ant one in
colonial history. It was in that year that the New Haven colony was
founded; that the league of The United Colonies of New England was
formed; and that Roger Williams obtained the first charter of
Rhode Island.

%46. New Charters.%--During the next twenty years no changes took
place in the boundaries of the colonies. This was the period of the
Civil War in England, of the Commonwealth, of the rule of Cromwell and
the Puritans; and affairs in New England were left to take care of
themselves. But in 1660 Charles II. was restored to the throne of
England, and a new era opens in colonial history. In 1661 the little
colony of Connecticut promptly acknowledged the restoration of Charles
II. and applied for a charter. The application was more than granted;
for to Connecticut (1662) was given not only a charter and an immense
tract of land, but also the colony of New Haven.[1] The land grant was
comprised in a strip that stretched across the continent from Rhode
Island to the Pacific and was as wide as the present state.[2] In 1663
Rhode Island was given a new charter.

[Footnote 1: In 1660, after the restoration of Charles II., Edward
Whalley and William Goffe (the regicides, "king-killers," as they were
called), two of the judges who had condemned Charles I. to be beheaded,
fled to New Haven and were protected by the people. This act had much to
do with the annexation of New Haven to Connecticut.]

[Footnote 2: Read Fiske's _Beginnings of New England_, pp. 192-196. Many
of the New Haven colonists were disgusted by the union of their colony
with Connecticut, and in June, 1667, migrated to New Jersey, where they
founded "New-Ark" or Newark.]

In 1684 the King's judges declared the Massachusetts charter void, and
James II. was about to make New England one royal colony, when the
English people drove him from the throne. William and Mary in 1691
granted a new charter and united the Plymouth colony, Massachusetts,
Maine, and Nova Scotia, in one colony called Massachusetts Bay. This
charter was in force when the Revolution opened.

SUMMARY

1. The first colony established by the Plymouth Company (1607, on the
coast of Maine) was a failure.

2. Captain John Smith explored the New England coast and mapped it
(1613), but did not succeed in planting any colonies.

3. The permanent settlement of New England began with the arrival of a
body of Separatists in the _Mayflower_ (1620), who founded the colony
of Plymou