h century may well have seemed to the red men a
supernatural visitation, like the hurricane or the earthquake. The
uncompromising vigour with which the founders of Massachusetts carried
on their work was viewed in some quarters with a dissatisfaction which
soon thrust the English migration into the very heart of the Indian
country.

The first movement, however, was directed against the encroachments of
the New Netherlands. In October, 1634, some men of Plymouth, led by
William Holmes, sailed up the Connecticut river, and, after bandying
threats with a party of Dutch who had built a rude fort on the site of
Hartford, passed on and fortified themselves on the site of Windsor.
Next year Governor Van Twiller sent a company of seventy men to drive
away these intruders, but after reconnoitring the situation the Dutchmen
thought it best not to make an attack. Their little stronghold at
Hartford remained unmolested by the English, and, in order to secure
the communication between this advanced outpost and New Amsterdam, Van
Twiller decided to build another fort at the mouth of the river, but
this time the English were beforehand. Rumours of Dutch designs may
have reached the ears of Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brooke--"fanatic
Brooke," as Scott calls him in "Marmion"--who had obtained from the
Council for New England a grant of territory on the shores of the Sound.
These noblemen chose as their agent the younger John Winthrop, son of
the Massachusetts governor, and this new-comer arrived upon the scene
just in time to drive away Van Twiller's vessel and build an English
fort which in honour of his two patrons he called "Say-Brooke."

Had it not been for seeds of discontent already sown in Massachusetts,
the English hold upon the Connecticut valley might perhaps have been
for a few years confined to these two military outposts at Windsor and
Saybrook. But there were people in Massachusetts who did not look with
favour upon the aristocratic and theocratic features in its polity. The
provision that none but church-members should vote or hold office was
by no means unanimously approved. We see it in the course of another
generation putting altogether too much temporal power into the hands of
the clergy, and we can trace the growth of the opposition to it until in
the reign of Charles II. it becomes a dangerous source of weakness to
Massachusetts. At the outset the opposition seems to have been strongest
in Dorchester, Newtown, and