(1663) by the crown.  Not until long after the congregation of Thomas Hooker from Newtown blazed the way into the Connecticut River Valley did the king of England give Connecticut a charter of its own (1662) and a place among the colonies.  Half a century elapsed before the towns laid out beyond the Merrimac River by emigrants from Massachusetts were formed into the royal province of New Hampshire in 1679.

Even when Connecticut was chartered, the parchment and sealing wax of the royal lawyers did but confirm rights and habits of self-government and obedience to law previously established by the congregations.  The towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield had long lived happily under their “Fundamental Orders” drawn up by themselves in 1639; so had the settlers dwelt peacefully at New Haven under their “Fundamental Articles” drafted in the same year.  The pioneers on the Connecticut shore had no difficulty in agreeing that “the Scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men.”

=The Proprietor.=—­A third and very important colonial agency was the proprietor, or proprietary.  As the name, associated with the word “property,” implies, the proprietor was a person to whom the king granted property in lands in North America to have, hold, use, and enjoy for his own benefit and profit, with the right to hand the estate down to his heirs in perpetual succession.  The proprietor was a rich and powerful person, prepared to furnish or secure the capital, collect the ships, supply the stores, and assemble the settlers necessary to found and sustain a plantation beyond the seas.  Sometimes the proprietor worked alone.  Sometimes two or more were associated like partners in the common undertaking.

Five colonies, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the Carolinas, owe their formal origins, though not always their first settlements, nor in most cases their prosperity, to the proprietary system.  Maryland, established in 1634 under a Catholic nobleman, Lord Baltimore, and blessed with religious toleration by the act of 1649, flourished under the mild rule of proprietors until it became a state in the American union.  New Jersey, beginning its career under two proprietors, Berkeley and Carteret, in 1664, passed under the direct government of the crown in 1702.  Pennsylvania was, in a very large measure, the product of the generous spirit and tireless labors of its first proprietor, the leader of the Friends, William Penn, to whom it was granted in 1681 and in whose family it remained until 1776.  The two Carolinas were first organized as one colony in 1663 under the government and patronage of eight proprietors, including Lord Clarendon; but after more than half a century both became royal provinces governed by the king.

[Illustration:  WILLIAM PENN, PROPRIETOR OF PENNSYLVANIA]

THE COLONIAL PEOPLES