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The Saybrook Patent
The Earl of Warwick had, in 1631, granted a piece of land in modern Connecticut to a group of his friends and family. He’d lost leadership of the Council for New England as a result of the dubiously legal act, but in 1635, colonists planned to settle the Saybrook Colony. Oliver Cromwell, John Hampden and John Pym had considered relocating there, but King Charles prevented them from going. Still, the colony became one of the more radical settlements in the region.
Roger Williams’ exile
After a change in leadership in Massachusetts, and after continuing political agitation, Roger Williams was exiled in the middle of winter. They’d planned to send him back to England, but Winthrop warned Williams of their plan, and he fled into the wilderness to spend the winter with the Narragansetts. He learned about Narragansett language and culture, and came away with even greater differences from the rest of the Puritans.
The first hints of future Revolution
As King Charles prepared to send his own governor to Massachusetts, colonists prepared to rebel. It was a minor incident, but in the context of future events unmistakably significant. The king’s governor never arrived, and the situation dissipated, but it had been the first time they prepared to rebel against the Crown. They also started building a trade network (including the slave trade), and that trade network would pave the way for revolution in the 1770s.
Transcript
In summer, colonists got the news they had been dreading. King Charles was still having trouble governing England, but news from Massachusetts had pushed him to declare he would now take over and assign his own governor. The Colony had just proven that its ministers preached sedition and rebellion, and that its leaders were subversive. They certainly weren’t loyal to the king, and they may not be loyal to the kingdom. Living alone and governing themselves, their ideas would only grow more extreme, and they could become a significant threat to the stability of the kingdom. It was time to act.
Introduction
Simplifying the king’s task of taking over, the Council for New England, or Plymouth Council for New England, had resigned its charter. The Earl of Warwick had been the person who gave the Puritans their grants, but he had been forced to resign as head of the Council after abusing his power to give his friends and family an exclusive charter to a piece of land in Connecticut – more on that in just a couple minutes – and Gorges’s people were firmly back in charge of the Council. But, Gorges felt that the Puritans had cheated him out of his land, and he’d been trying to regain control of the region for a couple years at this point. One way he could do this was to push for the region to be turned into a Crown Colony, and the best way to do this was to disband his own Council for New England. His joint stock company was the greatest protection the Puritans had against his own wishes. And to make things even weirder, he could cite Parliament’s frequent criticisms of the Council as his reason for disbanding it.
The way it worked was this. When King James had approved the new Council for New England, he had given it a lot of power. It had been primarily dominated by Gorges and his associates, who were strongly Anglican royalists who Puritans accused of being borderline feudalists. His vision was a society dominated by a few leaders with grants and patents he gave them, with farming and fishing being the basis of the economy, and with their paying him taxes to protect the entire region. Parliamentary dislike of Gorges, his vision and the amount of power he’d been given in New England led Parliament to repeatedly criticize the Council. But, then Gorges had gone off to war, and the Puritan Earl of Warwick had taken over leadership of the Council, and given land which Gorges had already claimed to the Massachusetts Puritans. Then, he’d been ousted, and Gorges’s people were back in control of the company, but not of the colony. Now, the rights and power which had at one point been intended for Gorges and his associates, was protecting Puritans who Gorges felt had cheated him out of his own land.
After a few years of fighting, Gorges decided that his best hope for reasserting his influence in the region was by making New England a Crown Colony like Virginia. His Council had issued all the patents in the region, and was therefore essentially the legal protection of the region’s colonies. When his Council was protecting his enemies against his interests, his best course of action was to voluntarily dissolve it and make things easier for both him and the king. And, because Parliament had scrutinized the council in the past, he could claim that his reason for doing so was to avoid a clash with Parliament, nevermind the fact that Parliament had been dissolved years ago and Charles was showing no signs of calling a new one.
This opened the way for the king to declare that he was now in charge of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Its existing paperwork had been nullified, and the king could take over with no opposition. It wouldn’t be a matter of political or legal drama like in Virginia – the Council had voluntarily disbanded. This, of course, nullified all Council for New England-issued patents, including the patent for Plymouth, and for years they’d live in America without a patent. The king’s focus was on Massachusetts, though, not Plymouth.
All of the Massachusetts’s England-based associates were now excluded from decision-making, and Cradock in particular was convicted of usurpation, meaning he’d wrongfully claimed power and authority, and the sentence deprived him of any ability to act on the colony’s behalf. And, King Charles was preparing to send his own governor to the Bay Colony.
The king had already stopped one group of passengers from heading to New England. John Pym, John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell were among the people forced to remain in England. Like much 17th Century American History, we mostly know about this from brief snippets in letters and diaries and public records, so we don’t know exactly why it happened. After the Civil War, though, the prominence of the people involved made the event the subject of some intrigue. Royalists claimed that Cromwell was fleeing destitution after squandering his inheritance, and that he changed his mind about relocating when written into his uncle’s will. Some Parliamentarians said Cromwell, Pym and Hampden had decided to emigrate after seeing no end to English oppression, and still other Parliamentarians argued the event couldn’t have taken place at all, because Cromwell would never seek refuge in America with so much at stake in England. They argued that the ships the detainees were reputed to have boarded did sail for New England, meaning most if not all of the passengers were allowed to go.
Debate over the event is a funny little example of the emotions of the time, and who knows what the exact story is. It isn’t hard to imagine that the king would prevent his most dangerous citizens from going to his most subversive colony, though in 1635, Cromwell wasn’t exactly a prominent figure, and he did have some financial difficulties.
Among the people who had arrived in New England in the detained fleet, though, were Thomas Shepard, Robert Keayne, Hugh Peter, and Henry Vane – and Henry Vane had brought a patent to start a plantation in the Connecticut River Valley, granted by the Earl of Warwick to a group of his friends and family, including Richard Saltonstall, and Lords Saye and Brooke. And that brings us back to the Warwick Patent – or Saybrook Patent – I’d mentioned earlier.
This patent, issued in 1631, was extremely controversial. It hadn’t technically gone through the Council for New England, and the Earl of Warwick also didn’t have a real claim to the land he was giving away. The issuing of the patent on such dubiously legal grounds led to Warwick being ousted as president of the Council that year, but preparations to go continued. A few months later, four more gentlemen were added to the list of patentees, including Colonel George Fenwick. So, the patent hadn’t actually been affected by the dissolution of the Council, but it also wasn’t exactly legitimate in the first place. Like so much of New England, it existed in a legal grey area, but they proceeded.
The patentees appointed John Winthrop Jr. as governor, and Fenwick as deputy governor. Saltonstall had financed a 40 ton ship with men, including an experienced military engineer, ironwork, portcullis, drawbridges and ammunition and 2000 pounds to be sent to the region to begin a fort. The Dutch had already bought the land the English were claiming from the local Indians, and had been fur trading there for years. They were planning a permanent settlement, but hadn’t yet set it up, so Winthrop Jr. worked fast. He sent 20 men led by Lion Gardiner to seize control of the area, and to quickly erect two cannons so the Dutch couldn’t land. They began building the town, which had already been laid out, and a month later Winthrop, Jr. himself arrived.
When the Dutch arrived, it was too late, and they had to turn around. The local Indians welcomed the settlers, again seeing them as protection against the Pequots.
As the year ended, and into the next spring, they built and renamed the settlement Saybrook, after the two noble patentees. Within a few years, it would be one of the three major settlements in what’s now Connecticut, with towns like Lyme, Westbrook, Chester, Essex and Deep River branching off from the original town, within the same colony. It was well located for trade with the Chesapeake and Caribbean, and for transferring goods from river boats to ocean ships. It also became one of the more radical colonies politically, populated by people who would overwhelmingly support Cromwell in the aftermath of the English Civil War, and in fact Cromwell and his fellow intended émigrés had intended to settle in Saybrook.
Around this time, Thomas Hooker, the Newtown Pastor, also moved to what’s now Connecticut and set up the beginning of the Connecticut Colony. He had moved a group of people down to found Hartford after his repeated clashes with and skepticism of John Cotton. And in a move that dismayed Newtown residents, residents of Watertown and Roxbury had been allowed to move to the same Connecticut Valley meadow that Newtown residents had asked for the year before. There they founded Concord, and the land became a long-running bone of contention between the colonists.
The foundation of Hartford, however, really marked the birth of Connecticut, though it was still under Massachusetts jurisdiction for the time being. Connecticut and Saybrook were distinct colonies at this point in time, and very different from each other. Whereas Saybrook was militant, Connecticut became the mildest Puritan colony, attracting relative moderates from London and the West Country who had never quite fit in in Massachusetts.
Hoping to get at least some benefit from the Connecticut Valley, Plymouth sent Winslow to explain that they had formerly purchased some of the Connecticut land from the Indians, and that they’d erected a trading post there. He asked for either 1/16th of the land, or a hundred pounds as compensation for the land which had been taken, but the laws didn’t back their claim, and they quickly gave up.
While Saybrook started to grow, Massachusetts was still reeling from its confrontation with the king, and panicking about the prospect of having a king-appointed governor sent over. They elected their own new governor, John Haynes and he was a strategic choice. Haynes, along with Dudley had condemned Endicott’s defacing of the flag. He also felt that the colony needed stricter rules and stronger punishments. Through Haynes’s term as governor, he, Hooker and Dudley would form a faction which clashed repeatedly with Winthrop, specifically focusing on Winthrop’s lax enforcement of the rules. And, over the course of the year, the General Court would strengthen laws, strengthen punishments, ban the smoking of tobacco, regulate clothing standards and raise the standards for Church membership. Many individual communities would adopt requirements that were even stricter.
In summer, though, when Massachusetts got news of the king’s new plans, the colony had a very important decision to make. How would it respond if a general governor was sent out from England? Their choices were to accept him, or face the prospect of military conflict, and they unanimously agreed on the latter. The colony would not accept a new governor, period. It would fight to defend itself, and if it couldn’t fight back, it would do whatever it could to get around the new requirement, delay, avoid or protract the conflict.
In preparation for a potential new conflict, they built a fort and two platforms on Castle Island to secure Boston Harbor, as well as fortifying Charlestown and Dorchester Heights. They increased the drilling of the militia, and gathered their arms and ammunition. The circulation of farthings was forbidden, and bullets were made legal tender instead. In terms of government, they agreed that they would appoint men to draft a body of laws resembling the Magna Carta, which would form the legal foundation of the colony.
Fortunately for the Puritans, the governor never arrived. The ship he’d boarded to take him to New England had wrecked just off the English shore, and the King never sent another. The events leading to the First Bishops War had started, and after the setback he just didn’t choose another governor and send another ship. The threat was still there, lingering in the background, but for the colonists, the acute situation had passed.
Roger Williams was continuing to challenge the colony’s leadership, though, and his closest allies, Winthrop and Endicott, were no longer in positions of authority. In fact, he was a perfect example of someone Haynes and Dudley felt should be punished more severely. His ideas weren’t popular, and he’d caused problems, so in the fall session of the General Court, he was exiled. They offered to delay the sentence, provided he stop preaching his opinions, but within a couple months he’d done it again, and the sentence was implemented immediately. They planned to send him back on the next ship to England, but Winthrop warned Williams before officials could arrest him.
He traveled through the wilderness to Narragansett Bay, walking 55 miles through the snow, and spent the winter with Massasoit’s Wampanoags – specifically the Narragansetts. He already knew some words of their language, but over winter he became proficient enough to write a book on it. He grew to greatly respect their culture, and even some aspects of their religion, though he refused to partake in aspects he felt might be influenced by the Devil. He started to understand what made the Indians tick, and in which ways he felt they were superior to the Puritans, with their welcoming nature topping the list. He was greatly impacted by his time with them, and he became the greatest cultural bridge between the Puritans and Indians.
In the Spring, Williams bought land from Massasoit, and a handful of settlers from Salem went to join him. Hugh Peter had taken his place as pastor of the Salem Church, and Peter had immediately drawn up a new Church covenant and required everyone to subscribe to it. People who preferred Williams’ fire to Peter’s moved to Williams’ new settlement.
Williams had been someone whose uncompromising honesty and willingness to take unpopular or inconvenient positions had gotten him banished. Hugh Peter had Williams’s penchant for being uncompromising, but in him it took a harsher form. In fact, years later rumors would circulate that he had been King Charles’s executioner, and there’s decent reason to believe he was the first to suggest the execution. And that’s really a good illustration of the type of perspective he embraced. Harsh, even brutal, theocratic and with a preaching style that some considered inspiring, while others just saw it as silly. Those who remained in Salem grew to embrace him, though, in a way they’d never embraced another preacher.
With the king’s governor gone, Massachusetts was once again free to govern itself, and for the rest of the year, the colony simply grew quietly. Endicott’s year forbidden from public office ended, and he became a magistrate – a role that he’d have for most of the rest of his life.
Winter set in, and things slowed down as they tended to in the cold months. 1636, and next episode, would bring the two biggest conflicts Massachusetts had yet experienced – the Pequot War and the Antinomian Crisis. Before we get into that, it’s worth taking the last couple minutes of this episode to note some of the other kinds of building that were going on in Massachusetts, because they’re an integral part of the colony’s story. People were still flooding in, 3000 in this year alone, and with that came more economic building, and more government work. And, in 1636, they split the county into colonies which among other things dealt with the legal disputes and business disagreements. These conflicts had become too frequent for one court alone to deal with while simultaneously dealing with elections and legislation.
And, the colony was building. It started plans in this year to establish Harvard, and had already opened its first grade school, as well as setting up Boston Common. In fact, there was a steady and productive building effort as yet unseen in the New World, with colonists who were overwhelmingly in the prime of their lives, living in a healthy climate with no fear of starvation, little fear of disease, and as much clean water as they needed.
1636 also saw the real birth of New England’s large-scale trade activities, and trade is what economically sustained New England until after independence had been achieved, and it became an important part of the social and political developments of all of the New World. English settlers were starting to colonize the Caribbean at this point, so New Englanders acted as the central trading location for Virginia and New England, both raising their own cattle to sell to the other colonies, and trading goods from England and elsewhere. Plymouth helped raise cattle which were traded to these Colonies, and bought the land from the Indians to sell to other settlers who were hoping to raise cattle, which helped make Plymouth affluent for the first time in its history. And if Plymouth flourished, Massachusetts boomed. This trade network would ultimately connect the colonies to each other much more closely than they were connected to their mother country, which is one reason the idea of Revolution could take off over a century later. It wasn’t producing goods like tobacco and cotton which would make New England rich – it was trading them. And, one of the types of trade New England started dabbling with in 1636 was the trade in slaves. In 1636, slaves weren’t a common commodity anywhere in English America with the exception of Providence Island, but the slave trade had been extremely valuable for other countries. It was certainly a potentially valuable form of trade, and in 1636, Massachusetts built its first slave carrier – the Desire. The slave trade wouldn’t truly boom for a few more years, but this marked the beginning of serious dabbling on New England’s part – yet another subject on which Roger Williams and the rest of the Puritans would clash.
Before I end this episode, there’s one more thing I’d like to tell you and that’s that on this podcast’s facebook page, I’ve started adding little mini-bios of various Puritans and New England settlers. I’d done a few of these in the past, but as we start dealing with bigger and bigger historical events, I’m going to do it more and more. They’re interesting, and get into details that don’t necessarily fit into the narrative as I weave it here. So, if you want, you can check that out at facebook.com/americanhistorypodcast.