A Harbor for Ships

“It hath a fair river, fit for harboring of ships, and abounds with rich and goodly meadows.” This description of New Haven, or Quinnipiac, as the Indians called it, was brought back to Boston in the summer of 1637, after the Pequot War, by some of the English soldiers who had pursued the flying Pequots into that part of Connecticut and had noticed the good harbor of New Haven as they passed.

The report sounded so pleasant and so satisfactory in the ears of a company of London merchants, who, with their families and their fortunes, had recently come to New England and were looking about for a suitable spot in which to settle, that they decided to visit this place and judge of it for themselves.

These people, about two hundred and fifty in number, had arrived in Boston in June of that same year, after a voyage of two months. Of course in the small ships of those days there must have been many discomforts, even in a pleasant season, and no doubt some of the people were seasick. An old record of that time says, “We fetched out the children and others that lay groaning in the cabins, and having stretched a rope from the steerage to the mainmast, made them stand some on one side and some on the other and sway it up and down till they were warm. By this means they soon grew well and merry. ... When the ship heaved and set more than usual a few were sick, but of these such as came upon deck and bestirred themselves were presently well again, therefore our captain set our children and young men to some harmless exercises, in which the seamen were very active and did our people much good, though they would sometimes play the wags with them.” When at last the Hector dropped anchor in Boston Harbor, and “there came a smell off the shore like the smell of a garden,” her passengers must have been glad that the long voyage was over.

The two leaders of the company were Theophilus Eaton, a successful shipping merchant of London, a man of affairs and of great personal dignity and kindliness, and his friend, Reverend John Davenport, a London clergyman, who, like many other Puritan ministers of those days, had been obliged to leave England on account of his religious opinions. These two men had been schoolboys together in the town of Coventry, they had been associated later in London, they came together to America, and they remained friends to the end of their lives.

As many of their party were merchants, and not farmers like a large number of the settlers on the Connecticut River at Hartford, it was important to select a place for their colony which would be convenient for trade and where there was a good harbor for the commerce they hoped to establish. For this reason the report of Quinnipiac interested them, and in September several members of the company went to Quinnipiac and liked it so well that seven men were left there through the winter to prepare for the coming of the rest in the spring. In April the whole number removed there from Boston.

The people of Massachusetts Bay were sorry to have them go. They would have been glad to have this rich and influential company join their colony, but these new settlers wished to found a colony of their own in which they could carry out their own ideas of what a model state should be, both in civil and religious matters. They took ship, therefore, from Boston for Quinnipiac, carrying all their goods and provisions with them. The expedition was well fitted out and all its details had been carefully planned before they left England. Friends already in the colonies had written offering suggestions: “Bring good store of clothes and bedding with you; bring paper and linseed oil for your windows, with cotton yarn for your lamps.”

As they sailed into Quinnipiac Harbor they saw for the first time the two great cliffs, the East and West Rocks, called by the Dutch “the Red Hills,” which still stand like guardians, one on each side of the present city of New Haven. On the level plain between them, which is watered by several small streams, they determined to build their town and to place it at the head of the beautiful harbor.

They made large and generous plans for it. They laid it out in regular squares and set aside a great open space in the center for a market-place. This is the New Haven Green, which exists to-day just as John Brockett, the surveyor, laid it out in 1638. It is still the largest public square in the heart of any city in the United States. In the middle of the Green they built the first “meeting-house.” It was fifty feet square, made of rough timbers, with a small tower on top where the drummer stood on Sundays to “drum” the people to church; for at first there were no bells. Each person had a seat carefully assigned to him, or her, in the meeting-house. Sometimes the boys sat with the soldiers near the door. We read later in the records that at one time the children in the galleries were so restless during the long sermons, that “tithing-men” were appointed “to take a stick or wand and smite such as are of uncomely behavior in the meeting and acquaint their parents.” On week-days the children went to school in a schoolhouse which was built on the Green.

The town of New Haven was soon noted for its large and fine houses, Eaton’s having nineteen fireplaces according to tradition, and Davenport’s, thirteen. But at first any kind of shelter was used for protection. The people met under an oak tree for service on the first Sunday after landing and Reverend John Davenport preached a sermon to them on the “Temptation of the Wilderness,” so it is said. During the first winter some of them slept in cellars dug out in the banks of one of the creeks and covered with earth. A boy named Michael Wigglesworth, who came to New Haven with his parents in October, 1638, when he was nine years old, lived in one of these cellars. When he grew up he wrote his autobiography and in it he says, “I remember that one great rain brake in upon us and drenched me so in my bed, being asleep, that I fell sick upon it, but the Lord in mercy spared my life and restored my health.”

When the settlers at Quinnipiac, or New Haven, as it was soon called, had been there a little more than a year, they met in Robert Newman’s barn “to consult about settling civil government” and also about establishing a church. Up to this time they had lived under what was known as the “Plantation Covenant,” which was a simple agreement among themselves that they would all “be ordered by those rules which the Scripture holds forth.” At this meeting on June 4, l639, they decided that they would continue to accept the Bible as a code of laws, and that only church members should hold office or have the right to vote for magistrates. They did this under the direction of John Davenport, who in one of his writings had described this colony as “a new Plantation whose design is religion.” This agreement, made in Robert Newman’s barn, was known as the “Fundamental Agreement.” Twelve men were appointed on that day who chose seven from among themselves to found a church. These seven men were called the “Seven Pillars.” On August 22, the “Seven Pillars” met and established a church, and on the 25th of October they met again and set up the civil government.

Like the Connecticut Colony, the New Haven Colony in setting up its government made no reference to any authority beyond itself; the people elected their own magistrates and made their own laws. But the New Haven Colony was unlike Connecticut in one important respect. In New Haven no man could vote or hold a place in the government unless he was a church member. This led later to much discontent among some of the people, and was one reason, among others, for the failure of New Haven as a separate colony and for its beng absorbed, twenty-five years afterward,—­in 1664,—­into the larger and more liberal Connecticut Colony.

Meanwhile, even before the government was organized, the merchants and shippers of the company had bought or built boats and had begun to trade along the coasts to the north and to the south. During the first winter while some of the people, like the family of Michael Wigglesworth, were still living in cellars dug in the river-banks, Master George Lamberton was sailing in his sloop, the Cock, on a trading voyage to Virginia. Other New Haven ships soon established commercial relations with Boston and New Amsterdam, with Delaware, where beaver skins could be obtained in abundance, with Virginia, whose great staple was tobacco, and with other plantations still farther away, such as Barbados in the West Indies, where sugar was the most important article of exchange. Now and then we hear of a New Haven ship in strange and foreign parts of the world.

There was one which set out in December, 1642, for the Canary Islands, laden with clapboards, and fell in with pirates near the Island of Palma, one of the Canaries. A Turkish pirate ship of three hundred tons with two hundred men on board and twenty-six guns, attacked this small New Haven ship of one hundred and eighty tons, which had only seven guns fit for use and twenty men armed with rusty muskets. The fight lasted for three hours, and Captain Carman, the master of the New Haven ship, and his men succeeded in killing a good many Turks in spite of being taken at a disadvantage. But at last the pirates put their ship alongside and sent one hundred men on board the New Haven ship, When, however, they found that their captain was shot and the rudder of their ship broken, the pirates hauled, down their flag and drew off so quickly that they left fifty of their men behind. “Then the master [Captain Carman] and some of his men came up and fought those fifty hand to hand and slew so many of them that the rest leaped overboard. The master had many wounds on his head and body and divers of his men were wounded, yet but one slain. So with much difficulty he got to the Island [of Palma], where he was very courteously entertained, and supplied with whatever he needed.”

But New Haven ships did not always come off as well as in this encounter with the pirates, and their voyages were not always successful. Some members of the New Haven Colony bought land in Delaware and attempted to establish a trading-post in order to take advantage of the profitable trade in beaver skins. But the Dutch and Swedes, who had settled there, objected to the coming of the English, and once, in 1642, they seized Captain Lamberton, who had come in his ship the Cock, accused him of inciting the Indians against them, and threw him into prison. As the charges against him could not be proved he was soon released, but the hostility of the Dutch and Swedes continued until the New Haven merchants were driven away from that coast and out of the rich fur-trade of Delaware. This was a great blow to the colony. Other losses, too, were met with, and at last the people became greatly discouraged as they saw their hopes of founding a successful commercial colony slowly, but surely, disappearing.

The voyage of the “Great Shippe” which took place about this time is the most tragic adventure in the story of New Haven’s early shipping days. It began in this way. In 1646, as a last resource, the merchants of New Haven decided to fit out a ship with what was left of their “tradeable estate,” and send her to London. Up to this time they had sent goods to England by way of Boston or of the West Indies; there might be more profit, they thought, in a direct trade, cutting out the cost of reshipment. So they bought a ship. We do not know her name, she is always spoken of as the “Great Shippe,” although she was only one hundred tons; perhaps the title was given her because the colonists were staking so much on this venture. If it succeeded, their prosperity might be assured; if it failed, they must give up the sea and commerce as a dependence and turn their energies to agriculture. The “Great Shippe” was a new boat, said to have been built in Rhode Island, and she was loaded principally with wheat and peas shipped in bulk, with West Indies hides, beaver skins, and what silver plate could be spared for exchange in London. Her cargo altogether was worth about twenty-five thousand dollars, which was a large sum in those days, especially in a new and struggling colony.

The master of the ship was the same Captain Lamberton we have heard of before. He was a brave and bold skipper, but it is said that he was not altogether pleased with the ship when he first saw her; that he did not like her lines and thought her not quite seaworthy. Other people, too, besides Captain Lamberton, complained that she was not only badly built, but badly loaded, with the light goods of the cargo below and the heavy above, and some old seamen predicted that the grain would shift in rough weather and make trouble. These were mostly rumors, however, and few paid attention to them at the time; but long afterward, when people talked over the strange fate of the “Great Shippe,” Captain Lamberton’s words, “This ship will be our grave,” were recalled and believed to have been a prophecy.

That winter of 1646 was a bitterly cold one in Connecticut, and New Haven Harbor was frozen over. When the “Great Shippe” was ready to sail, it was necessary to cut a way out for her with handsaws through the thick ice for nearly three miles. A good many people from the town walked out on the harbor ice beside the ship to see her begin her voyage, and to bid good-bye to a number of their friends who were going home to England on business of one kind or another. Seventy people had taken passage in the “Great Shippe,” and among them were some who were very prominent in the colony, as, for instance, Captain Nathaniel Turner, who, having had experience in the war with the Pequot Indians, had been given “the command and ordering of all martial affairs” in the plantation, and Thomas Gregson, one of the magistrates, who was charged by the colony to obtain a charter for them, if possible, from the English Parliament, then in control in England.

Reverend John Davenport, the minister, stood in the crowd of people on the ice that winter day and offered a prayer to God for the protection of the travelers. “Lord,” he said, “if it be thy will to bury these our friends in the bottom of the sea, they are thine, save them.” This does not sound like a very cheerful send-off, but we must remember that a long voyage was a serious undertaking in those days and that people sometimes made their wills even before sailing from New Haven for Boston.

When the “Great Shippe” had really gone, when the people had seen the last of Captain Lamberton standing on her deck giving orders, and had watched her white sails dwindle and disappear, they walked back over the ice to their homes on the shore remembering sadly that it would be a long time before they could expect to have any news from her. It might be two or three months before she reached London and as many more before word of her arrival could come back to them. So they waited patiently through the hard New England winter and the early spring, but by summer time they were eagerly looking for tidings of her. Ships came from England as usual to the colonies, but no one of them brought news of the safe arrival in London of the “Great Shippe” from New Haven. Then the people began to question the skippers of other boats, boats from the West Indies and from the plantations on the southern coasts, and to ask if anything had been heard of her in that direction. For they remembered that there had been an unusually violent storm soon after the ship had sailed, and they began to fear that she might have been blown out of her course and possibly wrecked on some such coast or island. Public prayers were offered for her safety and for the safety of her passengers. Meanwhile, the summer passed and the cold weather came again, and still there was no word from the fated ship. Few vessels put into New England harbors during the winter, and, as the chance of news grew less and less, the anxiety of the people gradually changed to despair. They recalled the sacrifices they had made to fit out that ship, the precious cargo she carried, all the things that could not be replaced (such as the sermons and other writings of Mr. Davenport which he had sent to England for publication); and in the loss of the ship on which they had set all their hopes they saw the final blow to the prosperity of New Haven. No one now had the courage or the money for another venture of that kind. Slowly and reluctantly the people turned to agriculture instead of trade, and the days of New Haven as a commercial colony were numbered.

But far worse to them than any material loss was the loss of the dear friends and relatives who had sailed with the “Great Shippe” for England. No compensation could come to those who had loved them. In November, 1647, the passengers on the ship were finally given up as lost and counted among the dead and their estates settled.

Yet many to whom they were dear could not rest satisfied. They remembered all the perils of the sea, the dangers of shipwreck on some barren coast, of possible capture by pirates, such as those who had attacked Captain Carman off the Canary Islands not many years before, and they came to feel at last that they would be thankful to learn that the ship had foundered at sea and that their friends had gone down with her to a natural death in the waters.

Two years and a half after the sailing of the “Great; Shippe” (so the story stands in a strange old book called the Magnolia Christi, by the Reverend Cotton Mather), a wonderful vision came to the people of New Haven. On that June afternoon in the year 1648, a great thunderstorm came up from the northwest. The sky grew black and threatening, there was vivid lightning, and a cold wind swept over the harbor. Before the rain had ceased and calm had come again, it was nearly sunset.

Then, against the clear evening light, a strange ship sailed into New Haven Harbor. Around the point she came with her sails full set and her colors flying. “There’s a brave ship,” cried the children, and they left their play to stand and gaze at her. Men and women gathered on the water-front and the same startled hope thrilled every heart: “It may be the ‘Great Shippe’ come home again!” For there was the old familiar outline, there were her three masts, her tackling, and her sails. And yet there was something new and mysterious, something awe-inspiring about her, and the watchers held their breath as they realized that she was sailing toward them straight against the wind that blew strong off the north shore. For a full half-hour they stood and gazed, until they could distinguish the different parts of her rigging, until they could see, standing high on her poop, the figure of a man with “one hand akimbo under his left side and in his right hand a sword stretched out toward the sea.” Then, all at once, a mist rose out of the sea behind her and covered her like smoke, and through the mist and smoke men saw dimly her shrouds give way, and her masts break and fall, as though a hurricane had struck her, and slowly she careened and plunged beneath the surface of the water.

The people turned to their pastor. “What does it mean?” they asked. “It was the form of Master Lamberton. Why is this vision sent us?” And he replied that doubtless God had sent it in answer to their prayers, to show them the fate of their friends and to set their hearts at rest, for “this was the mould of their ship, and thus her tragic end.”

References

1. Levermore, Charles H. Republic of New Haven. Johns Hopkins University Studies. Baltimore, 1886.
2. Atwater, Edward E. History of the Colony of New Haven. Printed at New Haven, 1881.
3. Blake, Henry T. Chronicles of New Haven Green. Printed at New Haven, 1892.
4. Winthrop, John. History of New England. Edited by James Savage. Boston, 1825.
5. Mather, Reverend Cotton. Magnalia Christi Americana, i, 25. London, 1702.

Three Judges

In the year 1661, when the city of New Haven was a small village not much more than twenty years old, a family of boys named Sperry lived out on a farm some two or three miles west of that settlement. There was only one house then besides theirs outside the town in that direction and the woods all about were thick and wild.

That summer something mysterious was going on near the Sperry farm. Every morning Richard Sperry himself, or one of his boys, carried food, in dishes covered with a cloth, into the woods on the steep side of West Rock about a mile from the house, and left it there on a stump. Every evening he, or one of his sons, went for the empty bowls and brought them home. The boys were curious to know who had eaten the food, for they never met any one coming or going, and never saw any one up on the Rock. In reply their father told them that there were men at work in the forest near by; yet they never heard voices nor the sound of an axe, and it was only long afterward that they learned the real reason for what they had done. If one of the boys had waited long enough some morning, lying still and hidden in the bushes, he might have seen a man come slowly and cautiously through the woods toward him, a dignified, grave-looking person with something foreign in his dress, something soldierly in his bearing, as if he were accustomed to commanding others; he might have watched this stranger—­so different from the people he knew—­take up the dishes of food and disappear again into the dark forest. And he would have wondered why a man like that, who was evidently not a hunter and not a new settler, should be hiding in the woods around New Haven.

Twelve years before, in England, this same man had taken part in a very different scene. There was a great trial held in the stately old Hall of Westminster and the prisoner at the bar was the King of England himself, and among the fifty-nine judges who condemned him to death was the man who was now hunted for his own life and was in hiding near the Sperry farm that summer, three thousand miles away from all he loved in England.

There were nearly one hundred men who had some part, large or small, in the trial and death of King Charles the First, and all of them were in great danger eleven years later when the Royalists returned to power and his son, Charles the Second, became king. A few who had very little to do with the king’s sentence were pardoned; others were seized at once, tried, condemned, and executed in the barbarous way the English law then allowed, and still others tried to escape by leaving England. Some got safely to the Continent and wandered about from one foreign city to another, trying to pass unnoticed in the crowd, and always in danger of being discovered and arrested by the messengers the English Government sent after them.

Three of them came to New England and spent some time in Connecticut. This is their story.

Early in May, 1660, a ship named the Prudent Mary lay at Gravesend near London, getting ready to sail under her master, Captain Pierce, for the colonies in the new world. Two of the regicides, General Edward Whalley and General William Goffe, had taken passage in her, but they dared not sail under their own names and they came aboard as Edward Richardson and William Stephenson. While the ship was waiting in Gravesend the new king was proclaimed. That was on Saturday, May 12. The next day General Goffe wrote in his diary,—­“May 13. Wee kept Sabbath abord.”

On Monday they sailed and were happy to get away from England before an order could be given for their arrest. The ships of those days were very small and the little Prudent Mary took ten weeks to make her way across the ocean, but at last Goffe wrote in his journal: “July 27. We came to anchor between Boston and Charlestown; between 8 and 9 in the morning; all in good health through the good hand of God upon us.”

When the judges landed they were among friends, for most of the people in New England were of their political party. They took their own names again, called on the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and went about freely. Goffe’s diary says: “Aug. 9. Went to Boston lecture and heard Mr. Norton. Went afterwards to his house where we were lovingly entertained with many ministers and found great respects from them.” And on the 26th: “We visited Elder Frost, who received us with great kindness and love.”

This diary and his letters show that Goffe was sincere and religious, but his life tells us that he was brave and energetic too. He had made his own way, and both he and Whalley, who was his father-in-law, had been important men in England; they were major-generals who had fought in great battles and had taken part in great events in history. There is an old story about their skill in fencing.

“At Boston,” so the story runs, “there appeared a gallant person, some say a fencing-master, who, on a stage erected for the purpose, walked for several days challenging and defying any to play with him at swords. At length one of the judges disguised in a rustic dress, holding in one hand a cheese wrapped in a napkin for a shield, with a broomstick, whose mop he had besmeared with dirty puddle water as he passed along, mounted the stage. The fencing-master railed at him for his impudence, asked what business he had there, and bade him begone. The judge stood his ground, upon which the gladiator made a pass at him with his sword to drive him off. An encounter ensued. The judge received the sword into the cheese and held it till he drew the mop of the broom over the other’s mouth, and gave the gentleman a pair of whiskers. The gentleman made another pass, and plunging his sword a second time, it was caught and held in the cheese till the broom was drawn over his eyes. At a third lunge, the sword was caught again, till the mop of the broom was rubbed gently all over his face. Upon this, the gentleman let fall, or laid aside, his small sword and took up the broadsword and came at him with that, upon which the judge said, ’Stop, sir! Hitherto, you see, I have only played with you and have not attempted to hurt you, but if you come at me now with the broadsword, know that I will certainly take your life.’ The firmness and determination with which he spoke struck the gentleman, who, desisting, exclaimed, ’Who can you be? You are either Goffe, Whalley, or the devil, for there was no other man in England that could beat me.’”

For seven months the two judges lived in Cambridge at the house of Major Daniel Gookin, a member of the governor’s council and a fellow passenger of theirs in the Prudent Mary. They went to church on Sundays, and no doubt on “training-days” they watched the train-bands practice, for they were famous fighters themselves. But meantime the news of their being in the colonies was carried to England by a royalist named Captain Breedon, and the governor debated with his council what to do about it. He wanted to protect them, but he feared the king’s displeasure might bring trouble on the colony. Before he decided, the two judges, or “the two Colonels” as they were called, finding they were not safe in Boston, left for New Haven.

This was their first journey in the new wilderness; it was winter time, and probably there was snow on the ground and hanging heavy on the trees-more snow than they had ever seen in England. Most of the road between Boston and New Haven was a trail through forests where a guide was necessary. They stopped at Hartford, were kindly received there, and reached New Haven early in March. For three weeks they were guests of the minister, Reverend John Davenport. He was their friend and is said to have preached a sermon from the text, “Hide the outcasts; betray not him that wandereth,” to prepare people for their coming. Whalley’s sister had once lived in New Haven and they had other friends there too. But it was very dangerous for these friends to try to protect them, and when word came that a reward had been offered in England for their arrest, the hunted judges left New Haven as they had left Boston before, pretending, this time, to go to New York. However, they only went as far as Milford and turned back secretly in the night to New Haven where the minister received them again and hid them, in his own house and in the houses of other friends, until May, when a still greater danger threatened them.

The royal order for their arrest at last reached Boston and the governor there was obliged to forward it. He gave it to two young royalists, Thomas Kellond and Thomas Kirk, and on Saturday, May 11, they arrived with it in Guilford at the house of William Leete, the Governor of the New Haven Colony. Governor Leete took the paper and began to read it aloud, hoping some one in the room would overhear it and send word to warn the judges. Kirk and Kellond interrupted him and said the paper was too important to read in public. Then they asked for horses and a search-warrant to carry with them to New Haven. It took a long time to get the horses; there was one delay after another, and the governor said he could not give them the warrant without consulting the other magistrates, but he would write a letter. It took a long time also to write the letter, and when both horses and letter were ready it was too late to start that night. The next day was Sunday and nobody was allowed to travel on Sunday in the New Haven Colony. So the messengers waited impatiently for Monday, and meantime they heard rumors that the judges had been seen in New Haven, and that Mr. Davenport must be protecting them still, because he had lately put ten pounds’ worth of fresh provisions in his house; all of which made them still more impatient.

On Monday, at last, they got to New Haven, and some hours later Governor Leete followed them—­very slowly—­and called the magistrates together. It took the magistrates so long to decide what to do that Kellond and Kirk asked bluntly whether they meant to honor and obey the king or not. The governor answered, “We honor his Majesty, but we have tender consciences.” At last a search was ordered to be made for the regicides, but Kirk and Kellond were convinced by this time that it would be useless, and they left in disgust for New York.

They were right, it was useless; for an Indian runner had come quickly from Guilford on Saturday, and Goffe and Whalley had disappeared.

Several stories are told of their narrow escapes at this time. One says they were on the Neck Bridge over Mill River on State Street when they heard the horses of their pursuers behind them and had only time to slip under the bridge and lie there hidden while the men rode over their heads. Another tells how a woman hid them in her house, in a closet whose door looked like a part of the wall with kitchen pots and pans hung on it. When they left the settlement they took refuge in the wild forest, and most of that summer they lived in a cave in a pile of boulders on the top of West Rock. The cave is there still, and is called “Judges’ Cave” to-day. Richard Sperry carried food to them or sent it by one of his boys, and sometimes on very stormy nights they crept secretly down to his house and stayed with him. Once, in June, they went back to New Haven and offered to give themselves up to save their friends, if necessary, and arranged that Governor Leete should always know where to find them. Most people thought they had left the colony altogther then, but they were back in their cave on the Rock, or in some other hiding-place in the deep woods. Rewards were still offered for them and they dared not venture out. They called West Rock “Providence Hill,” because God had provided for them there. And now these two men, who had led such stirring, active lives in England, lived in a great loneliness and silence, with no friends near them, no sounds but the distant crash of a falling tree, or the wind sighing in the forest branches. There were prowling Indians and prowling wild beasts. Once, so the story says, a panther crept up stealthily to the cave at night as they lay in bed and put his head in at the opening, his eyes burning in the darkness like two fires.

In August, when the search for them was pretty much over, they went to Milford. They stayed there very secretly for three years, until, in 1664, there was danger of another search being made. Then they went back to their cave on the Rock; but it was no longer a safe place for them, because “some Indians in their hunting discovered the cave with the bed,” and their friends made a different plan for their concealment.

The exiles set out on another long journey. They traveled only at night, stopping and hiding in the daytime. The trail they followed led them up the valley of the Connecticut River, beyond Hartford and far into the north, until they came to what is now the town of Hadley in Massachusetts. This was then one of the farthest settlements in the wilderness and very remote and lonely. Reverend John Russell, the minister there, gave them shelter and took care of them. There was a cellar under part of his house, and, by taking up some loose boards in the floor above it, they could drop down quickly into it if visitors came unexpectedly. In spite of the danger to himself, Mr. Russell kept them safe in Hadley for twelve or fifteen years. A few friends wrote to them and sent them money, but no one else in the world outside knew what had become of them or whether or not they were still alive.

There is a famous story about one of the regicides in Hadley. Once, it says, in King Philip’s War the Indians attacked the place. They burst out of the woods and rushed upon the settlement on a Sunday morning while every one was at church. Terror-stricken and thrown into wild confusion by the sight of the yelling savages the people of Hadley were helpless, when, all at once, an unknown man, with whitening hair and strange garments, appeared in the midst of them and took command. He rallied them and led them out against the Indians and drove them back into the forest. “As suddenly as he had come, the deliverer of Hadley disappeared.” No one ever saw him again, and the people said God must have sent an angel to help them. Long afterward they learned that it was General Goffe.

There is not much more to tell about the judges after this. Whalley was an an old man now, and Goffe wrote to his wife, who was Whalley’s daughter, “Your old friend” (he dared not say her father, and he signed himself Walter Goldsmith instead of William Goffe) “is yet living, but continues in a very weak condition and seems not to take much notice of anything that is done or said, but patiently bears all things and never complains of anything. The common and very frequent question is to know how he doth and his answer for the most part is, ’Very well, I praise God,’ which he utters with a very low and weak voice.”

After Whalley died, Goffe left Hadley and went to Hartford. We do not know much about him there. We know that he was still an exile with a price on his head, and still hiding. In one of his letters he says to a friend, “Dear Sir, you know my trials are considerable, but I beseech you not to interpret any expression in my letters as if I complained of God’s dealing with me.” His family in England had moved and he did not know their address or how to reach them, and in April, 1679, he wrote to the same friend, “I am greatly longing to hear from my poor desolate relations, and whether my last summer’s letters got safe to them.” What answer he received, whether he ever heard from them again, we cannot tell, for his story ends with that last letter.

The third regicide judge who came to Connecticut; was Colonel John Dixwell. He spent some time with Whalley and Goffe at Hadley and afterward lived seventeen years in New Haven. No search was ever made for him because he was supposed to have died in Europe, and he was known to almost every one in the colony as Mr. James Davids. It was only when he was on his death-bed that he allowed his real name to be told. His house stood on the corner of Grove and College Streets; he married in New Haven and had several children. He was a great friend of Reverend James Pierpont, the minister, and the story goes that they had beaten a path walking across their lots to talk over the fence and that Madame Pierpont used to ask her husband who that old man was who was so fond of living “an obscure and unnoticed life” and why he liked so much to talk with him, and he replied that “if she knew the worth and value of that old man she would not wonder at it.”

Once, so it is said, Sir Edmund Andros came from Boston to New Haven and noticed on Sunday in church a dignified old gentleman with an erect and military air very different from the rest of the people, and asked who he was. He was told that it was Mr. Davids, a New Haven merchant. “Oh, no,” said Andros, “I have seen men and can judge them by their looks. He is no merchant; he has been a soldier and has figured somewhere in a more public station than this.” Some one warned Dixwell and he stayed away from church that afternoon.

When he died he was buried in the old burying-ground behind Center Church on the New Haven Green. In 1849, one of his descendants put up the monument to him which stands there to-day. The monument to Goffe and Whalley is the “Judges’ Cave” on the top of West Rock, and three streets in New Haven are also named for the three regicide judges who came to Connecticut.

References

1. Hutchinson, Thomas. History of Massachusetts, Salem and Boston, 1795.
2. The Mather Papers, in Massachusetts Historical Collections, 4th series, vol. 8.
3. Dexter, F.B. Memoranda respecting Edward Whalley and William Goffe, in Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society, vol. 2.
4. Stiles, Ezra. A History of Three of the Judges of King Charles First. Hartford, 1794 Reprinted in Library of American History, Samuel L. Knapp, editor. New York, 1839.
5. Goffe’s Diary, in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1863-64.
6. Judd, Sylvester. History of Hadley. Introduction to edition of 1905. H.R. Huntting & Co. Springfield, 1905.

The Fort on the River

A boy named Lion Gardiner was born in England in 1599, toward the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was strong, active, and energetic, and as he grew up he was trained to be an engineer. Like a good many other ambitious young Englishmen of his day, he took service in the Low Countries,—­that is, in what is now Holland and Belgium,—­where the people were fighting against Spain for their independence. He was employed as “an engineer and master of works of fortification in the legers [camps] of the Prince of Orange.”

While he was in Holland he received an offer from a group of English “Lords and Gentlemen” of the Puritan party, who were interested in colonization in America, to go to New England and construct works of fortification there. “I was to serve them,” he says, “in the drawing, ordering, and making of a city, towns, or forts of defence,” and “I was appointed to attend such orders as Mr. John Winthrop, Esq., should appoint, and that we should choose a place both for the convenience of a good harbour and also for capableness and fitness for fortification.”

Lion Gardiner signed an agreement with them for four years at one hundred pounds, or five hundred dollars, a year and expenses paid to America for himself and his family. He was married before he left Holland and he and his wife sailed for London, July 10, 1635, in a small North Sea bark named the Batcheler. A month later they left London in the same little ship bound for Boston. The Batcheler was very small; there were only twelve men and two women on board, and these two women were Gardiner’s wife, Mary Wilemson, and her maid, Eliza Coles. The voyage was rough and stormy and lasted nearly three months and a half. When they arrived in Boston on November 28, the snow was knee-deep, and the winter set in so cold and forbidding that there was some delay in carrying out the plans for the new colony. As Lieutenant Gardiner was an “expert engineer,” the people of Boston were glad to take advantage of his stay with them to employ him in finishing some fortifications for them on Fort Hill.

In the spring he sailed once more on the little Batcheler for the mouth of the Connecticut River, where it had been decided to build the new fort and plant the new colony. This place was selected partly because of its good harbor, and partly because a fort here would command the entrance to this “Long, Fresh, Rich River.”

The “Lords and Gentlemen” who planned this undertaking included Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke, John Pym, and other well-known men in the Puritan party. They were opposed to the Government in England both in politics and religion, and at one time, when matters went strongly against their party, some of them expected to come to America. It is said that Oliver Cromwell, afterward Lord Protector of England, and John Hampden, his cousin, were among this number. It is at least true that Lieutenant Gardiner was ordered to construct “within the fort” houses suitable for “men of quality” and to erect “some convenient buildings for the receipt of gentlemen.” The place was named Saybrook for Lord Saye and Sele and for Lord Brooke. It was not a colony of merchants like the New Haven Colony, nor of farmers like the Connecticut Colony; it was a military post, and it was planned as a refuge in the New World for influential men in public life in England who might be forced to leave their own country.

John Winthrop, Jr., who was to be the governor of the settlement, had sent a ship in November with carpenters and other workmen to take possession of the place and to begin building, but when Lieutenant Gardiner arrived at the mouth of the Connecticut in March, he found that not much had been done—­only a few trees cut down and a few huts put up. He set to work at once and built a fort “of a kind of timber called ‘a read oack,’” and across the neck of land behind the fort he built a “palisade of whole trees set in the ground.”

The fort was on a point of land running out into the river just above its mouth. There were salt marshes around it, and on three sides it was protected by water. Dutch sailors had first discovered this place and called it “Kievet’s Hook” from the cry of the birds (pee-wees) whom they heard there. The Dutch themselves intended to establish a trading-post here, but they were driven away by the arrival of the English.

The “Lords and Gentlemen” in England had promised to send Lieutenant Gardiner “three hundred able men” that spring, to help him; “two hundred to attend fortification, fifty to till the ground, and fifty to build houses,” but they did not come and he was greatly disappointed. George Fenwick, acting as agent of the company, however, arrived to see how matters were progressing at Saybrook. Fenwick was the only one of the Puritan “gentlemen” who ever came to New England; for conditions were rapidly changing in English politics, and their party was soon engaged in a struggle with the Government that kept all its prominent leaders at home. But although Lion Gardiner was left without enough workmen and with few supplies, he made the most of his resources, and his little fort, built under such difficulties, soon became an important place because of the protection it gave to the planters against the Indians.

He was scarcely established at Saybrook before trouble broke out with the Pequots, a large and powerful tribe of Indians. There were wrongs and misunderstandings on both sides, and at last the Pequots murdered Captain Stone, a Virginia trader, in his boat on the Connecticut River, and most of the party with him. Not long after this John Oldham, a Massachusetts trader, was killed on Block Island. These and other outrages led the Massachusetts Colony to demand satisfaction of the Pequots and the surrender of the murderers. Lieutenant Gardiner, in his exposed position, felt that a war just then would be a mistake, and he sent a protest to the magistrates of Massachusetts to “entreat them to rest awhile, till we get more strength here about,” he said, “and provide for it; for I have but twenty-four in all, men, women, and boys and girls, and not food for them for two months unless we save our cornfield, which could not be if it came to war for it is two miles from our house. I know, if you make war with these Pequots, myself with these few you will leave at the stake to be roasted or for hunger to be starved; for Indian corn is now twelve shillings per bushel and we have but three acres planted. War is like a three-footed stool; want one foot and down comes all, and these three feet are men, victuals, and munition; therefore, seeing in peace we are like to be famished, what will be done in war? Wherefore I think it will be best only to fight against Captain Hunger.”

But the Massachusetts people did not take his advice. Instead, they sent out an expedition under Captain Endecott, to punish the Pequots. This expedition burnt the Indian wigwams and cornfields on Block Island, and also in the Pequot country near the mouth of the Pequot, or Thames, River; and Captain Endecott and his soldiers came to Saybrook Port and made that place their headquarters, “to my great grief,” said Gardiner, “for you come hither to raise these wasps about my ears and then you will take wing and flee away.”

His prophecy came true, for the expedition returned to Boston without having accomplished anything except to enrage the Indians still further and to make the position of the little garrison at the fort more difficult than ever.

Even before this they had found it dangerous to trade with the Indians. About the time that Gardiner sent his protest to Massachusetts, a Saybrook man, Thomas Hurlburt, had a narrow escape from death in the Pequot country, where he had gone with a trading party, and he was only saved by the kindness and compassion of an Indian woman. He stepped into the sachem’s wigwam to inquire about some stolen horses. While he was there, the Indians having for some reason left him alone for a moment, the sachem’s wife, Wincumbone, came back and made signs to him secretly that the men were planning to kill him. “He drew his sword,” ran to his companions, and barely got aboard the boat in time.

“This caused me,” says Lieutenant Gardiner, “to keep watch and ward, for I saw that they plotted our destruction.”

From this time on the fort was almost besieged by Indians who lay in ambush around it, watching and waiting for a chance to attack any of the garrison who might venture out.

One day two men were “beating samp at the Garden Pales,” not far from the fort, when the sentinels called to them to run in quickly because a number of Pequots were creeping up to catch them. “I, hearing it,” says Gardiner, “went up to the redoubt and put two cross-bar shot into the two guns that lay above, and levelled them at the trees in the middle of the limbs and boughs. The Indians began a long shout, and then the two great guns went off and divers of them were hurt.”

These “two great guns” were two pieces, of three inches each, by which the fort was defended.

“After this,” writes Gardiner, “I immediately took men and went to our cornfield to gather our corn, appointing others to come with the shallop [the boat] and fetch it, and I left five lusty men in the strong house I had built for the defense of the corn. Now, these men, not regarding the charge I had given them, three of them went a mile from the house, a-fowling; and having loaded themselves with fowl, they returned. The Pequots let them pass first, till they had loaded themselves, but at their return they arose out of their ambush and shot all three; one of them escaped through the corn, shot through the leg, the other two they tormented.”

An equally cruel fate befell a trader named Tilly, who was taken alive by the Indians and tortured. Tilly came from Massachusetts Bay and was going up the river to Hartford. When he landed at Saybrook, as all travelers were obliged to do, he saw a paper nailed up over the fort gate with orders that no boat going up the river should stop anywhere between Saybrook and Wethersfield. These orders were put up by Lieutenant Gardiner because a boat with three men well armed in it had lately been captured by the river Indians. Tilly, however, refused to obey, and quarreled with Gardiner. “I wish you, and also charge you,” said Gardiner to him in reply, “to observe that which you have read at the gate; ’tis my duty to God and my masters which is the ground of this, had you but eyes to see it; but you will not till you feel it.” Tilly went up the river safely, obeying orders; but coming down, when he was about three miles above Saybrook, he went ashore with only one man and carelessly fired off his gun. The Indians, hearing it, came up, captured him, and carried him away. Gardiner called the spot where this happened “Tilly’s Folly.”

It was a winter of great responsibility and danger for Lieutenant Lion Gardiner, and all his courage and good sense were needed to carry him safely through it. Once he was himself wounded by Indian arrows and nearly lost his life. On the 22d of February, he “went out with ten men and three dogs, half a mile from the house, to burn the weeds, leaves, and reeds upon the neck of land” behind the fort, when, suddenly, four Indians “started up out of the fiery reeds,” and the sentinels he had set to watch called to him that a great many more were coming from “the other side of the marsh.” The Indians attacked his party, killed three or four men, and tried to get between the rest and the fort and cut off their return. “They kept us in a half-moon,” says Gardiner, “we retreating and exchanging many a shot... defending ourselves with our naked swords, or else they had taken us all alive.... I was shot with many arrows, but my buff coat preserved me, only one hurt me.” The English soldiers of those days wore back and breast pieces of steel over their buff coats. A few days later, the Indians, believing Gardiner dead, came again and surrounded the fort, and, as the old record says, “made many proud challenges and dared the English out to fight,” but Gardiner ordered the “two great guns” set off once more, and the Indians disappeared.

Finding the fort at Saybrook so well defended, the Pequots fell upon the settlement at Wethersfield, killed a number of men working in the fields, and carried off two young girls. Flushed with this success, they paddled down the river in their canoes and when they passed the Saybrook fort they set up poles, like masts, in the canoes and, by way of bravado, hung upon them the clothes of the Englishmen whom they had murdered. The men in the fort fired on the canoes, but the distance was too great. One shot just grazed the bow of the boat in which were the two young English girls. The Indians passed safely and carried their captives with them to the Pequot country.

The Connecticut men now determined to put a stop to the depredations of the Pequots. It was a serious undertaking, for there were only about two hundred and fifty Englishmen in all Connecticut at this time, and there were several hundred Pequot warriors. Help was asked from the colonies in Massachusetts, and, meanwhile, about ninety men were collected from the three settlements of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor and sent down to Saybrook under the command of Captain John Mason. A number of friendly Indians also went with them, and chief among these was Uncas, sachem of the Mohegans.

While this expedition was at Saybrook, taking counsel with Lieutenant Lion Gardiner and making ready, a Dutch boat put in at the fort on its way to trade in the Pequot country. The officers at the fort were unwilling to let the boat proceed, for there were articles on board for trade with the Indians that might be useful to the latter in war time, such as kettles, out of which the Indians could make arrowheads. The Dutch, however, promised that if they were allowed to go on they would do all in their power to obtain the release of the two captive English girls. So they were given permission and they sailed for the Pequot River. There the master of the boat went ashore and offered to trade with the Indians.

“What do you want in return for your goods?” asked the Pequot sachem.

“The two English maids,” answered the Dutchman.

But the sachem would not consent. After a time, however, the Dutch captain succeeded in enticing several of the principal Indians on board his boat, and, having secured them there as hostages, he called to the others on shore that if they wanted their men returned they must bring the two young girls. “If not,” said he, “we set sail and will turn all your Indians overboard in the main ocean so soon as ever we come out.” The Pequots refused to believe him until the boat was actually under way and sailing down the river; then at last they yielded, gave up the two English girls, and received the seven Indians in return.

These two poor little girls reached Saybrook in a sad condition, worn out and frightened. The Dutch sailors had kindly given them their own linen jackets because the girls had lost most of their clothes, and Lieutenant Gardiner paid ten pounds out of his own purse for their redemption. The Indians seem, on the whole, to have treated them well. They were saved from death at first by the pity and intercession of Wincumbone, the same chieftain’s wife who once before had saved Thomas Hurlburt. She took care of them, the girls said, and they told how “the Indians carried them from place to place and showed them their forts and curious wigwams and houses, and encouraged them to be merry.” But they could not be very merry, and the elder, who was sixteen, said that she slipped “behind the rocks and under the trees” as often as she could to pray God to send them help. The Dutch governor was so much interested in their story that he sent for the girls to come to New Amsterdam (later New York), that he might see them and hear them tell of their adventures. At last, after all these journeyings, they were sent back safely to their homes in Wethersfield.

Soon after this, Captain Mason and his company set out from Saybrook on their expedition against the Pequots. After burning the Indian fort at Mystic, in which many women and children lost their lives, and killing several hundred Pequot warriors, they returned victorious. They reached the bank of the Connecticut opposite Saybrook at sunset, too late to cross the river that night, but they were welcomed by a salute from the guns of the fort; “being nobly entertained by Lieutenant Gardiner with many great guns,” as Captain Mason expressed it. The destruction of the Pequots relieved Saybrook Fort from danger and secured the safety of the colonists in Connecticut; there was never again any serious trouble with the Indians. But the story is a cruel one, and we can only forgive it when we remember that the settlers felt that their own lives, and the lives of their wives and little children, were in constant danger from the attacks of the savages.

When the four years of his contract were ended, in the summer of 1639, Lieutenant Lion Gardiner left Saybrook Fort, which he had defended so bravely, and went to live on an island he had bought from the Indians. This island, still known as “Gardiner’s Island,” is at the end of Long Island and must have been very remote in those days, and far from any white neighbors. But Gardiner was on the best of terms with the Long Island Indians, and between him and their sachem, Waiandance, there was a true and generous friendship, founded on mutual respect and trust, which lasted throughout their lives. When Waiandance died, in 1658, Gardiner wrote, “My friend and brother is gone, who will now do the like?” It is a noble record of friendship between a white man and an Indian.

About the time that Lieutenant Gardiner left the fort, George Fenwick, who had come to Saybrook once before, in 1636, came again and brought his wife, Lady Fenwick. She was Alice Apsley, the widow of Sir John Boteler, and was called “Lady” by courtesy. They lived in Saybrook for a number of years. An old letter of that time says that “Master Fenwick and the Lady Boteler [his wife] and Master Higginson, their chaplain, were living in a fair house, and well fortified.” In 1644, Fenwick, as agent, sold Saybrook to the Connecticut Colony. The next year Lady Fenwick died and was buried within the fort. Her tomb can be seen to-day in the old cemetery on Saybrook Point, to which it was removed in l870.

Although when the Pequot War was over Saybrook was no longer exposed to constant attacks from the Indians, yet, for a woman brought up as Lady Fenwick had been, in ease and comfort, life there must have been full of hardship. But she made no complaint. All that we know of her is good and charming. She loved flowers and fruits and had her gardens and her pet rabbits. She brought with her some red Devon cattle which she gave to Mr. Whitfield in Guilford. She has left behind her a memory of gentleness and kindness that still cling to the story of the rough, little pioneer fort, set in the midst of the salt marshes and surrounded by savage neighbors:—­

“And ever this wave-washed shore
  Shall be linked with her tomb and fame,
 And blend with the wind and the billowy roar
  The music of her name.”

One more fact deserves to be remembered in connection with Saybrook. Yale College was organized there in 1701 as the “Collegiate School” of the Connecticut Colony, and was not removed to New Haven until sixteen years later. Its site in Saybrook is marked now by a granite boulder with a tablet and inscription. About half a mile west of this monument are two old millstones which are said to have been in use in the gristmill belonging to the first little fort at Saybrook, the “Fort on the River,” which was built and defended by the “Brave Lieutenant Lion Gardiner.”

References

1. Winthrop, John., History of New England. Edited by James Savage. Boston, 1825.
2. Gardiner, Curtiss C. “Papers and Biography of Lion Gardiner,” in Lion Gardiner and his Descendants. A. Whipple. St. Louis, 1890.
3. Orr, Charles. History of the Pequot War. (Accounts of Mason, Underhill, Vincent and Gardiner.) The Helman-Taylor Co. Cleveland, 1897.
4. Newton, Arthur Percival. The Colonizing Activities of the English Puritans. Yale University Press. New Haven, 1914.
5. Saybrook Quadrimillenial, November 27, 1885. Hartford, 1886.