Excerpt from Chapters on the Early Government of Connecticut, Vol. 3: With Critical and Explanatory Remarks on the Constitution of 1639
But steadfastness, in those times, was not a rare quality, and the proposed general movement, mostly without official sanction, was not long delayed. After it had begun, the General Court, in May, 1636, with the acquiescence of John Winthrop, Jr., whom the patentees in England had appointed governor of Connecticut, granted a commission to eight discreet persons to govern the new settlements for one year. Their names and the names of the towns they were probably expected, in some way, to represent, were: Roger Ludlow and William Phelps, of Windsor, John Steele and William Westwood, of Hartford, William Swaine and Andrew Ward, of Wethersfield, William Pynchon, of Agawam (Springfield), and Henry Smith, his son-in-law. Seemingly, for mutual convenience and support, Agawam was at first associated in government with the towns below. This connection, always wavering or disputed, was not formally ended till 1641. (See Palfrey"s History of New England, i, 604.) There was a controversy about the boundary line and the right of jurisdiction which caused confusion and a vacillating policy.
Undeniably, that was an extraordinary form of government which the people of Connecticut accepted as their own. Provided, as it was, by another colony - one with which they had now no political connection - it had, of course, no rightful authority, and could bind nobody. On the part of Massachusetts, it was a manifest usurpation. In appearance, the governed, as a body, had no voice in it, took no action concerning it, yet they submitted with seeming cheerfulness, considering it, probably, as a needful and convenient provisional arrangement.
To the commissioners was given "full power to hear and determine, in a judicial way, all differences between party and party; to imprison, impose fines, and inflict corporal punishment for crimes, and to order the affairs of the plantations in trading, planting, building, military discipline, etc., as shall best conduce to the public good." (Hazard, i, 322.)
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