t
find the peace which they pursued. The distractions which they left
Boston to avoid attended them in the wilderness; and in the end the
colony was united with the settlements to the north, where the liberal
ideas of Hooker had proved compatible, not only with strict morality and
frugal prosperity, but with religious and spiritual concord as well. The
charter of 1662 which founded the larger Connecticut embodied the ideas
of Hooker rather than those of Davenport, and was so wisely contrived
that it stood the shock of the Revolution and survived to the nineteenth
century as the fundamental law of Connecticut.

Internal difficulties growing out of conflicting ideals of Church and
State had scarcely achieved the dispersion of the New England
settlements before external dangers began to draw them together. As
early as 1637, and again in 1639, the Connecticut settlements,
threatened by the Dutch and the Indians, applied to Massachusetts Bay
for support against the common danger. The Dutch and the Indians were
less dangerous to Massachusetts than to Connecticut, but the possibility
of royal interference touched her more nearly. In 1634 Laud had obtained
the appointment of a commission to inquire into her affairs, and in 1642
the "ill news we have had out of England concerning the breach between
King and Parliament" gave further apprehension with respect to the
colony's chartered liberties. Accordingly, the third proposal of
Connecticut in 1642 met with a favorable response, and in the following
year the New England Confederation was founded. Rhode Island was without
the pale, but Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and New Haven
entered into a "firm and perpetual league of friendship and amity for
offense and defense, mutual advice and succor, both for preserving and
propagating the truth and liberties of the Gospel, and for their own
mutual safety and welfare." The affairs of the league were to be
administered by a board of two commissioners from each colony.
Massachusetts, with a greater population than the other three combined,
agreed to bear her proper burden in men and money, and presumed at times
to exercise a corresponding influence. The smaller colonies were
naturally more willing to accept her money than disposed to submit to
her dictation; but in spite of disputes, the Confederation was
maintained for forty years, an effective influence in its day, and the
first of many compromises which led in the end to that mo