in New England. However that may be, they lent
themselves to the efforts that Winthrop and Clarke were making to obtain
charters for their respective colonies. These agents were able,
discreet, and broadminded men. Clarke, a resident in England for a
number of years, had acquired no little personal influence; and
Winthrop, as an old-time friend of the English lords and gentlemen whose
governor he had been at Saybrook, could count on the help of the one
surviving member of that group, Lord Saye and Sele, who was a privy
councillor, a member of the House of Lords and of the plantations
council, and, as we are told, Lord Privy Seal, a position that would be
of direct service in expediting the issue of a charter. Winthrop had
personal qualities, also, that made for success. He was a university
man, had made the grand tour of the Continent, and was familiar with
official traditions and the ways of the court. Soon after his arrival in
England, he became a member of the Royal Society and served on several
of its committees, and thus had an opportunity of making friends and of
showing his interest in other things than theology. If Cotton Mather was
rightly informed, Winthrop was accorded a personal interview with
Charles II and presented the King with a ring which Charles I, as Prince
of Wales, had given his grandfather, Adam Winthrop.

Winthrop made good use of a good cause. Connecticut had behaved herself
well and had incurred no ill-will. She had had no dealings with the
Cromwellian Government, had dutifully proclaimed the King, had been
discreet in her attitude toward Whalley and Goffe, the regicides who had
fled to New England, and had aroused no resentment against herself among
her neighbors. With proceedings once begun, the securing of the charter
went rapidly forward. Winthrop at first petitioned for a confirmation
of the old Warwick patent, which had been purchased of the English lords
and gentlemen in 1644, but later, encouraged it may be by friends in
England, he asked for a charter. The request was granted.[2] The
document gave to Connecticut the same boundaries as those of the old
patent, and conferred powers of government identical with those of the
Fundamental Orders of 1639. That the main features of the charter were
drawn up in the colony before Winthrop sailed is probable, though it is
not impossible that they were drafted in London by Winthrop himself. All
that the English officials did was to give the text it