Saybrook Colony

The Saybrook Colony was a short-lived English colony established in New England in 1635 at the mouth of the Connecticut River in what is today Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Saybrook was founded by a group of Puritan noblemen as a potential political refuge from the personal rule of Charles I. They claimed possession of the land via a deed of conveyance from Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, which granted the colony the land from the Narragansett Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Saybrook was named in honor of two of its primary investors, the Lords Saye and Sele and Brooke. John Winthrop the Younger was contracted as the colony's first governor, but quickly left Saybrook after failing to enforce its authority over Connecticut's settlers. With Winthrop gone, Lion Gardiner was left in charge of Saybrook's considerable fort, defending it when it was besieged during the Pequot War. Governor George Fenwick arrived in the colony in 1639, but quickly saw it as a lost cause. Fenwick negotiated the colony's sale to Connecticut in 1644 after interest in colonization dried up due to the investors' involvement in the English Civil War. The colony's founding document, the Warwick Patent, was used to justify the existence of the Connecticut Colony, which lacked a formal charter until 1662.

History

The area that would become the site of the colony was originally inhabited by the Niantic people, however, early in the 17th century the Niantic were pushed out of the land by the neighboring Pequot. In 1614 Dutch explorer Adriaen Block was sent to explore eastern New Netherland, in the process becoming the first European to sail up the Connecticut River. The Dutch, fearing English expansion in the region, sent a group of settlers from New Amsterdam in 1623. This effort would be unsuccessful and the settlers would return after a few months. Dutch efforts to colonize the area were revived in 1632 when New Netherland director Wouter van Twiller sent Hans Eechyus to purchase land at the mouth of the Connecticut River from the local Indians. Eechyus subsequently built a fur trading post there and named it Kievet's Hook.

In 1631 Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, president of the Council for New England, granted a patent to a group of Puritan noblemen giving them the right to all the land from the Narragansett Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Warwick lacked the authority to grant this patent without the rest of the Council's approval, but plans for colonization proceeded anyway. Despite the patent's weak legitimacy, it would later be used by the Connecticut Colony to justify its existence, as that colony lacked a formal charter until 1662. The founders of the colony were ardent Puritans and Parliamentarians, with the colony's founders hoping it would serve as a possible political refuge from Charles I. Besides the eponymous Viscount Saye and Sele and Baron Brooke, the group of investors included future Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, John Hampden, Arthur Hesilrige, and John Pym. The investment group had previously funded the failed colonies of Providence Island and Cocheco. The Puritan gentlemen, however, were not allowed to leave England and found it difficult to discreetly sell their English estates. By September 1635, reports of the gentlemen's intentions had spread and they dared not attempt to emigrate. The investors instead offered to join the Massachusetts Bay Colony on the condition that they be established in the Massachusetts government as a hereditary nobility, a condition rejected by the colony due to its lack of a requirement that freemen be church members.

John Winthrop Jr. of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was hired to remove the Dutch from the area and did so with a group of twenty men and two cannons. When his men found the coat of arms of the Dutch West India Company nailed to a tree, they took it down and replaced it with a shield with a smiling face. Shortly after the seizure a Dutch ship came to the rivers mouth but was intimidated by the English cannons, surrendering the fort to English control. After establishing the colony, Winthrop named it in honor of William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele and Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, prominent Parliamentarians and the principal investors in the colony.

After securing the area from the Dutch, Winthrop, along with Hugh Peter and Henry Vane the Younger, spent the winter of 1635–36 attempting to convince the settlers of the Connecticut Valley, who had occupied much of the best land under the colony's charter, to respect the authority of the new colony. Winthrop was given no instructions on incorporating these settlers into the colonial government and was unwilling to acquiesce to the gentlemen investors' demands of securing large plots of lands for themselves. Winthrop finally arrived in the colony in April 1636, but seeing a lack of funding, settlers unwilling to accept the colony's authority, and hostile Indians, returned to Boston just a few months into his year long contract as governor, leaving Lion Gardiner in charge of the fort.

The three doors of Fort Saybrook were ten feet high and four feet wide, encircling an area of two hundred square feet. Several of the colony's settlers were veterans of the Thirty Years' War. Among these settlers was Lion Gardiner, who was in charge of constructing the fort and planning the town. As the fort was being constructed, Gardiner's wife Mary gave birth to a son, David, the first European child born in Connecticut. The defensive precautions would prove useful when during the Pequot War the colony withstood a siege from September 1636 to April 1637, the longest engagement of the war. The fort lasted from 1635 to the winter of 1647/48 when it burned down, though it was quickly replaced with another fort closer to the river.

In 1639 George Fenwick arrived in the colony to replace Winthrop as governor. The colony would soon struggle with the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, with the colony's backers canceling plans to settle in Saybrook, instead deciding to fight for the Parliamentarian cause. With English support lost, Fenwick negotiated to sell the colony to the neighboring Connecticut Colony for an annual payment of 180 pounds of equal quantities of wheat, peas, and either rye or barley. After selling the colony, Fenwick returned to England where he served as a colonel in the Civil War and became Member of Parliament for Morpeth and later governor of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Legacy

Though he ultimately decided not to settle in Saybrook, Cromwell was long warmly regarded by the Puritan New Englanders. He was often referred to by his first name Oliver, including by John Adams. The name Oliver remained popular in New England well after his death, despite waning in popularity in England. The town of Cromwell, Connecticut was also named in his honor. As late as 1864, town residents could still recall the plots of land that were to be assigned to the Puritan lords. The badge of Yale's Saybrook College is derived from the seal of the colony. The seal also established grapevines as a symbol of Connecticut. The colony's motto ''Qui Transtulit Sustinet'' "He Who Transplanted Still Sustains" remains the motto of Connecticut today. Fenwick's wife, Lady Anne Butler, was the first white woman in Connecticut. She would end up becoming a subject of local lore after her tombstone was removed to make room for a railroad.

See also

* Lower Connecticut River Valley – Connecticut planning region covering the area

References

External links

History of Old Saybrook at the Old Saybrook Historical Society

{{Thirteen Colonies

States and territories disestablished in 1644
English colonization of the Americas
Connecticut Colony
Middlesex County, Connecticut
History of the Thirteen Colonies
Former English colonies
States and territories established in 1635
Colonial settlements in North America
1635 establishments in the Thirteen Colonies