ing was a hobby to which he was always ready to give personal supervision. When building was going on he would stand by and give orders to the workmen, or would even in his zeal pick up a foot-rule and measure a board to see if it would fit. It goes without saying that trade and currency would engage the attention of such a man. He fostered trades and tradesmen with rules and regulations until it was a wonder that New York had any trade left. Even the quantity of brine in which the farmer might immerse his Currency. blocks of fat pork was minutely prescribed. As for prices, they were of course fixed by ordinance. The currency of the province was in that unfathomable chaos which has always had so many admirers in the New World, - specie, beaver skins, white and black wampum, with relative values perpetually shifting, and in the attempt to introduce something like order and stability Andros struggled manfully but in vain. Another crying evil was intemperance. It was said, perhaps with some exaggeration, that one quarter of all the houses in the city were places for retailing beer and spirits, and it could not be denied that the streets were too noisy with tipplers. The vehement mood in which Andros approached such matters is shown by his ordinance that if any man were to be seen drunk on the street, and the magistrates should be unable to discover where he had got his liquor, they were empowered forthwith to clap a fine upon every house in that street! How far this superlative edict was enforced we do not know.

Dram-shops.

Andros

necticut

In spite of his zeal and diligence the prosperity of New York did not come up to its governor's wishes and expectations, and although inducements were held out to immigrants, yet the population did not increase so rapidly as was desired. It seemed to Andros necessary for the general welfare that the thriving towns and teeming fields of Connecticut should be added to his covets Con- province; or, as he himself would have honestly said, to assert the duke's rightful authority over this eastern portion of his province. At the same time both Andros and the duke knew that some discretion was needful in proceeding against a colony chartered by the king, to say nothing of the facts that Connecticut singlehanded was stronger than New York, and that she was loosely confederated with Massachusetts and Plymouth, upon whose aid in certain emergencies she could count.

In the spring of 1675 Andros sent a message to Hartford, requesting the General Court to make arrangements for turning over that town and all the country west of the Connecticut River to the Duke of York. The court replied by alleging the award of the royal commissioners of 1664, which gave to Connecticut a boundary twenty miles east of the Hudson River. Andros rejoined claim to it. that the alleged award had never been confirmed by the king, and was now quite superseded by the new royal grant to the duke. The men of Connecticut refused to admit this claim, and their contumacy was declared by Andros and his council to be tantamount to rebellion. In June

and lays

"hee sent home Capt. Salisbury for England to let his Royal Highness know how impossible it was for this Government to subsist without the addition of Connecticut." 1

In the answer to Salisbury's message, which did not come for nearly a year, the duke's secretary wrote to Andros: "Upon the whole you will see that His Roy11 Hss is willing things should rest as they are at present, but he is not sorry you have revived this clayme because possibly some good use may be hereafter made of it." 2

Breaking out of King

War.

But the ship that carried Captain Salisbury had scarcely sailed (July 2, 1675) when a courier from Hartford came spurring down the Bowery Lane (July 4) with the shocking news of the Indian massacre at Swanzey. The long- Philip's drawn chapter of horrors known as King Philip's War had begun. Andros at once wrote to Winthrop: "I am very much troubled at the Christians' misfortunes and hard disasters in those parts, being so overpowered by such heathen. Hereupon I have hastened my coming to your parts, and added a force to be ready to take such resolutions as may be fit for me upon this extraordinary occasion, with which I intend, God willing, to set out this evening, and to make the best of

1 Governor Dongan's report of 1687 to the Lords of Trade, in O'Callaghan's Documentary History of New York, i. 187. Dongan goes on to say, "Much less can it subsist now without it, being at more expense than in the time of Sir Edmond, having lost Delaware, etc. I hope his Maty will bee graciously pleased to add that Colony to this which is the Centre of all His Dominions in America."

2 Colonial Documents, iii. 236.

my way to Connecticut River, His Royal Highness' bounds there." 1

prepares to resist Andros.

If the good people at Hartford had been at all slow to dread the coming of Andros with his Danaan gift of reinforcements, this last ominous alluConnecticut sion would have quickened them. They promptly recalled the force which they had despatched in aid of Plymouth, and they sent Captain Thomas Bull, with 100 men, to hold the fort at Saybrook. The General Court was at once assembled, and unanimously adopted a protest against "Major Andros and all his aiders and abettors, as disturbers of the public peace of his Majesty's good subjects." It was resolved that they should "use their utmost power and endeavour (expecting therein the assistance of Almighty God) to defend the good people of the Colony from the said Major Andros's attempts."

On the 8th of July Andros arrived at Saybrook with three sloops-of-war, and found the fort already occupied by Captain Bull, and the royal standard floating over it, upon which it was neither prudent nor proper to fire. Andros sent a message up to Hartford, renewing his demand for territory, and asking for a "direct and effectual answer," for which he said he should wait. As for his aid against Indians, he hinted that the Connecticut people did not seem over eager for it.

Andros baffled at Saybrook.

Captain Bull told him that if he wished to be helpful against Philip's Indians he had better lose no time in sailing to Mount Hope Bay. After two days Andros came 1 Connecticut Colonial Records, ii. 579.

ashore and had an interview on the river's bank with Bull and his officers. Andros insisted upon having the duke's patent read aloud, but Bull's party refused to listen and walked away, saying it was no business of theirs. When the reading was finished, Andros said he should now depart unless they wished him to stay. The officers replied that they were not instructed to ask him to stay, but they had something to read aloud for his benefit, and they went on to read the protest of the General Court in which Andros was set down as a disturber of the public peace. He exclaimed that this was a poor requital for his kindness in offering aid against the savages; and so the colloquy ended. As his vessels got under weigh he was courteously saluted by the guns of the fort, and the salute was returned. Then with swelling canvas the governor's ships sailed out of the beautiful river and sped away over the majestic waters of the Sound with prows turned southward for Long Island. When the affair was reported to the Hartford magistrates, they commended Bull and his officers for what they had done, but wished that it might have been done less mildly. It would have been well, they said, if the reading of the patent had been drowned in a boom and clatter of drums.1 Eighteen years later, as we shall see, a very doubtful tradition credits Captain Wadsworth with remembering this hint and acting upon it.2

1 Connecticut Colonial Records, ii. 262, 334, 339-343, 579-584. Dr. Trumbull's account, in his History of Connecticut, i. 330, perhaps needs a little pruning.

2 See below, p. 218.

VOL. II.