Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/50

 18 Settlement of Connecticut. [i633-8 study of Calvinistic theology ; and a violent strife ensued. Vane, who had been elected governor in 1636, took the part of the new-comers. Finally, however, the party of Wheelwright and Mrs Hutchinson proved to be the minority and therefore the heretics. After two years of wrangling they were silenced and banished. Along the coast of Massachusetts the proportion of fertile soil to habitable area is but small, and consequently, as the community throve and grew, the inhabitants began to consider the question of expansion. The pastures along the rich valley of the Connecticut offered a tempting home. The legislature of Massachusetts at first opposed the movement. Local compactness was almost an essential condition of that intense spirit of unity and minute State-control at which Massachusetts aimed. But material considerations outweighed these feelings. The emigration to Connecticut was complicated by the fact that the district in question was already claimed by one party and partially occupied by another. In 1631 Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Brook and others had obtained from the New England Company a grant of land along the Connecticut. As they were of the Puritan party, this grant was not likely to act as a practical bar to emigration from Massachusetts. But it made it almost certain that, whatever wishes the legislature of Massachusetts might express, or whatever conditions they might impose, the colony when formed would be a separate body. In 1633 a party from Plymouth had already established themselves, not without opposition from the Dutch, in the Connecticut valley. Two years later a party of emigrants from Dorchester entered the valley. A dispute with the settlers from Plymouth followed; but terms were arranged, and the Dorchester men were left in possession. Soon after- wards a small party, sent out by the patentees, were, according to their own story, also driven out by the men of Dorchester. It was fortunate for the peace of New England that the aims and views of the Connecticut patentees were virtually identical with those of the rulers of Massachusetts. The choice by the former of Winthrop's son John as governor of their district was a further guarantee. Massachusetts allowed the secession to become complete ; and in 1638 three townships in the Connecticut valley formally declared themselves a commonwealth with a constitution similar to that of Massachusetts. In one point of great importance the constitution of Connecticut differed from that of Massachusetts. No religious test was imposed upon freemen. The more liberal spirit thus shown remained a characteristic of Connecticut during the whole of the colonial period. The settlement of Connecticut involved New England in its first Indian war. The country near Boston Bay had been depopulated not long before the arrival of the settlers by a pestilence, followed after 1630 by an outbreak of small-pox. Whether attacked or attacking, blameless or culpable, some isolated trader was almost always at the