ission government came to an end in March, 1637, and there is
reason to think that during the last month, an election of committees
took place in Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor, which would show that
the Connecticut settlers were exercising the privilege of the franchise
more than a year before Hooker preached his famous sermon declaring that
the right of government lay in the people. There also is some reason to
think that the leaders were still undecided whether or not to come to an
agreement with the English lords and gentlemen and to put themselves
under the latter's jurisdiction. But as Winthrop's commission expired at
the end of a year and no new governor was appointed--the English
Puritans having become absorbed in affairs at home--the Connecticut
colony was thrown on its own resources and compelled to set up a
government of its own. Pynchon at Springfield now cast in his lot with
Massachusetts, and from this time forward Springfield was a part of the
Massachusetts colony, but the men of Connecticut, disliking Pynchon's
desertion, determined to act for themselves. On May 31, 1638, Hooker
preached a sermon laying down the principles according to which
government should be established; and during the six months that
followed, the court, consisting of six magistrates and nine deputies,
framed the Fundamental Orders, the laws that were to govern the colony.

This remarkable document, though deserving all the encomiums passed upon
it, was not a constitution in any modern sense of the word and
established nothing fundamentally new, because the form of government
it outlined differed only in certain particulars from that of
Massachusetts and Plymouth. It was made up of two parts, a preamble,
which is a plantation covenant like that signed in the cabin of the
_Mayflower_, and a series of laws or orders passed either separately or
together by the court which drafted them. This court was a lawmaking
body and it made public the laws when they were passed. That this body
of laws or, as we may not improperly call it, this frame of government
was ratified, as Trumbull says, by all the free planters assembled at
Hartford on January 14, 1639, is not impossible, though such action
would seem unnecessary as the court was a representative body, and
unlikely as the time of year was not favorable for holding a
mass-meeting at Hartford. Later courts never hesitated to change the
articles without referring the changes to the plante