the king felt it to be unwise to irritate the people
of Massachusetts beyond endurance. The turbulent state of English
politics which followed still further absorbed his attention, and New
England had another respite of several years. [Sidenote: Founding of
Newark]

In New Haven a party had grown up which was dissatisfied with its
extreme theocratic policy and approved of the union with Connecticut.
Davenport and his followers, the founders of the colony, were beyond
measure disgusted. They spurned "the Christless rule" of the sister
colony. Many of them took advantage of the recent conquest of New
Netherland, and a strong party, led by the Rev. Abraham Pierson, of
Branford, migrated to the banks of the Passaic in June, 1667, and laid
the foundations of Newark. For some years to come the theocratic idea
that had given birth to New Haven continued to live on in New Jersey. As
for Mr. Davenport, he went to Boston and ended his days there. Cotton
Mather, writing at a later date, when the theocratic scheme of the early
settlers had been manifestly outgrown and superseded, says of Davenport:
"Yet, after all, the Lord gave him to see that in this world a
Church-State was impossible, whereinto there enters nothing which
defiles."

The theocratic policy, alike in New Haven and in Massachusetts, broke
down largely through its inherent weakness. It divided the community,
and created among the people a party adverse to its arrogance and
exclusiveness. This state of things facilitated the suppression of
New Haven by royal edict, and it made possible the victory of Wenlock
Christison in Massachusetts. We can now see the fundamental explanation
of the deadly hostility with which Endicott and his party regarded the
Quakers. The latter aimed a fatal blow at the very root of the idea
which had brought the Puritans to New England. Once admit these heretics
as citizens, or even as tolerated sojourners, and there was an end of
the theocratic state consisting of a united body of believers. It was a
life-and-death struggle, in which no quarter was given; and the Quakers,
aided by popular discontent with the theocracy, even more than by the
intervention of the crown, won a decisive victory.

As the work of planting New England took place chiefly in the eleven
years 1629-1640, during which Charles I. contrived to reign without a
parliament, so the prosperous period of the New England Confederacy,
1643-1664, covers the time of the Civil War