Part 4

"We honor His Majesty," answered Governor Leete, "but we have tender consciences."

The pursuers lodged at a little inn in New Haven. There the governor went that evening, and taking one of them by the hand, said, "I wish I had been a plowman, and had never been in office, since I find it so weighty."

"Will you own His Majesty or no?" demanded the two men from Massachusetts.

"We would first know whether His Majesty would own us," was the governor's guarded answer.

The officers of New Haven would not help them, the people were openly hostile, and so Kellond and Kirk left the colony, without having dared to search a single house. They went south to Manhattan Island, where the Dutch Governor Stuyvesant received them very politely, and promised to help them arrest the fugitives if the latter came to New Netherland. Then they went back to Boston, baffled of their quarry.

Now when the Indian messenger had come to New Haven the fugitive judges had fled from the town and spent the night at a mill two miles away. Then they went to a place called "Hatchet Harbor," where they stayed a couple of days, and from there to a cave upon a mountain that they called Providence Hill. This cave, ever since known as the "Judges' Cave," was a splendid hiding place. On the top of the mountain stood a group of pillars of trap rock, like a grove of trees. These rocks slanted inwards and so formed a room, the door of which could be hidden with boughs. Here the regicides hid for almost a month. A friend named Sperry, who lived in the neighborhood, brought them food. Sometimes he sent the provisions by his small son, who left the basket on the stump of a tree near the top of the mountain. The boy couldn't understand what became of the food and how it happened that he always found the basket empty when he returned for it the next day. The only answer the cautious father would give him was, "There's somebody at work in the woods who wants the food."

That part of the country near the "Judges' Cave" was full of wild animals. One night the regicides were visited by a panther that thrust its head in at the door of their cave and roared at them. One of the judges fled down the mountain to Sperry's house and gave the alarm, and the farmer and the fugitives hunted the panther the rest of the night.

After a while the fugitives decided that it would be better for their friends in the colony, and particularly for Mr. Davenport, if they should give themselves up in obedience to the command of King Charles. They left their cave and went to Guilford to see Governor Leete. But the governor and the other officers did not want to surrender them to the king. The judges hid in the governor's cellar, and were fed from his table, while he considered the best course to adopt. The colony of New Haven decided that it would not arrest them, and so the fugitives moved to the house of a Mr. Tompkins in Milford, where they stayed in hiding for two years.

The people of Milford did not know that the fugitives were there. One day a girl came to the house and happened to sing a ballad lately come from England, that made sport of the fugitive regicides. She sang the song in a room just above the one where the fugitives were, and they were so amused by the words that they asked Mr. Tompkins to have her come again and again and sing to her unseen audience.

Officers came out from England in 1664, charged, among other duties, with the arrest of the fugitive judges, and the friends of the regicides thought it best that they should leave Milford for some new hiding place. So in October they set out for the small town of Hadley, on the frontier of Massachusetts, a hundred miles from Milford, and so distant from Boston, Hartford and New Haven that it was thought that no one could trace them there. They traveled only at night, lying hidden in the woods by day. The places where they stopped they called Harbors, and the name still remains attached to one of them, now the flourishing town of Meriden, which bears the title of Pilgrim's Harbor. They reached Hadley in safety, and were taken in at the house of John Russell, a clergyman. He gave them room in his house, and there they spent the rest of their lives, safe from royal agents and spies in the small frontier settlement. So three of the men, who, doing their duty as they saw it, had voted for the execution of King Charles I, found a refuge in the American wilderness from the pursuit of his son, King Charles II.

Ten years later a very different sort of man came to the colony of Connecticut. King Charles I had made large grants in America to his brother the Duke of York, and among other territory that which had belonged to the Dutch, called New Netherland. The Duke of York made Major Edmund Andross, afterward Sir Edmund Andross, governor of all his territories, and sent him out to New England. With full powers from the Duke, Andross expected to do about as he pleased, and rule like a king in the new world.

By way of making a good start Edmund Andross at once laid claim to all the land that had belonged to the Dutch and also to that part of Connecticut that lay west of the Connecticut River. Unless the settlers in that part of Connecticut consented to his rule he threatened to invade their land with his soldiers. Now the people of Connecticut had received the boundary of their colony in an early grant, and though they already had the prospect of a war with the Indians under King Philip on their hands, their governor and his council determined to resist the cutting in two of their colony.

Word came to Hartford that Andross was about to land at the port of Saybrook and intended to march to Hartford, New Haven and other towns, suppress the colonial government and establish his own. At once colonial soldiers were sent to Saybrook and New London, and Captain Thomas Bull, in command at the former place, strengthened the fortifications there to resist the Duke of York's new governor.

July 9, 1675, the people of Saybrook saw an armed fleet heading for their fort. The men hurried to the fort and put themselves under the command of Captain Bull. Then a letter came from the governor at Hartford telling them what to do. "And if so be those forces on board should endeavor to land at Saybrook," so ran the order, "you are in His Majesty's name to forbid their landing. Yet if they should offer to land, you are to wait their landing and to command them to leave their arms on board; and then you may give them leave to land for necessary refreshing, peaceably, but so that they return on board again in a convenient time."

Major Andross sent a request that he might be allowed to land and meet the officers of Saybrook. The request was granted, and Captain Bull, with the principal men of the town, met the Englishman and his officers on the beach. Captain Bull stated the orders he had received from the governor of Connecticut. Andross, with great haughtiness, waved the orders aside, and told his clerk to read aloud the commission he held from the Duke of York.

But Captain Bull was not easily cowed. He ordered the clerk to stop his reading of the commission. The surprised clerk hesitated a minute, then went on with the reading. "Forbear!" thundered the captain, in a tone that startled even Major Andross.

The major, however, haughty and overbearing though he was, could not help but admire the other man's determined manner. "What is your name?" he asked.

"My name is Bull, sir," was the answer.

"Bull!" said Andross. "It is a pity that your horns are not tipped with silver."

Then, seeing that the captain and his men would not listen to his commission from the Duke of York, Andross returned to his small boat, and a few hours later his fleet sailed away from the harbor.

The colony of Connecticut, like those of Massachusetts and New York, now had a checkered career. Governor John Winthrop, who had done so much for his people, died. False reports of the colony were carried to England, the people were accused of harboring pirates and other outlaws. Finally, in 1686, Andross, now Sir Edmund Andross, was given a royal commission as governor of New England.

Sir Edmund went to Boston, and from there sent a message to the governor of Connecticut saying that he had received an order from the king to require Connecticut to give up its charter as a colony. The governor and council answered that, though they wished to do the king's bidding in all things, they begged that they might keep the original grants of their charter.

Sir Edmund's answer to that was to go to Hartford. October 31, 1687, he entered Hartford, accompanied by several gentlemen of his suite and with a body-guard of some sixty soldiers. He meant to take the charter in spite of all protests.

The governor and council met him with all marks of respect, but it was clear that they were not over-pleased to see him. Andross marched into the hall where the General Assembly was in session, demanded the charter, and declared that their present government was dissolved. Governor Treat protested, and eloquently told of all the early hardships of the colonists, their many wars with the Indians, the privations they had endured. Finally he said that it was like giving up his life to surrender the charter that represented rights and privileges they had so dearly bought and enjoyed for so long a time.

Sir Edmund listened to the governor's speech attentively. Looking about him at the citizens who had gathered in the Assembly Hall he realized that it would be well for him to obtain the charter as quietly as he could, and without waking too much spirit of resentment in the men of Hartford. Governor Treat's speech was long, the sun set, twilight came on, and still the charter of the colony had not been handed over to Sir Edmund.

The governor and the people knew that Sir Edmund meant to have the charter; he himself was prepared to stay there until they should hand the paper over to him. Candles were brought into the hall and their flickering light showed the spirited governor still arguing with the determined, haughty Sir Edmund. More people pressed into the room to hear the governor's words. Sir Edmund Andross glanced at the crowd; now they seemed peaceful people, not of the kind likely to make trouble.

Sir Edmund had listened to Governor Treat long enough. He grew impatient. He slapped his hand on the table in front of him, and stated again that he required the people of Connecticut to hand him over their charter, and that at once. The governor saw that Sir Edmund's patience was at an end, and whispered a word to his secretary. The secretary left the room, and when he returned he brought the precious charter in his hand.

The charter was laid on the table in full view of Sir Edmund and the men of the Assembly and the people who had crowded into the hall. Sir Edmund smiled; he had taught these stubborn Connecticut colonists a well-deserved lesson. He leaned forward in his chair, reaching out his hand for the parchment. At that very instant the candles went out, and the room was in total darkness.

No one spoke, there were no threats of violence, no motion toward Sir Edmund. In silence they waited for the relighting of the candles.

The clerks relighted the candles. Andross looked again at the table. The charter had disappeared. Andross stared at Governor Treat and the governor stared back at him, apparently as much amazed as was Sir Edmund at the disappearance. Then both men began to hunt. They looked in every corner of the room where the charter might have been hidden. But the charter had vanished in the time between the going-out of the candles and their relighting.

Sir Edmund, baffled and indignant, hid his anger as well as he could, and with his gentlemen and soldiers left the Assembly Room. Next day he took over control of the colony, and issued a proclamation that stated that by the king's order the government of the colony of Connecticut was annexed to that of Massachusetts and the other colonies under his rule. The orders he gave were harsh and tyrannical, and the people of the colony had little cause to like him.

What had become of the charter? When Governor Wellys, a former governor of Connecticut, had come to America he had sent his steward, a man named Gibbons, to prepare a country home for him. Gibbons chose a suitable place, and was cutting trees on a hill where the governor's house was to stand when some Indians from the South Meadow came up to him and begged him not to cut down an old oak that was there. "It has been the guide of our ancestors for centuries," said the leader of the Indians, "as to the time of planting our corn. When the leaves are of the size of a mouse's ears, then is the time to put the seed in the ground."

The tree was allowed to stand, and flourished, in spite of a large hole near the base of its trunk.

When the candles had been blown out in the Assembly Hall Captain Wadsworth had seized the charter and stolen away with it. He knew of the oak with the hole that seemed purposely made for concealing things. There he took the charter and hid it, and neither Andross nor his men ever laid hands on it. The tree became famous in history as the Charter Oak.

As long as James II was king of England Andross and other despotic governors like him had their way in the colonies. But when James was driven from his throne by William, the Prince of Orange, conditions changed. William sent a messenger with a statement of his new plans for the government of New England, and when the messenger reached Boston he was welcomed with open arms. Andross, however, had the man arrested and thrown into jail. Then on April 18, 1689, the people of Boston and the neighboring towns rose in rebellion, drove Andross and his fellows from their seats in the government and put back the old officers they had had before. They thought that William III would treat them more justly than James II had done, and they were not disappointed.

Already, in their protection of the regicides and in their saving of their charter, the people of Connecticut had shown that love of liberty that was to burst forth more bravely than ever in the days of the Revolution.

IV

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN NATHANIEL BACON AND SIR WILLIAM BERKELEY

(_Virginia, 1676_)

I

There was great excitement in that part of the American colony of Virginia where Edmund Porter lived. It was in the month of May, 1676, and the place was the country just below the settlement of Henricus, on the James River, as one went down-stream toward the capital city of Jamestown. The Porters had a plantation not very far from Curles, which was the name of the place where their friend Nathaniel Bacon lived; and Nathaniel Bacon seemed to be the centre of the exciting events that were taking place.

Nathaniel Bacon was a young man, of a good family in England, who had come out to Virginia with his wife, and settled at Curles on the James. He had another estate farther up the river, a place called "Bacon Quarter Branch," where his overseer and servants looked after his affairs, and to which he could easily ride in a morning from his own home, or go in his barge on the James, unless he objected to being rowed seven miles around the peninsula at Dutch Gap. He was popular with his neighbors, and seemed as quiet as any of them until trouble with the Indians in the spring of that year made him declare that he was going to see whether the governor would protect the farms along the river, and if the governor wouldn't, then he had a mind to take the matter into his own hands.

Now Edmund, who was a well-grown boy of sixteen, wanted to be wherever there was excitement, and so spent as much time as he could at Curles. He was out in the meadow back of the house, watching one of the men break in a colt, when a messenger came with news that Indians had attacked Mr. Bacon's other estate; killed his overseer and one of his servants, and were carrying fire and bloodshed along the frontier. The news spread like wild-fire, as news of Indian raids always did, for there was nothing else so fear-inspiring to the white settlers. Edmund jumped on his pony, and rode home as fast as he could to tell his father. Then father and son, each taking a gun, with powder-horn and bullet-pouch, dashed back to Nathaniel Bacon's. Other planters had already gathered there, armed and ready to ride on the track of the Indians. There was much talk and debate; some wanted to know whether Governor Berkeley, down the river at Jamestown, would send soldiers to protect the plantations farther up the James; others wondered whether the governor, who was not very prompt or ready in dealing with the Indians in this far-off part of the colony, would be willing to commission the planters to take the war into their own hands. In the midst of all the talk Bacon himself appeared, and the crowd of horsemen called on him to take command, it being known he had often said openly that he intended to protect Curles and his other farms from the redskins.

Bacon agreed to lead his neighbors, but told them he thought it would be best to send a messenger to Sir William Berkeley, and ask for the governor's commission. A man was sent at once down the river to Jamestown, and the neighbors rode home to wait for the governor's answer. Next afternoon they met again at Curles, and heard the answer Sir William Berkeley sent. It was very polite, and spoke highly of Nathaniel Bacon and his neighbors. It further said that the times were very troubled, that the governor was anxious to keep on good terms with the Indians, and was afraid that the outcome of an attack on them might be dangerous, and urged Mr. Bacon, for his own good interests, not to ride against them. He did not actually refuse the commission that Bacon had asked for, but, what amounted to the same matter, he did not send it.

The horsemen were very angry. Sir William Berkeley, a man seventy years old, and safe at Jamestown, might care little what the Indians did, but the men whose plantations were threatened cared a great deal. Again they urged Bacon to lead them, and he, nothing loath now that he had set the matter fairly before the governor, jumped into his saddle and put himself at the head of the troop. All were armed, some had fought Indians before; in those days such a ride was not uncommon. A few boys rode with their fathers, and among them Edmund Porter.

Bacon's band rode fast, and were marching through the woods of Charles City when a messenger came dashing after them. The company stopped to hear him. He said that he came from Sir William, and that Sir William ordered the band to disperse, on pain of being treated as rebels against his authority. The message made it clear that they would ride on at their peril.

This threat cooled the ardor of some, but not of many. Bacon snapped his fingers at the governor's messenger, and rode on, with fifty-seven other followers. They were not the men to leave their frontiers unguarded, no matter what Sir William might call them.

Bacon led on to the Falls, and there he found the Indians entrenched on a hill. Several white men went forward to parley, but as they advanced an Indian in ambush fired a shot at the rear of the party, and their captain gave the word to attack. Edmund and a few others formed a rear-guard by the river, while the rest waded through a stream; climbed the slope; stormed and set fire to the Indian stockade, and so blew up a great store of powder that the red men had collected. The rout of the marauding Indians was complete, and when the fighting was over one hundred and fifty of them had been killed, with only a loss of three in Bacon's party. Victory had been won, the Indians were driven back to the mountains, leaving the plantations along the James safe, for some time at least. With a train of captives, Bacon and his neighbors rode homeward. The Porters went to their plantation, and the others scattered to their houses farther down the river. Edmund and his father thought the excitement was over, and everybody in the neighborhood had only words of the highest praise for the gallant Nathaniel Bacon.

Sir William Berkeley, however, was very angry, and he was a man of his word. He had sent his messenger to say that if Bacon marched against the Indians he should consider Bacon a rebel and the men who rode with him rebels as well. He meant to be master in Virginia, and therefore as soon as the news of what was called the Battle of Bloody Run came to him he made his plans to teach all rebellious colonists a lesson. He called for a company of officers and horsemen and set out hot foot, in spite of his seventy years, to capture the upstart Bacon and make an example of him.

But Sir William had not ridden far when disquieting news reached him. The people along the coast had heard how Bacon had sent to the governor for a commission and had been refused, and they also knew how he had fought the Indians in spite of the governor's warning. They were proud of him; they liked his dash and determination, and they meant to stand by him, no matter what Sir William might have to say.

The governor, who had always had his own way in Virginia, was thoroughly furious now. There were rebels before him, and rebels behind him, for that was the name he gave to all who dared to dispute his orders. But with the lower country in a blaze he didn't dare attend to Nathaniel Bacon then, so he ordered his troop of horse to countermarch, and galloped back to Jamestown as fast as he could go.

When he reached his capital he found it in a tumult; word came to him that all the counties along the lower James and the York Rivers had rebelled. It looked as if the colony were facing a civil war like the one that had broken out in England thirty years before. Then, realizing that this was no time for anger, but for cool, calm words, Sir William mended his manners. He didn't pour oil on the colonists' fire; instead he met their demands half-way. When the leaders of the colonists protested that the forts on the border were more apt to be a danger to them than a help, Sir William agreed that the forts should be dismantled. When the leaders said that the House of Burgesses, which was the name of the Virginia parliament, no longer represented the people, but in fact defied the people's will, Sir William answered that the House of Burgesses should be dissolved and the people given a chance to send new representatives to it. And the governor kept his word after the angry planters had gone back to their homes. He didn't want such a civil war in Virginia as the one that had cost King Charles the First his throne in England.

Sir William might have forgiven Nathaniel Bacon's disobedience, and forgotten all about it, but the owner of Curles Manor bobbed up into public notice again almost immediately. As soon as orders were sent out through the colony that new elections were to be held for the House of Burgesses, as the governor had promised, Bacon declared that he was a candidate to represent Henrico County. He was so popular now that when the election was held he was chosen by a very large vote. Many men voting for him who had no right to vote at all, according to the law, which said that only freeholders, or men who owned land, should have the right to vote in such a case. So now the man who had been called a rebel by the governor was going to Jamestown to sit in the House of Burgesses and help make laws for the colony. Many a man might have hesitated to do that, but not such a good fighter as Mr. Bacon.