Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/52

20 Settlement of New Haven. [1686-43 Aquedneck, opposite to Providence. Their constitution was even simpler than that of Providence, since they had no "select men," but only a judge, William Coddington. In 1639 this settlement divided. The original settlers moved to Newport, and the island was shared between the two townships. In 1640 they reunited, and then a regular government was introduced, with two assistants chosen from each township. In 1637 another colony was formed, which practically secured to the English race the whole sea-board from the Kennebec to Long Island. The man who had the chief hand in bringing this about was Theophilus Eaton, a leading man in the Baltic Company. As agent for that Company he had sojourned abroad, and had subsequently acted as English ambassador in Denmark. He was accompanied by men of better station and larger means than the generality of emigrants to New England. They established themselves at the mouth of the Quinipiac river, south of the Connecticut. It is noteworthy that neither they nor the settlers at Providence and Aquedneck secured any title except by purchase from the Indians. This illustrates the fashion in which New England was, as it were spontaneously and half unconsciously, emancipating itself from the control of the mother-country. Of all the Puritan settlements, this most definitely and uncompromisingly asserted a religious basis for civil society. Not only were the rights of a freeman limited to Church members, but, when the community met to frame a constitution the minister, Davenport, preached a sermon in which he formally laid down the doctrine that Scripture is a perfect and sufficient rule for the conduct of civil affairs. As the community consisted of a single township no system of representation was at first necessary. The executive power was vested in an elected governor and four assistants. The town received the name of New Haven. Other settlements soon came into existence in the neighbourhood, at first, like New Haven, independent townships. The advantages of union however soon became manifest, and what a Greek would have called a process of syncnkismos took place. The exact steps are not recorded, but by 1643 New Haven was a colony with five townships and a representative system. The founders of New Haven were, in comparison with their neighbours, wealthy men; and the town at the outset impressed visitors from Massachusetts with a sense of its dignity and even luxury. This however was short-lived ; and, before the colony had existed ten years, there were symptoms of commercial decline. Though Puritanism was the dominant influence in bringing about the settlement of New England, yet we are not to suppose that it was the only one. New Hampshire, like New Haven, was formed by a process of consolidation out of a number of small independent settle- ments, some of them founded by men who were by no means in sympathy