Chapter 14: Rogue Anglicans and Fanatical Puritans. c1625–1660.

Upon its establishment in 1620, the Council for New England came under the leadership of Ferdinando Gorges – a distinguished military commander, and a cousin to both Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh. As chairman of the council, Gorges granted many patents to colonial promoters; the largest patent, comprising all New England north of Massachusetts Bay, he had granted to himself and his close colleague, John Mason. As the Separatists settled Plymouth, and Puritans bought up shares in the Massachusetts Bay Company, Gorges and Mason plotted prosperous Anglican provinces to the north.

Dividing their grant, Gorges took the northeast section and attempted to restyle it “New Somersetshire,” after his home county in England. But King Charles I detested the name, perhaps because it conjured up the Earl of Somerset – a favourite of his late father, James I, in court and perhaps in the bedchamber. King Charles was unequivocal, decreeing it, “shall forever hereafter be called and named the Province or County of Mayne, and not by any other name or names whatsoever.” The name would remain Maine.

Mason met no royal resistance in renaming the grant’s southwest section. Born in Norfolk, England, and entering naval service at a young age, Mason had travelled extensively around Great Britain and across the North Atlantic to Canada – where he had once held a proprietary grant to Newfoundland. Tasked with protecting British territories from pirates, he was himself once accused of piracy and briefly imprisoned in Scotland. By the mid-1620s Mason had made his home in Portsmouth, Hampshire, where he served as harbourmaster. Providing a name to his new landholdings in New England, Mason commemorated his adopted home county in NEW HAMPSHIRE.

Gorges had long considered Maine’s potential for a colony. In 1616, to test the freezing conditions of the windswept coast, he had sent Richard Vines to winter at the mouth of the Saco River. Calling the site “Winter Harbor,” Vines would return with his family to settle the site in the late 1620s. Appointed deputy governor, he would govern Maine in place of the Gorges family – though Vines and his family later quit the wintry conditions for the warmer climes of Barbados.

Throughout the 1620s Gorges and Mason sent agents to explore and exploit New England’s vast reserves of fish, furs, and timber. Christopher Levett surveyed the Maine coastline in 1623, receiving the hospitality of the Abenaki sagamore, Samoset. Levett recommended to Gorges one sheltered harbor in Casco Bay as an ideal site for a city called “York,” after his home city in Yorkshire. After fortifying an island post, Levitt left ten men to winter there in 1623-24. Their fate remains unknown.

In early 1623, at the behest of Gorges and Mason, Scotsman David Thompson and his English wife Amias Cole started a small fishing village at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. The cod-stocked waters yielded bountiful hauls. When Levett sojourned there in the spring, Thompson kept him well fed for weeks. And when Plymouth settlers pleaded for vital provisions in the summer, Thompson sent them a shallop of salted cod. In the late 1620s, the Thompsons abandoned the Piscataqua River for Massachusetts Bay. By the time Winthrop’s Fleet arrived in 1630, Thompson had mysteriously vanished; Cole remarried Samuel Maverick – who then claimed Thompson’s estate.

In 1630, Walter Neale arrived in New Hampshire to administer Mason’s nascent colony on the Piscataqua River. Near Thompson’s abandoned fishing village, Neale’s party found wild strawberries growing on the riverbanks and so named their new settlement “Strawberry Banke.” But as it grew into a bustling port city at the mouth of the Piscataqua, residents rebranded it PORTSMOUTH. Despite its descriptive value, the name commemorated Mason’s connections to Portsmouth, Hampshire. It also honored Neale, who served as de facto governor from new Portsmouth, New Hampshire, New England, before returning to his homeland – where he served as deputy governor of Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. Contemporary with Thompson’s arrival on the Piscataqua, fishmongers William and Edward Hilton founded a port upstream they called “Hilton’s Point.” Colonial sponsors from Gloucestershire renamed the settlement “Bristol.” In 1637, the Anglican Reverend George Burdett arrived to govern the colony and changed the name to DOVER. Neither Burdett, nor any other settlers of new Dover have been traced to old Dover in Kent. Burdett may have chosen the name to discreetly honour Robert Dover, an anti-Puritan lawyer and ally of Charles I; Dover’s “Olimpick Games,” held annually in the Cotswolds, scandalized English Puritans with ungodly displays of athletics, dancing, wrestling, and shin-kicking – all accompanied by rowdy banquets and heavy drinking. Burdett, likewise, scandalized American Puritans. Thomas Gorges, a Puritan cousin of Ferdinando, conveyed his fears to John Winthrop that Burdett had fallen too deep into sin to be saved, “His time he spends in drinking, dancing, singing scurrilous songs, and for his companions he selects the wretchedest people of the country.” Having left his wife and children behind in England, Burdett fathered several illegitimate children in New England, with his affairs warranting charges of fornication, adultery, and breach of the peace. Ousted from New Hampshire, and from New England, Burdett endured imprisonment in England for his Royalist sympathies before retiring to Ireland. While still preparing his first voyage to New Hampshire, John Mason died in 1635. While Mason’s heirs grappled with their foreign inheritance, Gorges now promoted the colony to exiles from Massachusetts Bay. The Reverend John Wheelwright was among the most imposing and well-connected Puritans in Massachusetts Bay. In his earlier days at Cambridge University, he had found common ground with Oliver Cromwell and John Cotton – and formed lasting friendships with each. According to Cotton Mather, Cromwell claimed he was more afraid of facing Wheelwright on the football field than he was of facing any army on the battlefield. After his marriage to Mary Hutchinson, Wheelwright became embroiled in the political and religious crises sparked by his new sister-in-law, Anne Hutchinson. Compelled to leave the colony, Anne found exile to the south, while Mary moved north with Wheelwright. William Wentworth, a supporter of Wheelwright and a cousin of the Hutchinsons, would join them in New Hampshire, where he established a dominant colonial dynasty. Although the Wheelwrights, Hutchinsons, and Wentworths all had roots in Alford, Lincolnshire, a second network of families with roots in Exeter, Devonshire, compelled them to settle under the name of EXETER. Among early residents from old Exeter was Godfrey Dearborn – whose descendants would distinguish themselves in the political and military affairs of New England. And the Reverend Joseph Hull, after leading his flock to Weymouth, Massachusetts Bay, continued north to New Hampshire; Hull, who had once lived in old Exeter, never settled in new Exeter – though some of his children did. Following their neighbours from new Weymouth, many new Hingham families relocated to new Exeter, including Gilmans and Folsoms, who would help shape New Hampshire’s future.

The Reverend Stephen Bachiler had no fear of contradicting the Massachusetts theocracy. Advocating the separation of church and state, he allied himself with the dangerous ideas of Roger Williams; when the General Court voted to banish Williams, Bachiler was probably the lone clergyman who cast a dissenting vote. In the late 1630s, while his daughter Deborah Bachiler Wing settled Sandwich in the Plymouth Colony, Bachiler led his flock into New Hampshire, where he settled HAMPTON – recalling his old home of Southampton, Hampshire. In old Hampshire, Southampton and Portsmouth are just over a dozen miles apart; in New Hampshire, Hampton and Portsmouth are just under a dozen miles apart. The old but virile Bachiler – whose surname also appears as “Bachelor” in early records – had already survived his first three wives and showed no inclination to curb his manly desires. In 1641, the 80-year-old reverend was excommunicated from the Hampton church for trying to seduce his neighbour’s wife. Relocating to Portsmouth, he married his fourth wife: a young widow in her 20s, Mary Magdalene Beedle. Caught fornicating with her neighbour, Beedle was convicted of adultery and her forehead was branded with a scarlet “A.”

Fearing New Hampshire would develop into an autonomous sanctuary for heretics and heathens, Massachusetts Bay moved swiftly to annex the area. By the 1640s the Bay Colony exerted increasing pressure over New Hampshire settlements, soon acquiring jurisdiction over the whole region. New Hampshire would not regain independence for decades.

In the mid-1630s, Gorges invested heavily in the river valley of the “Agamenticus.” Capitalizing on Maine’s boundless woodlands and budding farmlands, he sent to Agamenticus a ship equipped with all the necessary material to build a multipurpose sawmill and gristmill – the first tidal mill ever built in the colonies. Gorges also began sending his kinsmen to govern the colony: first his nephew, William Gorges; and then his cousin, Thomas Gorges. In 1642, under directions from Ferdinando, Thomas re-established Agamenticus as the colonial capital – under the name of “Gorgeana.” Bucking New England’s humble naming conventions, Gorgeana offended Puritan humility. Further exalting the family name, Ferdinando Gorges had this hamlet chartered and incorporated as the first “city” in the English colonies.

Settling on the north bank of the Piscataqua in the 1630s Alexander Shapleigh named KITTERY after his family estate, Kittery Court, Devonshire. Shapleigh’s daughter Catherine later married Edward Hilton of Dover, New Hampshire. Hilton’s son by his first wife, Edward Hilton the Younger, would secure the family’s connections to New England’s elite, by marrying Ann Dudley – daughter of Samuel Dudley and Mary Winthrop; granddaughter of Thomas Dudley and John Winthrop.

Crossing from New Hampshire to Maine, Stephen Bachiler and Mary Beedle soon settled in Kittery. Frustrated by New England, Bachiler returned in his 90s to England, where he died. Beedle remained in Kittery and later remarried. Beedle’s neighbours, William and Anne Hawthorne, never forgot the sight of her scarlet letter and would relay the scandalous tale to their descendants.

Pushed north by Massachusetts Bay authorities in the 1640s, John Wheelwright left New Hampshire and resettled in Maine. Among those who joined him were Edmund Littlefield and his wife, Agnes Austin, sister of Richard Austin. Wheelwright later returned to England – where he had a welcome reunion with Oliver Cromwell – before returning to New England. But the Littlefields remained in Maine, founding a new town north of Agamenticus, where Edmund became a trusted agent of the Gorges family. In honor of the Gorges ancestral lands around Wells, Somersetshire, the new town was named WELLS. Perhaps drawn to the name, John Wells of Massachusetts Bay soon settled in Wells, Maine and married into the Littlefield family.

After years of exile in New England and England, the libertine lawyer Thomas Morton of Merrymount returned to Massachusetts Bay in the 1640s. He was promptly imprisoned in Boston but released a year later in failing health. By 1645, Morton had retired to Gorgeana. He never erected another maypole.

In the turbulence of the English Civil War, Maine remained pocketed by rival parties of Anglicans and Puritans. Ferdinando Gorges and most of his family remained loyal to the crown – raising forces for the Royalist Army. But Thomas Gorges quit the governorship of Maine in the 1640s to join the Parliamentary Army. Although Ferdinando died in 1647, the Puritan ascendancy never forgot his Royalist leanings. As Massachusetts Bay threatened the independence of Maine, Cromwell’s Puritans made scant effort to protect the Gorges’ proprietorship. By 1652 Massachusetts Bay had begun annexing Maine. Under the Bay Colony’s yoke, Maine’s names remained humble and English. Erasing all memory of the former proprietor, Puritan administrators stripped Gorgeana of its city-status and renamed it YORK. Three decades earlier, the Yorkshire Anglican Christopher Levett had proposed the same name for a colony in Maine. But Puritans probably recalled the name to commemorate the siege of York in 1644 – in which the great Royalist stronghold in the north finally fell to the Parliamentary Army.

Backed by Massachusetts militiamen, English settlers asserted their sovereignty over Maine and began ousting the French pioneers of Acadia. In 1654 Major Robert Sedgwick, a Massachusetts soldier with a rank confirmed by Oliver Cromwell, captured French forts at St Johns and Port Royal and claimed the settlement at Penobscot.

In July 1658, two names drawn from England’s rugged coast were added to Maine’s rugged coast: SCARBOROUGH and FALMOUTH. Both names may have been selected by Puritans to commemorate successful Parliamentary sieges in the Civil War. The Royalist stronghold of Scarborough Castle in Yorkshire fell to a Parliamentary siege in 1645, led by Matthew Boynton – whose Yorkshire cousins were already settled in Massachusetts Bay and, by the end of the century, would also settle in Maine. One of the last refuges of King Charles I, Pendennis Castle, in Falmouth, Cornwall, fell to the Parliamentary Army in 1646. Richard Bonython whose family had roots in Falmouth, Cornwall, was one of Gorges’ family agents who settled around the Saco River in Maine; John Bonython, his brother, had commanded Pendennis Castle before the outbreak of civil war. Earlier still, while old Falmouth still dreaded Spanish attacks, the castle’s defenses had been planned by Walter Raleigh and Ferdinando Gorges.

In the 1630s Roger Williams made enemies in New England for advocating freedom of religious conscience, and the greater separation of church and state. He also challenged English claims on the land by asserting, “The natives are the true owners of it.” Fleeing first Plymouth and then Salem, Williams trudged 100 miles south through snow-choked forest and passed the bitter winter of 1635-36 living with Wampanoag Indians under the sachem Massasoit. In spring he ventured south, where Narragansett sachems bestowed him a home near the headwaters of Narragansett Bay. Reflecting on his recent hardship and hazard, Williams called the place PROVIDENCE, “for God’s merciful providence unto me in my distress.”

Contemplating other qualities that had sustained him in the wilderness, Williams christened islands in Narragansett Bay PATIENCE, PRUDENCE, and HOPE. The virtue of hope bore heavily upon William’s faith. Within the King James Bible he had read, “we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: Which hope we have as an anchor to the soul...” (Hebrews 6:18-19). Stirred by this passage, Williams designed a new seal for his emerging colony with an anchor at its center, and a motto of “Hope.”

Opposing infant baptism, Williams believed baptism must be chosen by those who professed faith in Christianity. Thus in 1638, in the village of Providence, Williams founded the First Baptist Church in America. Indeed, he named his newborn son Providence Williams but did not baptize him. In 1639, Chad Brown – an early settler, surveyor, and friend of Williams – became church pastor and formulated many early doctrines. Brown’s descendants were among the founders of the first university in Providence, intended as a Baptist college.

Coming through Massachusetts Bay, many founding settlers of Providence hailed from Dorsetshire, including John Greene, Thomas Hopkins, and his kinsman William Arnold. From these families came many future leaders who would govern from Providence. The Greene and Arnold families would also produce some of the finest soldiers in the colonies – although the Arnolds would also produce the most infamous traitor in American history.

Well-versed in the Algonquian language of the Narragansetts, Williams wrote “A key into the Languages of America,” describing local foodstuffs like quahog, squash, and succotash. Describing the largest island in Narragansett Bay, otherwise known as Rhode Island, Williams reported the Narragansett name on the island as AQUIDNECK. More tolerant of Indians than he was of most English colonists, Williams helped anchor their names in place. Ever grateful to the Narragansett sachem called Canonicus, Williams applied his name to the second largest island in Narragansett Bay: CONANICUT.

Another schism in Massachusetts Bay erupted when Anne Hutchinson challenged Puritan theology with the doctrine of Antinomianism. A mother of 15 children, Hutchinson questioned traditional views about Original Sin and rejected the supposition that women were to blame for the Fall of Man. She maintained that God had already chosen those who would be saved, such that neither good deeds nor bad deeds could alter the fate of a human soul. John Winthrop called her an “American Jezebel.” Charged with heresy, Hutchinson was first imprisoned and then banished from Massachusetts. She found allies in prominent Bostonians, including William Coddington, John Clarke, and Nicholas Easton, who arranged to establish their own colony beyond the reach of Massachusetts Bay. They consulted with Roger Williams, who suggested the largest island in Narragansett Bay: Rhode Island, also known as Aquidneck.

Crossing to the northern tip of the island, Hutchinson, Coddington, Clarke, and Easton named their new haven, a port’s mouth, PORTSMOUTH. Though the exiles probably chose the English name for its descriptive value, Easton may have proposed it: his old hometown in Hampshire lay just twenty miles from the old port city of Portsmouth.

Fellow exiles found new reasons for disharmony. Hutchinson soon quarreled with Coddington, Clarke, and Easton, leading the latter three to found another city on the island’s south side. With considerations of its fine harbor, they named their new port NEWPORT. Once more, the exiles had selected a descriptive value, though again Easton may have suggested a familiar name from old Hampshire: opposite old Portsmouth, on the Isle of Wight, was the old port city of Newport. Coddington, Clarke, and Easton would alternate governorships over the newborn colony. Hutchinson found new quarrels with incoming settlers and finally left Rhode Island for New Netherland.

A fourth settlement emerged in the 1640s after Samuel Gorton, another Antinomian preacher, was forced out of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth. He had first incurred the wrath of church elders by defending his maidservant, who had dared to smile during a staid Sabbath service. His rejection of all formal religious training earned him the wrath of the clergy and brought charges of heresy. Comparing Winthrop to Pontius Pilate, Gorton and his flock of Gortonites sought deliverance in the wilderness, pushing south of Providence to found a new parish. In pursuit came Massachusetts Bay militiamen, who arrested Gorton and confined him to the squalor of a Charlestown prison. Alarmed by this violation of sovereignty, Williams invited the leaders of Newport and Portsmouth into a political union with Providence. In 1643 they appealed to Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, now the Lord High Admiral of the Parliamentary Navy and head of the Parliamentary Commission on Plantation Affairs. The Puritan aristocrat confirmed their independence by granting the three towns a patent. Since two settlements lay on Rhode Island, and one at Providence, the new colony was formally chartered in 1644 as “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.” After Gorton was released from prison, he petitioned Rich for a fourth town to be admitted into this union. The sympathetic commissioner placated him with the necessary patent, and Gorton expressed his gratitude by naming his settlement for Rich, the 2nd Earl of WARWICK. Blending into New England’s toponymy, the new town echoed another English city familiar to early colonists.

Due to the length of its official name, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was long reduced to Rhode Island, a just reduction after Providence became the capital; the lengthy name was not formally reduced for another four centuries. But the name of Rhode Island remained ambiguous. When the Court of Providence Plantations formally replaced the old name of Aquidneck in 1644, it was conspicuously ambivalent about the new name, “...the island community called Aquethneck shall be henceforth called the Isle of Rhodes, or Rhode Island.” Since the colony was synonymous with its principal island, further confusion was inevitable. Thus, the island of Rhode Island is still known to most locals by its Algonquian name: Aquidneck.

In 1651 Coddington secured from parliament the lifetime governorship of the Isle of Rhodes – Aquidneck – thus making the island a separate political entity from the rest of Rhode Island. Williams hastened to England where he prevailed upon parliament to repeal Coddington’s governing charter, thus reuniting the colony. Whilst in London he met with Oliver Cromwell, an old acquaintance, and advocated the separation of church and state. He also kept in close contact with Puritan poet John Milton – now in his blindness. Williams tutored Milton in Dutch; Milton tutored Williams in Hebrew.

In early 1631, Governor John Winthrop had received in Boston a party of Algonquian speaking Indians who had journeyed from a large river valley out west and were eager to reap the benefits of English trade. Winthrop first reported the river’s name as “Quoanehtacut.” In the following years, as William Pynchon settled its central valley, the river appeared under dozens of alternate spellings, ranging from “Quinatucquet” and “Guonitogou” to “Conite Cock.” Ultimately the name prevailed as CONNECTICUT – not because it was the most accurate rendering of the Indian name but because it best conformed to English orthography. The Algonquian name described its location at the long tidal river.

In late 1631, as chairman of the Council for New England, Puritan aristocrat Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, had granted land at the mouth of the Connecticut River to two Puritan parliamentarians: William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele; and Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke. Other wealthy Puritans invested in the enterprise included Oliver Cromwell and John Hampden; in fact, Cromwell considered migrating to the colony before he resolved to stay and fight the king in England. In 1635, representing these wealthy Puritan investors, John Winthrop Jr led colonists to the Connecticut estuary where they founded SAYBROOK – echoing the titles of Lord Saye and Lord Brooke. But Saybrook also appeared in early records as “Seabrooke” and “Sea Brook,” echoing an early Dutch name in the region, “Zeebroeck,” meaning sea brook, as well as the English coastal town of Seabrook, Kent. Sea brook may be considered a loose translation of Connecticut’s tidal river. 1

After arriving in Massachusetts Bay in 1633, the Reverend Thomas Hooker clashed with the Reverend John Cotton over the exclusion of many colonists from church membership and thence from the franchise. Hooker sought to broaden membership to all those professing faith in a Christian God. Leaving Newtown – just before it was renamed after his alma mater of Cambridge – Hooker relocated beyond the reach of Bay Colony authorities, where he and his growing flock peopled three large towns along the Connecticut River. Recalling the homes they had left in Massachusetts Bay, they named their new homes “Newtown,” “Watertown,” and “Dorchester.” In 1636 these three towns formed an alliance as the Connecticut Colony, with Hooker laying the basis for a representative government: adopted by Connecticut in 1639, the Fundamental Orders may be considered the first constitution ever written on American soil.

In 1637, the three Connecticut towns cast off their Massachusetts names in favour of names drawn directly from old England. “Newtown” became the capital as HARTFORD, honoring Hertford, Hertfordshire. Many early residents of new Hartford had come, via Newtown, from old Hertford, including the Reverend Samuel Stone, Hooker's close friend and fellow minister. John Haynes, former governor of Massachusetts Bay and future governor of Connecticut, also hailed from Hadham, Hertfordshire, less than 10 miles from Hertford.

Led by John Oldham, many settlers of “Watertown,” Connecticut, had come from Watertown, Massachusetts Bay. But several families had begun their migration back in Wethersfield, Essex, which they now invoked in naming WETHERSFIELD. Among those who came from old Wethersfield, via Watertown, to new Wethersfield, were Nathaniel Foote, his wife Elizabeth Deming Foote, and her brother, John Deming; John soon married Honor Treat, sister of future governor Robert Treat; and after Nathaniel’s death, Elizabeth married Thomas Welles, another future governor of the colony.

Many families had come from around Dorchester, Dorsetshire, through Dorchester, Massachusetts Bay, and on to “Dorchester,” Connecticut – including Fords, Grants, Stoughtons, and Wolcotts. But since other early residents of Dorchester, Connecticut, had come from Windsor, Berkshire, the new settlement became WINDSOR. In the late 1630s, widow Mary Tinker came with her children from Windsor, Berkshire, to Windsor, Connecticut – via Dorchester, Massachusetts Bay. Her son John Tinker became a trusted associate of the Winthrops in developing the Connecticut Colony, while her daughters married other pioneer settlers. In 1647, Anne Tinker lost several children during an epidemic of influenza that also claimed the life of Thomas Hooker. Blame was cast upon Anne’s neighbour, Alice “Alse” Young – another resident of Windsor, Connecticut from Windsor, Berkshire. Young was found guilty of witchcraft and hanged in Hartford – the first New Englander executed as a witch. The witch hunts soon spread from Hartford to Wethersfield, just as the same mania swept Massachusetts Bay. Indeed, Alse Young’s young daughter was later accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts Bay – and only narrowly evaded the gallows.

In 1636, shortly after founding Wethersfield, John Oldham was slain by Indians while on a trading voyage to Block Island. His killing united New England colonies in defence. Blaming the attack on the Pequots, Massachusetts Bay authorities sent a militia under John Endecott to smite the perpetrators and quell any allied tribes. By the spring of 1637, violence flared along the Connecticut Valley, with Pequots launching attacks on Saybrook and Wethersfield. Despite support from the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies, the brunt of the fighting was borne by Connecticut and Saybrook militiamen under the command of John Mason – unrelated to the late John Mason of New Hampshire. In the war’s most savage episode, Mason’s militiamen torched an Indian village sheltering hundreds of men, women, and children – clubbing or shooting any who escaped the flames. The fighting raged through the summer of 1637, until the last Pequot combatants were brought to bay and vanquished in the Swamp Fight. Surviving Pequots were absorbed by other tribes, or else hunted down and sold into slavery.

Roger Ludlow was born in Wiltshire, with ties to Dorsetshire, and had arrived with the old Dorchester folk to settle new Dorchester in Massachusetts Bay. Well-connected, Ludlow was the brother-in-law of Governor John Endecott and served as deputy governor under Governor Thomas Dudley. Pipped by John Haynes for the governorship of Massachusetts Bay, he migrated with his neighbours to Windsor, Connecticut, where Haynes once more thwarted his hopes of governing the colony. As an officer in the Pequot War, Ludlow had fought in the Swamp Fight of 1637, and he returned to the area two years later to settle on the lush coastal clearings. In view of its fair fields, he named one new town FAIRFIELD – echoing many meadowed English Fairfields. Ludlow also founded the neighboring town of NORWALK. Although derived from an Indian description, Norwalk was sufficiently English in appearance to escape the cull that claimed most of Connecticut’s native names; early recordings like “Norwaulke” hint at its true origins. The Algonquian term probably meant point of land, referring to the site's protruding coastal location.

While Ludlow established himself as the first citizen of Fairfield, other families settled Norwalk. In the 1630s, Nathaniel Ely and Richard Olmsted had followed Reverend Hooker to Hartford, Connecticut, excited by the prospect of receiving freeman status and the right to vote. In the late 1640s, after Hooker’s death, Ely and Olmsted led the first settlers to Norwalk. In the 1650s, both men were elected to represent Norwalk in the General Court of Connecticut. Their descendants remained leading citizens in Connecticut for generations – before they began to spread west.

In 1653, Ludlow presided over the trial of Goody Knapp in Fairfield for witchcraft and condemned her to the gallows. Ludlow later claimed that, moments before her hanging, Knapp had whispered the name of another local witch – the wife of his own political rival. Few believed Ludlow. He was accused of slander, found guilty, and compelled to leave New England. After returning to England, he was dispatched by Cromwell to Ireland.

The Reverend John Davenport came from an influential Warwickshire family of divided faith. His brother Christopher had converted to Catholicism and now served as a royal chaplain to Queen Henrietta Maria in the court of King Charles. John, meanwhile, remained a devout Puritan and found refuge from religious persecution in the Netherlands. Whilst in exile, he planned a religious sanctuary in New England with his childhood friend, Theophilus Eaton. A wealthy London-based merchant, Eaton would embark for New England with an extended family that included his second wife, the widow Anne Yale, his stepdaughter, also named Anne Yale, and her husband, Edward Hopkins.

Upon his arrival in Massachusetts Bay in 1637, the Reverend Davenport boarded in Boston with the Reverend John Cotton. The following year, Davenport and Eaton led parishioners, and several slaves, to a harbor on Long Island Sound. Contrary to the universal Christian suffrage promised by Reverend Hooker in Connecticut, the Reverend Davenport railed against the inclusion of lapsed Christians and infant children in the Puritan Church. Davenport’s new community would have strict qualifications for entry into the church. He named it NEW HAVEN, punning on its purpose as a new sanctuary and as a new harbor, while echoing the harbour town of Newhaven, Sussex. Several prominent residents of early New Haven must have been familiar with Newhaven: John Budd, a merchant sea captain from Sussex, had shipping interests in many ports on the southern coasts of England and New England; and brothers William and John Potter were born and baptized in Lewes, Sussex, half a dozen miles from Newhaven. William Potter was among the pioneers who signed New Haven’s founding charter. But his prominent role in founding, and perhaps naming, New Haven may have been minimized by posterity after he was accused of bestiality by his wife and children, found guilty by the court, excommunicated by the church, and executed in New Haven.

Allied with New Haven, new towns rose upon the lush coastal lands of Long Island Sound, often at strategic crossings or fords of local streams. William Fowler built the colony’s first grist mill at a river ford early called “Mill Ford” and then MILFORD, echoing the village of Milford, Derbyshire, near his family’s old English estate. So important was Fowler’s mill to early Milford that, when it was damaged by floods in 1645, the town’s residents were legally conscripted to rebuild it.

In 1641, the Reverend Richard Denton, a one-eyed Puritan with a Presbyterian slant, led disgruntled residents from new Wethersfield to a new town named STAMFORD. The name may be linked to Stamford, in Lincolnshire, home county of many early settlers. But the name might be traced to Stamford Bridge, in Yorkshire, the home county of the Reverend Denton. Francis Bell, the first deputy from Stamford to the New Haven legislature, had come from around York, just a few miles from Stamford Bridge.

Reverend Henry Whitfield led a small flock from around Guilford, Surrey, across the Atlantic to a new settlement called GUILFORD. Whitfield designed his new Guilford house with stone walls two feet thick to withstand Indian attack; among the oldest stone houses built in the colonies, it remains the oldest still standing.

The names of perhaps three different English hometowns may have blurred to form BRANFORD. The Reverend Abraham Pierson, who led many of his flock to Brentford in the 1640s originally hailed from Bradford, Yorkshire; one of Pierson’s daughters would marry Francis Bell’s son in Branford, while another married John Davenport’s son in Stamford. Another patriarch of the early community was William Swain, who had once lived west of London, near Brentford, Middlesex. Other early settler families, including those of Robert Rose and Thomas Mulliner, had come from Ipswich, neighbouring the village of Bramford, Suffolk.

In 1643, Milford, Stamford, Guilford, and Branford confederated with New Haven to form the New Haven Colony – under the governorship of Theophilus Eaton. Another town, isolated in the west, soon joined a loose alliance with the colony.

Elizabeth Winthrop, upon marrying her first cousin Henry Winthrop, was both the niece and daughter-in-law of John Winthrop Sr. Though Henry had drowned in Salem before she had departed England, Elizabeth yet chose to cross the Atlantic with her infant child to join other Winthrops in Massachusetts. She followed her cousin and brother-in-law, John Winthrop Jr, into the Connecticut Valley, and continued towards the margins of New Netherland with her new husband, Robert Feake. In 1640 they built an independent settlement called GREENWICH – perhaps for its literal value as a green village, or perhaps because Feake had been born near Greenwich, Kent. By 1650, Greenwich was fully incorporated into the New Haven Colony.

Under the political governance of Eaton and the spiritual guidance of Davenport, New Haven remained prey to religious superstition and fanaticism. In 1642, after a New Haven sow gave birth to an ugly one-eyed pig, Puritan authorities accused George Spencer, an ugly, one eyed servant, of bestiality; with Eaton and Davenport satisfied of Spencer’s guilt, both man and sow were executed. In 1645 Davenport excommunicated Eaton’s second wife, Anne Yale, after she walked out of his sermons in opposition to infant baptism; Eaton made no attempt to defend his wife against his old friend. Then in 1646 Eaton set a new and confounding moral precedent for Puritans in New England: he freed his slaves.

In the early 1640s, after Edward Hopkins was elected governor of the Connecticut Colony, a new town near the border with the New Haven Colony was called STRATFORD. George Wyllys, former governor of the Connecticut Colony, and among the richest men in the Connecticut Valley, hailed from Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire; his son would marry the daughter of John Haynes, and his daughter would marry the son of William Pynchon. Thomas Welles, future governor of the Connecticut Colony, also hailed from Stratford-upon-Avon; neighbours back in old England, Welles and Wyllys now became neighbours in New England. But Hopkins may also have selected the name of Stratford to honor the hometown of his father in-law, Theophilus Eaton, Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire. Indeed, as governors of New Haven and Connecticut, Eaton and Hopkins collaborated closely in colonial affairs, often working with the Winthrops and the Winslows to build a lasting alliance among the New England colonies. Hopkins would soon return to England, as a member of parliament and the Admiralty under Oliver Cromwell. He would prove to be a generous benefactor of Harvard College, and of a newly established Hopkins School in New Haven; his relatives in the Yale family considered founding a new college in New Haven.

Deacon Stephen Hart had first explored the Connecticut River in the early 1630s and – according to local lore – left his name to the strategic crossing called “Hart’s Ford.” In the early 1640s Hart acquired land west of Hartford, where he established “Hart’s Farm.” As other planters seeded its fertile pastures, a new farming town was set off as FARMINGTON – echoing many small farming villages in old England.

By 1640, after a brief tenure as governor of the Saybrook Colony, John Winthrop Jr had returned to Massachusetts Bay and then to England seeking financial backers for New England projects. In 1645, a year after the Saybrook proprietors sold out to the Connecticut Colony, the young Winthrop returned to the shores of Long Island Sound. He led a growing circle of family, friends, and slaves to settle the site of the old Pequot capital. After presiding over the community for more than a decade, and watching it develop into a modern city, Winthrop renamed it NEW LONDON. Few, if any, of New London’s early settlers considered old London their home. But on his last trip to England, Winthrop had been dazzled by the political, commercial, and scientific activity of the imperial capital. As New London settlers built their homes on the banks of a broad stream – formerly known as the “Pequot River” – they refashioned it after the great river flowing through old London, the THAMES. The victorious Puritans had already passed laws making it illegal to speak the Pequot language or invoke the Pequot name. In such ways were the Pequot erased from the maps of New England.

After feuding with fellow Christians in Marshfield, Plymouth Colony, and then in Gloucester, Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Reverend Richard Blinman arrived to serve as the first minister of New London, Connecticut Colony. Once more clashing with Christian settlers over theological issues, the Reverend Blinman returned to the borderlands of England and Wales – having scattered half of his flock across New England.

With the annexation of the Saybrook Colony, Connecticut saw steady expansion through the 1640s and 1650s. MIDDLETOWN may have been inspired by an English Middleton or for its position midway between Saybrook and the three founding towns of Connecticut: Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford.

In 1659 John Mason, the old commander of Connecticut forces during the Pequot War – presently elected deputy governor of the colony – ventured northeast from old Saybrook and founded NORWICH. Mason may have chosen the name for its literal value as a north village, though he perhaps thought more of his wife, Anne Peck, whose English hometown of Hingham was just 15 miles from Norwich. Indeed, Anne Peck never strayed far from familiar names: she was born in Hingham, Norfolk; came with her father, the Reverend Robert Peck, to Hingham, Massachusetts Bay; and came with her new husband, John Mason, to Norwich, Connecticut, where she died.

Encroaching further upon Dutch claims, English Puritans spilled across ill-defined borders with New Netherland. Lion Gardiner – an Englishman who had once served as a military engineer in the Dutch Army – showed steadfast resolve in the Pequot War, designing and commanding the fort at Saybrook. During the conflict, Gardiner helped build an alliance with Wyandanch – the sachem of Montauk, and grand sachem of all Long Island tribes. In 1639, with Wyandanch’s assent, Gardiner bought an island between the eastern forks of Long Island – paying the local Montauks one gun, some powder and shot, rum, a few Dutch blankets, and one large black dog. Likening his new home to a small English island, Gardiner called it the “Isle of Wight.” Neighbours referred to it as GARDINER’S Island. His descendants retained ownership of the island over the next four centuries.

Wyandanch had long held the peace on Long Island without yielding too much to Dutch hucksters and English landgrabbers, reserving most of the island for Indian occupation. The military power of the New English settlers compelled him to make new land cessions. Ignoring or assuaging Dutch protestations, New Englanders descended on Long Island. In 1640 Reverend John Youngs, from the English town of Southwold, Suffolk, led settlers south from New Haven across Long Island Sound and to a new home at SOUTHOLD. With many early residents hailing from the same English shire, the larger part of Long Island adopted the name of SUFFOLK County.

Hundreds and then thousands of New England Puritans crossed Long Island Sound. Settlers from Lynn, Massachusetts moved to the island’s southern shores and settled SOUTHAMPTON. Since none of the original settlers have been traced back to Southampton, Hampshire, the name was probably selected for its literal value of South Town. Indeed, new Southampton lay south of Southold, Long Island, and farther south than all the Puritan settlements of New England.

From New Haven and Connecticut, Governors Theophilus Eaton and Edward Hopkins negotiated the purchase of more land east of Southampton and founded the East Town of EAST HAMPTON; Eaton enclosed the town with his brand of Puritanical Christianity. After Lion Gardiner’s teenage daughter died following a brief illness, an East Hampton girl was dragged before the Hartford court and charged with witchcraft. Despite Governor John Winthrop Jr’s exhortation to execute the witch, Connecticut jurors set her free.

As English Puritans spread west along Long Island in the 1640s, their settlements overlapped the Dutch frontier. The presence of colonists from competing empires showed on the maps with apt ambiguity. Lady Deborah Moody was a wealthy Puritan widow whose Anabaptist beliefs troubled Massachusetts Bay authorities. John Endecott warned John Winthrop that she was a “dangerous woeman.” Faced with excommunication or exile, she chose the latter. Finding refuge on Dutch Long Island, Moody became the first woman in the American colonies to found a new town. She called it GRAVESEND for an old English town at the mouth of the Thames, through which she had passed before leaving England; she was content to let her new Dutch neighbours believe the name came from an old Holland town of ‘s-Gravenzande.

Dissatisfied by the rigid Puritan laws of the New Haven Colony, the Reverend Richard Denton led his flock from Stamford to Long Island in 1644. With him came the Reverend Robert Fordham, who had negotiated with the Dutch and the Indians for the purchase of land. Raised around the English town of Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, Fordham now settled with his family in HEMPSTEAD – though many of their new Dutch neighbours assumed it echoed the old Dutch town of Heemstede. In 1644, Denton and Fordham founded a Presbyterian church in Hempstead – the first Presbyterian church in the American colonies.

In England, King Charles I neared his end. Defeated at key battles and pursued across England and Scotland, he finally fell into the hands of his Parliamentary enemies, who arranged his trial for treason. Decrying the show trial, Thomas Fairfax stepped aside. Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton thus spearheaded the prosecution of the king. Convicted of treason, Charles was sentenced to death. On January 30, 1649, outside the Palace of Whitehall, awestruck commoners beheld a masked axeman beheading the King of England.

Having pacified England, Cromwell launched new campaigns in Scotland and Ireland, with the confiscation of Catholic property sparking lasting divisions in the latter. Prince Charles, the uncrowned son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, tried in vain to rally Royalist forces. But after his defeat at the 1651 battle of Worcester, young Charles was fortunate to escape with his life: first by hiding in a tree, the fabled Royal Oak; and then by fleeing to his mother’s side in France. Assuming the powers of a monarch, Cromwell now ruled the British Isles as “Lord Protector.” Royalists and Anglicans in Virginia regarded the Protectorship as a baseless dictatorship. Dissidents and Puritans in New England welcomed it as a necessary correction in government. Yet Puritan support remained discreet. In 1653, the year in which Cromwell formally commenced his Protectorship, another group of Puritans settled on Long Island under the inconspicuous English name of HUNTINGTON. None of the original settlers have been traced to any English town of that name but they must have known that Cromwell was born in Huntingdon, Huntingdonshire.

With an eye on the colonies, Cromwell waged war against England’s maritime rivals. The First Anglo-Dutch War of 1652-54, and the Anglo-Spanish War of 1654-60, changed little in continental Europe or America. But the burgeoning British Empire expanded deeper into the Caribbean in 1655 when Admiral William Penn Sr seized from the Spanish the prized island of “Santiago,” restoring the old name of Jamaica. The following year, a new community on Long Island assumed the name of JAMAICA – ostensibly from a local Indian name. 2

In contemporary Massachusetts Bay, amongst a sea of English placenames, the name of “Jamaica,” now JAMAICA PLAIN, also appeared south of Boston – ostensibly from a local Indian name.

The conquest of Jamaica would prove to be the high watermark of Puritan providence. Not only had Puritans prevailed over other Protestant denominations in England, they had begun prevailing over Catholics around the globe.