Samuel Stone, with their church, went by land, from Cambridge, and settled at Hartford, the capital of Connecticut.-Winthrop's Journal, p. 34, 41, 51, 53, 74, 86, 90.

Mr. John Haynes was chosen governor of the MASSACHUSETTS, in 1635, and he pronounced the sentence of banishment against MR. WILLIAMS, in October, but he removed to Connecticut, in 1637, and confessed his fault to him, and therefore, as we shall soon see, Sir Henry Vane was governor in 1636, who was WILLIAMS's great friend afterwards. He wrote to WILLIAMS about the Indians, as related in my first volume, p. 75.

Captain John Mason, who was the chief commander in taking the Pequot Fort, in May, 1637, afterwards major-general of the militia in Connecticut, and also their deputy governor, was a good friend to WILLIAMS, and when Connecticut proposed to send to England to get Rhode Island Charter altered about the bounds between them, WILLIAMS wrote to Mason about it, June 22, 1670, and the letter was published by the Historical Society in BOSTON, in 1792, in which WILLIAMS says,

"1. When I was unkindly and unchristianly, as I believe, driven from my house and land, Wife and Children, at Salem, in the midst of a New England winter, that ever-honoured governor, Mr. Winthrop, privately wrote to me to steer my course to the Narraganset Bay and Indians, for many high, heavenly, and public ends, encouraging me from the freeness of the place from any English claims and

patents. I took his prudent motion as an hint and voice of God, and waving all other thoughts and motions, I steered my course from Salem unto those parts wherein I may say PENIEL, that is, I have seen the face of God.

"2. I first pitched, and began to build and plant, at Seawork, now Reobolt, but I received a letter from my ancient friend, Mr. Winslow, then governor of Plymouth, professing his own and others love and respect to me, yet lovingly advising me, since I was fallen into the edge of their bounds, and they loth to displease the Bay, to remove but to the other side of the water, and then (he said,) I had the country before me, and might be as free as themselves, and we should be loving neighbours together. These were the joint understandings of these two eminently wise and Christian governors, and others in their day, together with their counsel and advice, as to the freedom and vacancy of this place, which in this respect, and many other Providences of the MOST HOLY and ONLY WISE, I called -PROVIDENCE.

"3. Sometime after, Plymouth Great Sachem (Osamaquin), upon occasion affirming that Providence was his land, and therefore Plymouth's land, and some resenting it, the then prudent and godly governor, Mr. Bradford, and others of his godly council, answered, that, if after due examination, it should be found true what the barbarian said, yet having, to the loss of a harvest that year, been now (through their gentle advice) as good as banished from Ply

mouth as from the Massachusetts, and I had quietly departed from them, at their motion, to the place where I now was-I should not be molested and tossed up and down again, while they had breath in their bodies; and surely between those my friends of the Bay and Plymouth, I was sorely tossed up and down for FOURTEEN WEEKS, in a bitter winter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean; beside the yearly loss of no small matter in trading with English and natives, being debarred from Boston, the chief mart and port of New England. God knows, that many thousand pounds cannot repay the very temporary losses I have sustained! It lies upon the Massachusetts and me, yea, and other colonies joining with them to examine, with fear and trembling, before the eyes of flaming fire, the true cause of all my sorrows and sufferings. It pleased the Father of Spirits to touch many hearts, dear to him with some relentings, among which that great and pious soul, Mr. Winslow, melted and kindly visited me at PROVIDENCE, and put a piece of gold into the hand of my wife, for our supply.

"4. When, the year after my banishment, the Lord drew the bow of the Pequot war, against the country in which, sir, the Lord made yourself with others, a blessed instrument of peace to all New England, I had my share of service to the whole land in that Pequot business, inferior to very few that acted.

"For, 1. Upon letters received from the governor and council at Boston, requesting me to use my

utmost and speediest endeavours to break and hinder the league laboured for by the Pequots against Mohegan, and Pequots against the English (excusing the not sending of company, and supply by the haste of business); the Lord' helped me imme diately to put my life into my hand, and, scarcely acquainting my wife, to ship myself all alone in ▲ POOR CANOE, and to cut through a stormy wind with great seas, every minute in hazard of life, to the Sachem's house*! 2. Three days and nights my business forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequot ambassadors, whose hands and arms, without, reaked with the blood of my countrymen, murdered and massacred by them on Connecticut river, and from whom I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also! 3. When GOD wonderfully preserved me and helped me to break to pieces the Pequot's negociation and design, and to make, and promote, and finish, by many travels and charges, the English league with the Narragansetts and Mohegins against the Pequots, and that the English forces marched up to the Narragansett country against the Pequots. I gladly entertained at my house, in PROVIDEnce, the General Stoughton and his officers, and used my utmost care that all his officers and soldiers should be well accommodated with us. 4. I marched up with them to the Narragansett Sachems, and brought my countrymen and the barbarians, Sachems

* About twenty-five miles by water.

and captains, to a mutual confidence and complacence each in other. 5. Though I was ready to have marched further, yet upon agreement that I should keep at PROVIDENCE as an agent between the Bay and the army, I returned, and was interpreter and intelligencer, constantly receiving and sending letters to the Governor and Council at Boston, &c. in which work I judge it no impertinent digression, to recite (out of the many scores of letters at times from Mr. Winthrop) this one pious and heavenly prophecy, touching all New England, of that gallant man, viz. "If the Lord turn away his face from our sins, and bless our endeavours and yours, at this turn against our bloody enemy, we and our children shall long enjoy peace in this our wilderness condition." And himself, and some other of the Council, motioned, and it was debated, whether or not, I had not merited, not only to be recalled from banishment, but also to be honoured with some mark of favour. It is known who hindered, who never promoted the liberty of OTHER MEN'S CONSCIENCES! These things, and ten times more, I could relate, to show that I am no stranger to the Pequot wars and lands, and possibly not far from the merit of a foot of land in either country, which I have not.

"5. Upon frequent exceptions against Providence men, that we had no authority for civil government, I went purposely to ENGLAND*, and upon

*He went over in the spring of 1643, but was forced to go to the Dutch at New York for a passage to England.