1635 - Massachusetts Bay's Charter is revoked

January, 1635 - After abandoning his offices for two years to Edouard Winslow and Thomas Prence, William Bradford is reelected governor of Plymouth for a 11th one-year term.

February 13, 1635 - Founding of the Boston Latin School, considered the oldest American public institution.

April, 1635 - The settlers of Maryland and Virginia clash about land rights over Kent Island.  

William Claiborne, from Virginia, established a post there in 1631 from which he reaped substantial profits thanks to fur trade. The island would however be attributed next year to Maryland so that the governor of the new colony would claim payment of fees, what Claiborne will oppose arguing that he was the first to occupy the territory. 

In retaliation, Maryland settlers seized a pinnace owned by William Claiborne. A naval battle was engaged leaving 4 dead. Incidents of this kind would be repeated throughout the year.

April 22, 1635- King Charles 1 grants by letters patent Long Island to Sir William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling.

Renamed Stirling Island, it belonged at the time to the New Netherlands but the fact that the king of England gives it to one of his favorites could only have strong aftermath.

April 25, 1635 - The Council for New England revokes the Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Thomas Morton, expelled from Plymouth in 1628 by the Puritans, holds his revenge.

After three years in exile and a brief turn in Essex prison, Thomas Morton was able to resume business. He was engaged in a series of lawsuits against the Massachusetts Bay Company that he considered responsible of his troubles. To the surprise of defenders of the separatist Church of Plymouth, Morton gained broad support for his cause and emerged as a champion of freedom. Sir Ferdinando Gorges offered to give him assistance as the lawyer of the Council for New England, a position he mostly owed to King Charles 1, peculiarly adverse to Puritans. The revocation of the Charter soon caused major political changes in that after rejecting the royal decision, the General Court of Massachusetts would find isolated by lack of supply with, consequently, new tensions between foreign settlers and Indians.

Edward Winslow, who had been sent to England to plead

Edward Winslow

the cause of the colony and its charter, was arrested from his arrival in London and kept several weeks in Fleet's prison. Feeling threatened, the leaders of Massachusetts decided to fortify their coast, collect weapons and training militia groups.

While their charter just expired, the leaders of the Plymouth colony hastened to distribute lands in batches.

Captain John Mason who took part in the foundation of Portsmouth in 1630 and was licensed for New Hampshire by the London Company, sees granted all its area.

April 25, 1635 - the Plymouth Council decides to close its trading post on the Kennebec River.

Its members had registered too important losses to continue to maintain a post become not only expensive but unsafe especially because of its proximity to the French. They returned actually an empty shell and gave up definitively their charter. As responsible for the colony, governor William Bradford became, subsequently, the only holder of the rights on Kennebec.

 April 28, 1635 - A protest meeting against Governor John Harvey takes place in Charles River County, Virginia.

Was it because of his temper, his personal conception of power or due to the strong opposition he had aroused by providing assistance to the competing colony of Maryland and its catholic governor, Lord Baltimore, it remains that John Harvey had managed to be hated by the whole colony. His autocratic ways had even earned him to get the Council’s back up. The meeting held in Charles River County caused his anger and he decided to take coercive action. He summoned the council but it opposed his decisions. Without taking the measure of his unpopularity, he wanted some Council members being jailed but Dr. John Pott had his house surrounded by fifty armed men. The Council ruled in favor of the governor’s removal and sent John Utie announcing his arrest. John West was chosen to replace him, the time the king was told. Harvey was sent to England to face treason charges against him.

John Utie (? - 1639) - This soldier by training, certainly fom Norfolk, had arrived in 1620 in Virginia and settled down with his wife and his son near Jamestown where he had purchased a plantation. He was from 1624 member of the House of Burgesses and a little later officer for the Southampton division. Elected to the Council from 1630, he took part in the construction of the fort at Point Comfort and was one of first settlers on the York River.

John Haynes

May, 1635 - John Haynes, who arrived in Massachusetts two years ago, is chosen as governor of the colony.

John Haynes (May 1, 1594-January,1653 or 1654)

He was born into a gentry family from Essex, one of the cradles of the Puritan movement. He he had managed to amass lands and wealth in England before deciding, in 1633, to leave everything and head with his family to the Massachusetts Bay colony. He made the journey aboard the Griffin with Thomas Hooker, John Cotton and Samuel Stone and settled on his arrival at Newtown, near Boston, where he acquired the status of  free man on May 4, 1634. Elected governor one year later, it was during his term that Massachusetts experienced a strong immigration, a situation which quickly became a serious problem not only for food supply but because of  tensions arising from deep political and religious differences between newcomers. It was under his governship that Roger Williams was banished from the colony, a decision he later admitted to regret.

May 25, 1635 - John Harvey leaves Jamestown for England after letting John West act as Governor of Virginia till King Charles appoints another one.

June 2, 1635 -  Jacob Walingen arrives at New Amsterdam aboard the Koning David. He comes from the village of Winkel, North Holland, the name of which he keeps to be called Van Winkle. 
Another distinguished passenger is aboard the same boat, Pietro Cesari Alberti who fled Venice while his city is devastated by bubonic plague. He is the first Italian to come to live in America.

Pietro Cesare Alberti (Venice, 1608 – New Amsterdam, 1655) 

He was the son of Andrea Alberti, secretary of the Ducal Treasury of Venice. His family was for more than a century one of the most influential of Italy and enjoyed a huge fortune. Bubonic plague brought to Venice by Dutch troops had seen dying one-third of its population, thereby reducing considerably its commercial and political power. Seeing darkening the future of his city, Pietro decided to go to a new life in New Netherlands.

June 2, 1635 - July, 1635 - Foundation of the town of Wethersfield, Connecticut, 10 miles south of Windsor, established for nearly two years by William Holmes and settlers from Plymouth. 
This site was occupied by a Wangunk village known as Pyquaug.

August 7, 1635 - The Globe captained by Master Blackman leaves London for Virginia with 156 passengers on board. 

For only 1635, they would not be less than 1178 migrants to travel from London to Boston.

Rev. Richard Mather

August 15, 1635 - a hurricane bears down Narragansett Bay and moves northwards to coastal Maine. The Angel Gabriel, a 250 ton- vessel armed with 18 cannons, sinks during the storm while moored at Pemaquid Harbor.

August 15, 1635 - Puritan preacher Richard Mather arrives at Boston during one of the strongest storms of the time. He is so responding to letters from John Cotton and Thomas Hooker urging him to join the pilgrims company.

September 1635 - The General Court of Massachusetts authorizes the founding of Concord. Several families, eager to get more area for pastures, settle there under the leadership of Reverend Peter Bulkley and Major Simon Willard (1605-1676),

Peter Bulkley (Odell,Bedfords. January 31, 1583 - Concord (MA) March 9, 1659) 

Rev. Peter Bulkley

Renowned descending from Plantagenet, he studied at St. John's College, Cambridge where he was graduated at the age 16. He therefore followed in the footsteps of his father, rector of Odell’s parish, but the bishop forbade him to preach because of his non-conformism to the rules of the Church of England. In 1634, he was temporarily excluded from his parish by Archbishop William Laud, what determined him to emigrate to New England. He arrived in 1635 aboard the Susan & Ellen and led the first group of colonists to settle in the woods of Musketaquid, the future city of Concord. Poet keen on Lain, respected by the Indians, he wrote a book of Puritan sermons entitled The Gospel Covenant, published in London in 1646, in which people to come to New England where "they could more than any other people work to make spring happiness "and spoke of the" City on the Hill "dear to John Winthrop.

Roger Williams after banishment

October 9, 1635 -  Dissident Roger Williams who defends the separation of church and state, is banished from the Massachusetts Bay colony.

The Puritans of Boston and its neighborhood no longer tolerated the sermons of a nonconformist like Roger Williams. He was imposed a 6 week-deadline to leave the colony and never return. His banishment meant the break-up of the "City on the Hill" as John Winthrop had imagined and contained the seeds of a latent conflict between the English settlers and the local Indian tribes, touched by Roger Williams’s proposals. Rev. John Cotton considered, however, this ouster as "right in the eyes of God."

October, 1635 - John Steel with 60 pioneers settle on the Connecticut River at a place they name Newtowne (Hartford).

They came from Newtown ( Cambridge) of which John Steel (1610? - 1665) was a representative since 1634. Magistrate native of Essex, Steel had arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 and was part in the founding of Dorchester. The influx of immigrants made compelling searching new cropland to solve the food supply problem become critical in the Boston area. Considered a wise and capable man, John Steel had been chosen to lead a first group of settlers in the Connecticut Valley.

1635 - A census performed in Virginia enumerates 4914 people among whom 532 in the Warrosquyoake County.

November, 1635 - John Winthrop, Jr. lands in command of a detachment at Kievit Hoek, a post located in the mouth of the Connecticut River established in 1632 by the Dutch (kievit = lapwing). He makes remove the arms of the States General of the Netherlands and rename the place Saybrook in tribute to his sponsors William Fiennes, 1st Lord Saye and Sele and Robert Greville, Lord Brooke, both founding members of a company created, originally, to colonize the Island of Providence in the Caribbean.

The colony  of Connecticut will soon take shape further to the union of the towns of Windsor and Wethersfield with Hartford and Saybrook settlements.

John Winthrop, Jr. was back in Boston a month ago with his new wife Elizabeth Reade, after one year spent in England.