As the work of planting New England took place chiefly in the eleven years 1629-1640, during which Charles I. contrived to reign without a parliament, so the prosperous period of the New England Confederacy, 1643-1664, covers the time of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, and just laps on to the reign of Charles II.  By the summary extinction of the separate existence of one of its members for the benefit of another, its vigour was sadly impaired.  But its constitution was revised so as to make it a league of three states instead of four; and the Federal Commissioners kept on holding their meetings, though less frequently, until the revocation of the Massachusetts charter in 1684.  During this period a great Indian war occurred, in the course of which this concentration of the military strength of New England, imperfect as it was, proved itself very useful.  In the history of New England, from the restoration of the Stuarts until their final expulsion, the two most important facts are the military struggle of the newly founded states with the Indians, and their constitutional struggle against the British government.  The troubles and dangers of 1636 were renewed on a much more formidable scale, but the strength of the people had waxed greatly in the mean time, and the new perils were boldly overcome or skilfully warded off; not, however, until the constitution of Massachusetts had been violently wrenched out of shape in the struggle, and seeds of conflict sown which in the following century were to bear fruit in the American Revolution. [Sidenote:  Breaking down of the theocratic policy] [Sidenote:  Weakening of the Confederacy]

CHAPTER V.

KING PHILIP’S WAR.

For eight-and-thirty years after the destruction of the Pequots, the intercourse between the English and the Indians was to all outward appearance friendly.  The policy pursued by the settlers was in the main well considered.  While they had shown that they could strike with terrible force when blows were needed, their treatment of the natives in time of peace seems to have been generally just and kind.  Except in the single case of the conquered Pequot territory, they scrupulously paid for every rood of ground on which they settled, and so far as possible they extended to the Indians the protection of the law.  On these points we have the explicit testimony of Josiah Winslow, governor of Plymouth, in his report to the Federal Commissioners in May, 1676; and what he says about Plymouth seems to have been equally true of the other colonies.  Says Winslow, “I think I can clearly say that before these present troubles broke out, the English did not possess one foot of land in this colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors.  Nay, because some of our people are of a covetous disposition, and the Indians are in their straits easily prevailed with to part with their lands, we first made a law that