John Haynes - Connecticut Colony

Connecticut Colony

In 1635, a significant religious division began to grow in the Massachusetts colony. Anne Hutchinson and others espoused the Antinomianist view that the laws of the Church of England did not apply to them, while others argued the opposing Legalist position. Harsh reactions to the controversy may have played a role in the decision by Hooker, and consequently Haynes, to leave the colony for new settlements on the Connecticut River. Historians have also cited shortages of land and food as a reason for this migration, and political competition between Haynes and Winthrop. Winthrop recorded that Hooker's company was motivated by "the strong bent of their spirits to remove".

Haynes, while making arrangements to follow Hooker, continued to be involved in Massachusetts through 1636, serving as an assistant and as colonel of one of the colony's militia regiments. His lieutenant colonel was Roger Harlakenden, who in 1635 came over from England with his sister Mabel. John and Mabel were married in 1636; they had five children.

Haynes joined Hooker at the settlement they called Hartford in 1637. The colonial settlements on the river were established without any sort of royal charter and were not within the bounds of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. For the first two years, the few small settlements were governed by a general court of magistrates, headed by Haynes, and were likely preoccupied with the ongoing conflict with the Pequots. After the war ended in late 1638, the magistrates began drafting a body of principles and laws; these were ratified in January 1638/9. Now known as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, this document has been called the "first written constitution". The chief architects of the Fundamental Orders were Ludlow, the colony's principal legal mind, Haynes, and Thomas Hooker, who was known to advocate for the liberties the document enshrines.

Pursuant to the terms of this constitution, elections were held on April 11, 1639, and Haynes was elected as the colony's first governor. Because of restrictions in the constitution that disallowed consecutive terms, he was in and out of the office of governor a total of eight times between 1639 and his death in 1653/4. During most of the years he was not governor, he was instead the deputy governor.

Due to a lack of detailed documentation, the exact role Haynes played in the colony's political activities is unclear. One of his more notable achievements was the negotiations with some of the neighboring colonies that led to the creation of the New England Confederation in 1643. This organization was a loose confederation of the Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, New Haven, and Plymouth Colonies, principally established to coordinate defense against common threats. For Connecticut, the major threats came from Indians and from the Dutch of the New Netherlands to the west. In particular, the smaller colonies benefited from this confederation at the expense of the significantly more populous Massachusetts colony. During his terms in office, he was called upon to mediate disputes between local Indians and to negotiate with Dutch representatives of the New Netherlands, who claimed land south of Hartford on the Connecticut River. When one Dutch trader complained about the seizure by some Englishmen of land he claimed, Haynes responded that because the Dutchman had done nothing to develop the land, and that because "it was a sin to let such rich land ... lie uncultivated", he had effectively forfeited his claim. This dispute resulted in minor military confrontations between the English and Dutch in the 1640s and was resolved temporarily in the 1650 Treaty of Hartford, in which the Dutch ceded their claims on the river. Some territorial disputes continued even after the English took New Netherlands from the Dutch in 1664, and the territory described in the Duke of York's charter overlapped that of Connecticut.