dred and fifty pounds sterling.

[1673]

From 1641 Massachusetts had borne sway in New Hampshire as well,
ignoring John Mason's claim under Charles I.'s charters of 1629 and
1635, still urged by one of Mason's grandsons, backed by Charles II.
Here Massachusetts was beaten. In July, 1679, New Hampshire was
permanently separated from her, and erected into a royal province, of a
nature to be explained in a subsequent chapter, being the earliest
government of this kind in New England.

[1662]

These territorial assumptions on the part of Massachusetts much
increased the king's hostility. This probably would not have proved
fatal had it not been re-enforced by the determination of the merchants
and manufacturers of the mother-country to crush what they feared was
becoming a rival power beyond seas. They insisted upon full enforcement
of the Navigation Laws, which made America's foreign trade in a cruel
degree subservient to English interest. So incorrigible was the colony,
it was found that this end could be compassed only by the abrogation of
the charter, so that English law might become immediately valid in
Massachusetts, colonial laws to the contrary notwithstanding.
Accordingly, in 1684, the charter was vacated and the colonists ceased
to be free, their old government with its popular representation giving
way to an arbitrary commission.

The other New England colonies--Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and
New Haven--had made haste to proclaim Charles II. so soon as restored to
the throne, and to begin carrying on their governments in his name. That
beautiful and able man, the younger Winthrop, sped to London on
Connecticut's behalf, and, aided by his colony's friends at court, the
Earls of Clarendon and Manchester and Viscount Say and Seal, in 1662
secured to Connecticut, now made to include New Haven, a charter so
liberal that it continued till October 5, 1818, the ground law of the
State, then to be supplanted only by a close vote. Under this paper,
which declared all lands between the Narragansett River and the Pacific
Ocean Connecticut territory, Connecticut received every whit of that
right to govern itself which Charles was so sternly challenging in the
case of Massachusetts.

[Illustration: John Winthrop the Younger.]

From this time on, as indeed earlier, Connecticut was for many years
perhaps the most delightful example of popular government in all
history. Connecticut and New Haven together had ab