PREFACE. Savage, with the vast and various lore in the notes of the transcriber, is to praise them: without these works as examples of what diligence can do, as guides showing how such investigations are to be conducted, and as sources of information, I should have done nothing. And in naming the last of these works, I am reminded of my obligations to the first editor of Winthrop. The perusal and reperusal of "Winthrop's Journal," together with the study of Trumbull's first volume, made me feel when I was yet a boy, that the New England race "is sprung of earth's best blood." And knowing as I now know, under what disadvantages that first edition was published, before the public had begun to be interested in such documents, before even Massachusetts had a historical society, by the unaided enterprise of a young man to whom the undertaking was attended with heavy pecuniary sacrifices; and knowing how much historical inquiries in New England have been stimulated and aided by that publication; I cannot but regard it as not among the least of the many debts of American literature to the now venerable lexicographer. Mr. Savage's more perfect and more fortunate edition, the fruit of years of learned toil, cheered by the cooperation of enthusiastic antiquaries, aided by appropriations from the treasury of a generous commonwealth, and greeted by an applauding public that had already learned to honor its ancestry, needed not the poor recommendation of disparaging censures upon its predecessor. I must be allowed to add my acknowledgment of the aid which I have received in these studies, from the learning and kindness of Professor Kingsley. Certainly it was a rare privilege, to be able to avail myself continually of hints and counsels, from one so familiar with the written and unwritten history of New England, and especially of Connecticut. Some of my friends have expressed a little impatience at the delay of this publication. The mere magnitude of the volume will probably be to them a sufficient apology for the delay. Had I been told twelve months ago, that within a year I should prepare and publish such a volume, gathering the materials from so many different sources, few of which I had at that time even explored, I should have smiled at the extravagance of the prediction. Yet the work has been done, and that in the midst of public labors and domestic cares. And now in dismissing the last page of a work which with all the fatigues and midnight vigils it has cost me, has been continually pleasant, I desire to record my thanks to the divine providence which has permitted me to begin and finish this humble memorial. May He who hath said that the righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance, accept the unworthy service. New Haven, February, 1839. CONTENTS. John Davenport in his old age, the protector of the regicides, the op- ponent of union with Connecticut, the champion of the old way DISCOURSE I. CAUSES OF THE COLONIZATION OF NEW ENGLAND. THE SPIRIT OF THE FIRST PLANTERS. PSALM 1XXX, 8-11.-Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt; thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it. Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with the shadow of it; and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. She sent out her boughs to the sea and her branches to the river. THIS is the first Sabbath in the third century of the history of this religious congregation. Two hundred years have just been completed since the fathers and founders of this Church first united in public worship, on the spot which they had chosen for their home, and to which they had borne the ark and the ordinances of their God. Within these two centuries, great revolutions-one after another-have changed the aspect of the world; thrones have been overturned, dynasties have arisen and passed away; empires have been reared and have fallen; nations have perished, and nations have been born; and, what is more, opinions, systems, dynasties and and empires in the world of thought, have flourished and have departed; but amid all these changes, God has been worshiped here through Jesus Christy provinces in the bath, with no recorded interruid gems should come, to fill spiritual worship, kindled to augment the riches and splenlong ago, still burns One expedition after another was plan On such an aken, in the hope of acquiring some country somewhat.ould be to England, what Mexico and Peru had tion. to Spain. And when in consequence of successive and th-ost discouraging failures, such hopes began to be abandoned; and plans of colonization, and cultivation, and rational commerce, had succeeded to dreams of romantic conquest and adventure-when commercial companies with royal grants. and charters, actuated by ordinary commercial motives, at |