my report and petition, THE PARLIAMENT granted us a Charter of Government for those parts, so judged vacant on all hands. And upon this the Country about us was more friendly, and wrote to us, and treated us as an authorized colony; only the differences of OUR CONSCIENCES much obstructed, The bounds of this our Charter, I (having ocular knowledge of persons, places, and transactions,) did honestly and conscientiously, as in the holy presence of God, draw up from Pawcatuck river, which I then believed, and still do, is free from all English claims and conquests. For although there were some Pequots on this side of the river, who, by reason of some Sachems' marriages with some on this side, lived in a kind of neutrality with both sides; yet, upon breaking out of the war, they relinquished their land to the possession of their enemies, the Narragansetts, and their land never came into the condition of the land on the other side, which the English by conquest challenged: so that I must still affirm, as in God's holy presence, I tenderly waved to touch a foot of land in which I knew the Pequot wars were maintained, and were properly Pequot, being a gallant country. And from Pawcatuck river hitherward, being but a patch of ground full of troublesome inhabitants, I did, as I judged, inoffensively, draw our poor and inconsiderable line.

"6. Upon our humble address, by our agent Mr. Clarke to HIS MAJESTY, and his gracious promise of renewing our charter, Mr. Winthrop, son to the

governor at Boston, upon some mistake, had entrenched upon our line, and not only so, but is said, upon the lines of other Charters also; upon Mr. Clarke's complaint, your grant was called in again, and it had never been returned, but upon the report that the agents, Mr. Winthrop and Mr. Clarke, were agreed by the mediation of friends, and it is true they came to a solemn agreement, under hands and seals, which agreement was never violated on our part.

"7. But the King's majesty sending his commissioners, among other his royal purposes, to reconcile differences, and to settle the bounds between the colonies, yourselves know how the King himself therefore, hath given a decision of this controversy. Accordingly, the King's commissioners aforesaid at Rhode Island (where as a commissioner for this colony, I transacted with them, as did also commissioners from Plymouth), they composed a controversy between Plymouth and us, and settled the bounds between us, in which we rest*.

"8. However you satisfy yourselves with the Pequot conquest; with the sealing of your charter a few weeks before ours; with the complaints of particular men in your colony, yet upon due and serious examination of matters, in the sight of God, you will find the business at bottom to be,

"(1.) A depraved appetite after the great vanities, dreams, and shadows of this vanishing life, great portions of land, land in this wilderness, as if men

*This was in 1665.

were in as great necessity and danger for want of great portions of land, as poor, hungry, thirsty seamen have after a sick and stormy, a long and starving passage! This is one of the gods of New England, which THE LIVING and MOST HIGH ETERNAL will destroy and famish.

“(2.) An unneighbourly and unchristian intrusion upon us, as being the weaker, contrary to your laws as well as ours, concerning purchasing of lands without the consent of the General court. This I told Major Atherton at his first going up to the Narragansett about this business: 1 refused all their proffers of land, and refused to interpret for them to the Sachems.

" (3.) From these violations and intrusions, arise the complaints of many Privateers, not dealing as they would be dealt with, according to the law of Nature, the law of the Prophets and Christ Jesus, complaining against others in a design, when they themselves are delinquents and wrong doers.

"I could aggravate this many ways with Scripture, rhetoric, and similitudes, but I see need of anodynes (as physicians speak), and not irritations. Only this I must crave leave to say, that it looks like a prodigy or monster, that countrymen among savages in a wilderness, that professors of GOD and one Mediator, of an Eternal life, and this is like a dream, should not be content with those vast and large tracts which all the other colonies have, (like platters and tables full of dainties) but pull and snatch away their poor neighbours' bit or crust: and a crust

it is, and a dry hard one, because of the natives' continual troubles and vexations.

"9. Alas! Sir, in calm midnight thoughts, what are these leaves and flowers, and smoke and shadows, and dreams of earthly nothings, about which wẹ poor fools and children, as David saith, disquiet ourselves in vain? Alas! what is all the scuffling of this world for? What are all the contentions of this world about, generally, but for greater dishes and bowls of porridge, of which, if we believe God's Spirit in Scripture, Esau and Jacob were types? Esau will part with the heavenly birthright for his supping, after his hunting for god belly: and Jacob will part with his porridge for an eternal inheritance! O LORD! give me to make Jacob's and Mary's choice, which shall never be taken from me.

"10. How much sweeter is the counsel of the Son of God, to mind first the matters of his kingdom; to take no care for to-morrow; to pluck out, cut off, and fling away, right eyes, hands, and feet, rather than to be cast whole into hell-fire-to consider the ravens and lilies whom AN HEAVENLY FATHER SO clothes and feeds; and the counsel of his servant Paul, to roll the cares of this life also upon the Most High Lord Steward of his people, THE ETERNAL GOD; to be content with food and raiment; to mind not our own, but every man the things of another; yea, and to suffer wrong, and part with what we judge is right, yea, our lives; and as poor women martyrs said, as many as there be hairs upon our heads, for the name of Gop and the Son of God his

sake. This is humanity, yea, this is CHRISTIANITY; the rest is but formality and picture, courteous idolatry, and Jewish and Popish blasphemy against THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, the Father of spirits, and his Son the LORD JESUS!

"Beside, Sir, the matter with us is not about these children's toys of land, meadows, cattle, government, &c. But here all over this colony, a great number of weak and distressed souls scattered, are flying hither from Old and New England; THE MOST HIGH AND ONLY WISE hath in his infinite wisdom, provided this country and this corner, as a shelter for THE POOR PERSECUTED, according to their several persuasions! Thus that heavenly man, Mr. Haynes, Governor of Connecticut, though he pronounced the sentence of my long banishment against me at Cambridge, yet he said unto me in his own house at Hartford, being then in some difference with the Bay, I think, MR. WILLIAMS, I must confess to you, that the most wise God hath provided and cut out this part of his world for a refuge and receptacle for all sorts of consciences! I am now under a cloud, and my Brother Hooker, with THE BAY, as you have been: we have removed from them thus far, and yet they are not satisfied.'

"Thus, Sir, THE KING'S MAJESTY, though his Father's and his own conscience favoured Lord Bishops, which their Father, and Grandfather King James, whom I have spoke with, sore against his will also did, yet all the world may see by HIS MAJESTY'S declarations and engagements before his