The first movement, however, was directed against the encroachments of the New Netherlands.  In October, 1634, some men of Plymouth, led by William Holmes, sailed up the Connecticut river, and, after bandying threats with a party of Dutch who had built a rude fort on the site of Hartford, passed on and fortified themselves on the site of Windsor.  Next year Governor Van Twiller sent a company of seventy men to drive away these intruders, but after reconnoitring the situation the Dutchmen thought it best not to make an attack.  Their little stronghold at Hartford remained unmolested by the English, and, in order to secure the communication between this advanced outpost and New Amsterdam, Van Twiller decided to build another fort at the mouth of the river, but this time the English were beforehand.  Rumours of Dutch designs may have reached the ears of Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brooke—­“fanatic Brooke,” as Scott calls him in “Marmion”—­who had obtained from the Council for New England a grant of territory on the shores of the Sound.  These noblemen chose as their agent the younger John Winthrop, son of the Massachusetts governor, and this new-comer arrived upon the scene just in time to drive away Van Twiller’s vessel and build an English fort which in honour of his two patrons he called “Say-Brooke.”

Had it not been for seeds of discontent already sown in Massachusetts, the English hold upon the Connecticut valley might perhaps have been for a few years confined to these two military outposts at Windsor and Saybrook.  But there were people in Massachusetts who did not look with favour upon the aristocratic and theocratic features in its polity.  The provision that none but church-members should vote or hold office was by no means unanimously approved.  We see it in the course of another generation putting altogether too much temporal power into the hands of the clergy, and we can trace the growth of the opposition to it until in the reign of Charles II. it becomes a dangerous source of weakness to Massachusetts.  At the outset the opposition seems to have been strongest in Dorchester, Newtown, and Watertown.  When the Board of Assistants undertook to secure for themselves permanency of tenure, together with the power of choosing the governor and making the laws, these three towns sent deputies to Boston to inspect the charter and see if it authorized any such stretch of power.  They were foremost in insisting that representatives chosen by the towns must have a share in the general government.  Men who held such opinions were naturally unwilling to increase the political weight of the clergy, who, during these early disputes and indeed until the downfall of the charter, were inclined to take aristocratic views and to sympathize with the Board of Assistants.  Cotton declared that democracy was no fit government either for church or for commonwealth, and the majority of the ministers agreed with him.  Chief among those who did not was the learned and eloquent Thomas