Other Aspects of Colonial Government and Law

In addition to the constitutional documents, other aspects of the government and law of colonial Connecticut have been given close attention by scholarly and not-so-scholarly writers.

Andrews, Charles M. Connecticut and the British Government, pamphlet I (1933) in the Tercentenary series. This is actually the introduction to an edited edition of Reports on the laws of Connecticut by Francis Fane K. C. Standing Council to the Board of Trade and Plantations. Hartford: The Acorn Club, 191 5. Andrews uses the Report to analyze the reasons for Connecticut's relatively independent position vis a vis the mother country.

--The Connecticut Intestacy Law. Published as Tercentenary pamphlet no. II, this is an expanded version of an article published first in the Yale Review 3(November, 1894):261-92 and then, with changes, in Association of American Law Schools, Select Essays in Anglo-American legal History. (Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1907-9)3 vols; vol. I. Frustratingly, the last revision appears without citations. The intestacy law of 1699 is significant in that it violated British custom and law and was therefore a manifestation of Connecticut independence.

Atwater, Ellen Bessie. "In the Courts of the Kings: Connecticut Agents who Appeared Before the Throne in Appeals for Justice...." Connecticut Magazine 8(1903). This three-part series is a thoroughly professional study that begins in 1641 and comes down to the Revolution.

Baldwin, Simeon E. "Whipping and Castration as Punishment." Yale Law Journal 8(June, 1899)9:371-86. See in Legal History section below.

Benton, Josiah Henry. Warning 0ut in New England, 1656-1817. Boston, 1911. Pages 63-87 deal with Connecticut.

Capens, Edward Warren. Historical Development of the Poor Law in Connecticut. New York: Columbia University Press, 1905. See under "Daily Life and Society."

Case, Bert Francis. "Trials in Early Justice Courts in Connecticut." Connecticut Magazine 11(1907)1:43-48. Based on (and includes) a transcript of the justice of-the-peace records (177 3-75) of Jabez Brainerd of Haddam and his son-in-law, Joseph Dart of Chatham (1 775-83).

Cohen, Ronald Dennis. "Colonial Leviathan: New England Foreign Affairs in the Seventeenth Century." Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1967. "New England particularism is perhaps best viewed by examining the colonies' relations with their foreign neighbors. Faced with the prospect of either coexisting or quarreling with their Dutch, French, and Swedish neighbors, each of the English colonies regulated its behavior according to its own best interests. New Haven and Connecticut assumed a hostile stance towards the Dutch and Swedes, whose territory they coveted." (from the abstract)

Cornelia Hughes Dayton.  Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789.  Chapel Hill, Univ. of N.C. Press, 1995

Cornelia Hughes Dayton . "Taking the Trade: Abortion and Gender Reldtions in an Eighteeth-Century New England Village," William and Mary Quarterly 48 (January, 1991) 1:19-49

This fascinating account of a death by abortion in Pomfret in 1742 revealled, through a pretty full set of court documents, much detail about sexual moves and practices, class and family relationships, and colonial law.  Though not a focus of this article, the case stands as one of the few examples we have of the use of English criminal common law in Connecticut during the Colonial era. 

Dexter, Franklin B. "The Early Relations Between New Netherland and New England." Papers of the NHCHS 3(1882):443-70. This deals with Connecticut and New Haven in the context of the United Colonies. For a recent study o the United Colonies, see Harry Ward, The United Colonies of New England, 1643 1690 (New York: Vantage, 1961).

Dinkin, Robert J. "Elections in Colonial Connecticut." CHS Bulletin 37(January 1972)1: 17-20. But see Dinkin's Voting in Provincial America: A Study of Election in the Thirteen Colonies, 1689-1776 (Westport: Greenwood, 1977), which covers the entire electoral process, including political philosophy. He concludes that each colony did its own experimenting.

--"The Nomination of Governor and Assistants in Colonial Connecticut." CH9 Bulletin 36(July, 1971)5.

Farrell, John Thomas. "The Administration of Justice in Connecticut in the Middle of the Eighteenth Century." This doctoral dissertation (Yale, 1937) was not published, but much of its valuable material is included in Farrell's introduction to "The Superior Court Diary of William Samuel Johnson, 1772-1773, of the Colony of Connecticut," in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association (Washington, 1942). It is an essential source. With the inclusion of Superior Court records and file papers, 1772-1773, it was also published at American Legal Records, vol. IV (Washington: American Historical Association, 1942).

Fowler, William Chauncey. "Local Law in Connecticut, Historically Considered.” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 24(January, 1870)1:32-42, 137-46. A slight piece dealing with the earliest local laws of the River Towns, New Haven, Saybrook, and the New England Confederation. Not worth the trouble of searching.

Gaskins, Richard. " Changes in the Criminal Law in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut" American Journal of Legal History. 25(0ctober, 1981).   Gaskins in Am J of L Hist Oct' 81. "Puritan crimes," those of morality, were downgraded throughout the 18^th century while crimes against property were more severely punished.  This tendency was noticeable in Connecticut much earlier than in Massachusetts and is traceable through both statutory revision and the qualitative dimension of the punishments ordered by the courts.  By the second half of the 18^th century, "if the law' had any central concerns . . ., it was to assist creditors in collecting debts, to allow debtos officially to discharge their obligations, and to settle claims against estates." (p. 315)  Based on a justices' books from Farmington (1763-69), Waterbury (1757-64), Goshen 1795-1820), Derby (1777-1803), New Haven County Court (1750-70).  Includes an excellent discussion of the gradual withering away of corporal punishment - whipping, branding, dismembering, stocks, etc. - and the rise of the prison system.

But see Goodwin who puts the dilution of moral crimes in the early 18^th c. (p. 46).

Gipson, Lawrence Henry. "The Criminal Codes of Connecticut." Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology 6(July, 1915)2:177-89. A brief summary of the codes of 1650 and 1784, and of the New Haven code of 1656. Points out that Ludlow's code of 1650 replicated the Massachusetts code of 1641, with significant adaptations to frontier conditions.

Goodwin, Everett C. "The Magistracy Rediscovered: Connecticut, 1696-1818." Doctoral dissertation, Brown University, 1974. This work shows how the radical concept of an independent judiciary developed in Connecticut, where it had not prevailed during the colonial period. A very tenuous work containing material, not found elsewhere, that challenges the conventional wisdom on little separation and legislative supremacy. But see damning reviews in The Journal of American History 69 (June, 1982)1:195 and The William and Mary Quarterly 39 (October, 1982) 4:700.

Holdsworth, William K. "Law and Society in Colonial Connecticut, 1636-1672." Doctoral dissertation, Claremont Graduate School, 1974. This is a mammoth, two-volume study supervised by Leonard Levy. If "seeks to demonstrate that the Puritan ideal of the godly commonwealth, which inspired the first settlers of Connecticut and found expression in their fundamental laws, their governmental and social institutions, and their code of law, increasingly failed to withstand the many changes that beset the colony after 1665, and was finally reformulated in the Code of 1672 in order to comport with these changes." (p. x)

Humphrey, Edward F. "Connecticut's Colonial Committee System." Connecticut Bar Journal 10(0ctober, 1956)4:239-47. The author was professor of history and government at Trinity College. This is an excellent, fully documented study of legislative committees from 1636 to the Revolution. Donald Lines Jacobus argues with Humphrey in another article of the same title in the same journal 11(October, 1937)4:359-65. See also in the same journal Edwin Stanley Wells' "The First Committee of the General Court of Connecticut Held May 1, 1637." 12(January, 1958)1:3-8.

Lewis, Leon P. "The Development of a Common Law System in Connecticut." Connecticut Bar Journal 27(December, 1953)4:419-27. Lewis discusses the development of the Connecticut legal system, 1639-1800. "The colony which at its outset most clearly rejected [the English common law] system was Connecticut. The First state to establish a system of common law of its own was Connecticut" (p.419)

Lyman Dean B., Jr. "Notes on the New Haven Colonial Courts." Connecticut Bar Journal 20 (April, 1946)2:178-89. See above under " Colonial New Haven."

Maltbie, William M. "Judicial Administration in Connecticut Colony Before the Charter of 1662." Connecticut Bar Journal 23 (June, 1949):147-58. He points to the many procedures and penalties that had no statutory basis, but became part of the colony's customary system of jurisprudence.  This analysis, by Connecticut's most distinguished chief justice of the twentieth century, is based on volume I of the Public Record of the Colony of Connecticut. In Part II, 23(September, 1949):288-341, Maltbie deals with criminal and civil procedure.

Mann Bruce Hartling. "Parishes, Law, and Community in Connecticut 17001760." Doctoral dissertation, Yale, 1977. "This dissertation is a study of the meaning of community in eighteenth-century Connecticut.... It examines changing patterns in the social uses of litigation and the emergence and transformation of a new community known as the parish. It treats local litigation and parish as two aspects of community and traces their development toward greater legal and administrative rationalization." (from the abstract) The focus is on Guilford and New Haven. Mann reports that as society became more complex, legal relationships were increasingly rationalized and "disrupted the multiplex ties that had once characterized communities and paired people instead of single-interest relationships." (p. 218 of his "Rationality, Legal Change and Community in Connecticut 1690-1700." Law and Society Review 14(Winter, 1980)2:187-221.)

John Murrin, "Magistrates, Sinners and a Precarious Law.  Liberty: Trial by Jury in Seventeenth-Century New England" in David D. Hall, et al., eds. Saints and Revolutionaries: Essays on Early American History.  New York, W. W. Norton, 1984.

Jury trials for non-capital crimes were not the norm in Connecticut.  New Haven did not allow jury trials at all before the union with Connecticut.  The courts generally were more concerned about punishing violations of biblical admonitions, and they did this without juries - except in the biblical capital crimes.  Juries were used routinely in civil cases, and as the 17^th century progressed, an area of torts - wrongful actions somewhere between crimes and civil disagreements - developed in which juries were more and more employed.  Meanwhile statutes permitted defendents and sometimes plaintiff to request jury trials - even eschew them in capital cases.

This article puts New England colonial practices in context of English and other colonial common law practices.  The New England colonies before 1665 went from no juries in any court in New Have to very wide use of juries in criminal and civil cases in Rhode Island.  The general practice in Connecticut was to provide juries in civil suits and capital crimes.

Poteet, James M. "Unrest in the 'Land of Steady Habits': The Hartford Riot of 1722." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 119(June, 1 975):22332. The "Riot" was not a unique occurrence but merely "the most visible demonstration, and culmination, of a long period of gathering disorder as Connecticut made the transition from colony to province." The cause lay in population pressure on land held in large lots by speculators.

Selesky, Harold E. "Patterns of Officeholding in the Connecticut General Assembly: 1725-1774," in George Willauer, ed., A Lyme Miscellany. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1977. Selesky, a doctoral student of Edmund Morgan, makes a statistical analysis of officeholding in both houses to show that "In the fifty years before 1775, the people of Connecticut questioned, evaluated, and reformulated inherited ideas about religion, politics, and the social order. New attitudes found expression through recognized channels: change was orderly, gradual and democratic" (p. 195)

Arthur Shipman. "Connecticut's First Lawyer," Connecticut Bar Journal 1 (April, 1927) 2: 110-27. This article concerns mainly Ludlow's efforts to legitimate Connecticut's claims to the lands occupied by the River Towns and also those included in the Warwick Patent.  The author concludes that the best claim to possession lay in the purchases made from the local Indians.

Stark, Bruce. "The Election of 1740 in Connecticut" Connecticut History 22(January, 1981). An "intermingling of political ambition and economic interests" in a deal made by eastern and western interests for an unusual 25 percent (three men) turnover on the Council. Stark found some rare vote tallies for this election.

Stark, Bruce P. "'A Factious Spirit': Constitutional Theory and Political Practice in Connecticut, C. 1740," W&MQ 3^rd Series 47 (Kuly 1990) 3:391-410. Reprints "A LETTER" From a Gentleman to his Friend in Connecticut," a five page pamphlet printed in Boston, July 30, 1740.  The LETTER defends electioneering practiced used to get pro-paper money onto the Council and also Thomas Fitch whose gubernatorial prospects interested others who were not paper-money enthusiasts.

Stark's nine-page introduction explains fully the issues involved and the political context of the letter.  This is a very valuable discussion of the politics of paper money which sheds much light on the political progress of the future governors Fitch and Trumbull.

"The Upper House in Early Connecticut History," in George Willauer, ed., A Lyme Miscellany, 1776-1976. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press 1977. Stark examines election laws, politics, and the evolution of the Council of Assistants. He concludes that the government dominated by the Council "was responsible to the will of the majority, though not to its whims." (p. 158)

Townshend, Henry H. "Judicial Administration in New Haven Colony Before the Charter of 1662." Connecticut Bar Journal 24 (March 1950):210-34.

Turner, Sylvie, ed. Journal Kept by William Williams of the Proceedings of the Lower House of the Connecticut General Assembly, May 1717 Session Hartford: CHS, 1975. This is a most revealing account of a very significant session that brought affairs between Old Light and New Light factions to a head.

Trumbull, J. Hammond. The True Blue-Laws of Connecticut and New Haven and the False Blue Laws Invented by the Rev. Samuel Peters. Hartford: American Publishing Co., 1876. This is a classic treatment of both Peters and the "blue laws."

G.B. Warden, "Law Reform in England and New England, 1620-1660"  Law W&MQ 3^rd. Ser. 35 (Oct. 1978) 4: 669-690. This extremely useful survey includes a nice summary of the English and New English context for secular compacts such as the Fundamental Orders (p.p. 671-73).  Warden's special point is that legal reform which was only urged  in England was actually accomplished in New England.  Partible inheritance, land registration, and codification of laws, for instance, all became the norm in New England but were generally absent in England.  New England still had its poverty, crime, futile hopes of the Puritan Revolution in England, legal  reforms in New England reduced the possibility that power - social, economic or political could be permanently monopolized by a few or within a perpetually petrified institutionally hierarchy  p. 683. The citations constitute a fine bibliography of 17^th century New England legal history. 

Welles, Edwin Stanley. "Time for Holding the Annual Town Meeting of Election in Connecticut" Connecticut Magazine 7(1901)2:146-48. Welles found no standard time for meetings across the colony until the time of Andros in 1688. The revised law of 1703 provided for the same day everywhere

See also "suffrage" in the index

Society and daily life have their own section in this bibliography, but some works focused on the colonial period should be noted here. One investigator with a political interest is Bruce Colin Daniels, who wrote a dissertation at the University of Connecticut(l970), "Large Town Power Structures in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut An Analysis of Political Leadership in Hartford Norwich and Fairfield" which he plumbed for several useful articles. Principal among these is "The Political Structure of Local Government in Colonial Connecticut" in Town and Country Essays on the Structure of Local Government in the American Colonies (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press 1978), which he edited. See also several other, articles by Daniels:

"Connecticut" Villages Become Mature Towns: The Complexity of Local Institutions, 1676-1'1 76." William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series 34(January, 1977)1:83-103. Daniels points out that the popular perception of the town as governed through the town meeting is not accurate. There was considerable fragmentation of authority among the ecclesiastical society, the proprietary body, the Freemen, and several judicial officers.

"Deference and Rotation of Selectmen's Offices in 18th-Century Connecticut." CHS Bulletin 37(July, 1972)3:92-96. In Hartford and Norwich at least the selectmen were rotated fairly frequently, but Fairfield supplies evidence to support the conventional view that deference to their "betters" caused voters to keep the same rulers in office for long periods.

"Democracy and Oligarchy in Connecticut Towns: General Assembly Office holding, 1701 1790." Social Science Quarterly (December, 1975):460-75. In this piece Daniels focuses on deputies to the General Assembly. His analysis convinces him that among historians interested in the question of democracy versus oligarch in colonial New England, "A general consensus will emerge behind an oligarchic picture of a few men serving most of the terms, with these few men often coming from the same families." (p. 464)

"Family Dynasties in Connecticut's Largest Towns, 1701-1760." Canadian Journal of History 8(September, 1979)2:99-1 10. Daniels' reading of the historical literature leads him to note that "All of the qualitative evidence supports the earlier held concept of colonial elites while all the quantitative evidence would suggest political openness and mobility." (p. 100) He analyzes political leaders in Hartford, Norwich, and Fairfield in 1774 and finds that as the eighteenth century unfolded, the office of deputy came to be dominated more and more by small groups or single families, while considerable rotation of selectmen continued.

"The Growth in Size and Power of Local Government in Colonial Connecticut" CHS Bulletin 39(January, 1974)1:20-25. The town government became increasingly complex involving larger numbers of office holders as the eighteenth century waxed. The town meeting became more significant in the Revolutionary Era than it had been earlier in the century.

"Large Town Otficeholding in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut: The Growth of Oligarchy." Journal of American Studies 9(April 1975)1:1-12. "If there was a long range democratizing trend in eighteenth-century politics the officeholding structure did not reflect it and if the Revolution added to this trend, the officeholding structure did not reflect it either. The widening gap between economic classes, the increasing prestige and power of select families and the Revolutionary emergency all coalesced to form a more oligarchical pattern of local office holding." (p. 12)

"The Long-lasting Men of Local Government in Colonial Connecticut" CHS Bulletin 41(July, 1976)5:90-96. The town clerks just went on and on and on.

In the same genre of Daniels' analysis are three important pieces by Jackson Turner Main: "The Economic and Social Structure of Early Lyme" in George Willauer, ed., A Lyme Miscellany (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1977); "The Distribution of Property in Colonial Connecticut" in James Kirby Martin, ed., The Human Dimension of Nation Making Essays on Colonial and Revolutionary America (Madison University of Wisconsin Press, 1970); and Connecticut Society in the Era of the American Revolution Bicentennia1 pamphlet XXI. All three Main works are discussed below. Similar but pioneering and thus less sophisticated analysis is found in Charles Grant's work cited below and in his "Land Speculation in the Settlement of Kent," New England Quarterly 28(March, 1955). Grant views Kent's mid-eighteenth-century pioneers as expectant capitalists,” equally interested in speculation and in farming.

See also: Jackson T. Main. "Standard of Living and the Life Cycle in Colonial Connecticut,"  Journal of Economic History  43 (March, 1983) 1:159-65.

Based on 10,000 estate inventories of Connecticut men and thirty-five tax lists, Main determines that subsistance requirements change as people more from dependent children through young marrieds to mature householders and back to dependent old age.  He provides figures in pounds of what was needed at each stage for various levels of living from bare subsistence to luxurious living.

Gloria  L. Main. "Toward a History of the Standard of Living in British North America:  The Standard of Living in Southern New England, 1640-1773,"  William and Mary Quarterly 45 (January 1988) 124-34  Main's data shows a rising level of living and an increasing presence of consumer goods such as knives and forks among both the wealthy and middle class during the 18^th century - more so in Connecticut than in Boston.  Her point is made more thoroughly in her 2001 book and that of her husband treated below.

Religion and politics were much intertwined during the colonial period and Maria Louise Greene's magnificent study, the Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905, reprinted by Da Capo in 1970), based on her 1895 Yale dissertation, includes a great deal of political matter which must not be overlooked. A Tercentenary pamphlet by Rolan Mather Hooker, The Spanish Ship Case: A Troublesome Episode for Connecticut 1752-1758 (no. XXV, 1954) explores a bizarre embroglio involving a wrecked Spanish vessel and the mysterious disappearance of its valuable cash cargo. The incident had political repercussions causing the, downfall of the administration of Roger Wolcott in 1754.