1645 - Protestants ransack Maryland

Map of Maryland

February, 1645 - the English and the Dutch launch a night-attack against the Siwanoy and Tankiteke Indians near Greenwich, Connecticut. Between 500 and 700 Wappinger warriors are allegedly killed during this massacre. 

A Thanksgiving will be observed further to what would be considered as the extermination of the Siwanoy.

February 14, 1645 - left Virginia aboard the ship Reformation, Richard Ingle and a group of Protestants armed with letters of marque from the English Parliament, succeed in seizing St Mary's City, capital of the governor of Maryland. Overthrown, Leonard Calvert is informed of his defeat in Virginia where he is staying at the same moment.

Several buildings in the city were destroyed and acting Governor Giles Brent who was sailing in the Bay aboard the Dutch ship "Der Spiegel" was made prisoner while the boat was looted. On his side, Captain Thomas Cornwallis, in command of defending the city, although he had for many years good relationship with Richard Ingle, made the bitter acknowledgement of his failure and had rather returning definitively in England where he died in 1675.

Ingle took control of the colony and his men shared the properties of the rich Catholic settlers claiming for this he had a power to seize from the new government. As settlers especially considered him as a pirate, he retaliated by imprisoning two Jesuits, Father Thomas Coley and Andrew White before expelling them to England in chains. 
Aware of the damage he had just caused, Richard Ingle planned to go back to England with most possible catholic priests to justify before the Parliament the existence of a papist plot so as to clear himself.

February, 1645 - William Claiborne is sent by the government of Virginia to deal with Rappahanocks hostile to Powhatan Chief Opechancanough, in hopes that they put into the service of the colony to fight against Pamunkey.

Sir William Berkeley (1605-1677)
Governor of Virginia

February 27th, 1645 -  Colonial Secretary William Kemp informs the governor of Virginia William Berkeley that reprisals against the Indians have borne fruit: villages were burned as well as crops, men have been killed or captured.

Governor of Maryland Leonard Calvert attended the settlers going up the Chickahominy River with his boat and attacking the Indians in their own territory.

Lack of resources and ammunitions, the Assembly decided to build three small forts in strategic border locations: Fort Charles by the James River Falls, Fort James on the Chickahominy River and Fort Royal along the Pamunkey River where it was planned to garrison armed men due to the animosity of the local tribe. A fourth fort named Fort Henry set up near the falls of the Appomatox will be added to the list.

April 2, 1645 - Richard Ingle sets sail for England aboard the Reformation with his booty and a load of tobacco. He carries with him former governor Giles Brent, secretary of the colony John Lewgar and both Jesuit fathers.

Arrived at London in June, Ingle did not find the expected support from the Parliamentarians. He met on the contrary with Thomas Cornwallis, just back  in England, who demanded him the repayment of the destruction of his house in St Mary’s City. The Court showed no sympathy towards Ingle and refused to take his hostages as prisoners. He tried to defend himself by suing, submiting that he had acted only in the interests of the Parliament.
The procedure was going to last 2 years and Ingle was finally condemned to pay off the owners of the Spiegel and to compensate all his victims. Having lost everything, he was never able to return to America.

April 13, 1645 - John Haynes is appointed Governor of Connecticut. It is the third time he is at the head of the colony.

May, 14, on 1645 - Always avid to avenge the murder of their great Sachem Miantonomo, an army of Narragansetts led by chiefs Pessacus and Canonicus, invades the Mohegan territory. After a day of battle, both sides count many casualties.

June, 1645 - William Bradford becomes the new governor of Plymouth.
The colony stops paying off its debts to its last creditor, John Beauchamp for a 291-£ amount paid in lands.

June, 1645 - Back in Virginia, Governor William Berkeley sends a troop to  capture old Powhatan leader Opechancanough. This one is taken prisoner and locked up in Jamestown prison. The governor of Virginia promises in return to the Indians to limit the expansion of the settlers westward.

June, 1645 - Thomas Dudley is chosen as governor of Massachusetts. He already held this position in 1634 and 1640.

He was 69 years old but had remarried the previous year with Catherine Drighton after the death of his first wife, a delayed union of which of which he was nevertheless going to have three children.

July, 1645 - the United Colonies of New England send a company of 300 soldiers to face the Narragansett.

After their raid on Mohegan territory , the Narragansetts did not hide that they would only drop the weapons after eliminating Uncas, the responsible of the death of Miantonomo a year before. They tried for it to rally the neighboring tribes but these proved reluctant and Ninigret, the Niantic sachem having displayed his neutrality, it returned to the English commissioners to threaten to  take action by mobilizing troops, 190 men from Massachusetts, 40 from Plymouth and Connecticut and 30 from New Haven.

August 9, 1645 - the Dutch and the Wappinger who lost for their part 2600 people of their tribe, start peace talks through the Mohawks. These will be properly rewarded for their services.

New England and New Nertherland in the 1640's

August, 1645 - Governor William Berkeley orders that the Pamunkey warriors who were captured with their chief Opechancanough are led and left on Western Island (today Tangier in the Chesapeake Bay)

August 3, 1645 - the  United Colonies of New England sign in Boston a peace treaty with the Narragansetts represented by Chief Canonicus and his son Mixanno.

The Narragansetts looked since the end of the Pequot war to spread their hegemony on the Indian tribes of the region and to take revenge on the Mohawk leader Uncas, responsible for the execution of sachem Miantonomo. But Roger Williams of Providence was also warned that they were hatching a plot against the United Colonies. A 300-men army was raised to respond to possible hostilities. The importance of these provisions had the effect of scaring the Indians who had no other choice than to sign a an humiliating peace treaty with the colonies and agreed to the proposed conditions including that of leaving in a perpetual peace with the English people and their allies.

August, 1645 - Reverend John Eliot founds the Roxbury Latin School thanks to the donations of 54 residents of the city who sign its original charter.

This independent school intended for boys had for ambition to teach the younger basic materials and to familiarize the older with Latin in preparation for Harvard College.

August 30, 1645 - the Indians and the Dutch sign a peace treaty in New Amsterdam. Only a hundred Europeans have stayed in the city.

The treaty subjected Wappinger to Mahican and demanded Metoac that they also pay them a yearly tribute in wampum. The leaders of the Indian tribes smoked the peace pipe on the Bowling Green of New Amsterdam.

While the Mahican had to pay a tribute to Mohawk, some Metoac took refuge among the Iroquois who had indirectly taken advantage of this war. Without losing one of their warriors in a war to which they were not involved, Mohawk and Mahican seized the wampum trade in the lower Hudson Valley. After the war, the Mahican strengthened their population by assimilating surviving Wappinger. However, several of the tribes Wappinger, from now on subjects to Mahican having gone out of the war without damage, rather than claiming tribute to Metoac, like that had been planned, Mahican turned to them.

October, 1645 -  imprisoned since a few months in Jamestown, Powhatan chief Opechancanough is loosely murdered by one of his captors.

Oliver Cromwell (by Samuel Cooper)

1645 – the Susquehannock who, after beating the English, had to give up a part of their trade, cease hostilities and sign a peace treaty with the government of  Maryland.

November 22, 1645 - Because of his support to King Charles 1, Sir Robert Heath sees seizing all his possessions by the Parliament of London, including the province of Carolana (current Carolines) granted to him by a charter dated 1629.

Heath fled to France where he was to die in 1649, the same year when the Cromwellian Round Heads made behead King Charles 1 and proclaimed the republic. He had, anyway, never held his commitments to populate this new colony and expand trade there. For his part, Cromwell, who would be interested in the development of the northeast coast of America never paid any attention on Caroline's territory.

There was indeed a plan devised by the Vassalls, a powerful puritan family, which would allowed a group of Huguenots refugees to set up but it failed. Thereafter, Sir Robert Heath apparently delegated his interests in the province to Samuel Vassall then to Sir Richard Grenville’s heirs (a close friend of Sir Walter Raleigh once involved in the aborted project of colonization of  Roanoke Island, 1585). According to another report, it was to Lord Maltravers, the heir to the Earl of Arundel, that Heath assigned his rights which reverted then to the Duke of Norfolk and his family. Both land claims remained however rather vague because neither of the parties ever had real settlement projects.

December 19, 1645 - Lady Deborah Moody is granted by Director General Willem Kieft a land South of present Booklyn. She establishes the town of Gravesend and becomes the first woman in the history of the New World to receive a charter of this kind.

Lady Deborah Moody (1586 - 1659?) -  the daughter of Walter and Deborah Dunch and the grand-daughter of Archbishop of Durham James Pilkington, she had married Sir Henry Moody, a big landowner of Wiltshire knighted under King James what had been worth to her being called Lady Deborah. Her husband having died prematurely in 1629, she was attracted by the anabaptist Protestants but the religious persecutions which raged then in England forced her to emigrate to New England in 1639 with the members of her congregation of which William Thorne. These were coldly welcomed by the Puritans who ran the colony and although Lady Deborah has well known John Winthrop and was the friend of his son John Winthrop, Jr. when they still lived in England, she discovered that the Massachusetts was a land where reigned the intolerance. In July 1643, John Winthrop wrote in his diary: "Lady Moody, a wise woman whose good religious consciousness was misled by those who refuse baptism to children was excluded from Church of Salem to which she belonged and as she persisted and in order to avoid further trouble, she went among the Dutch. She was accordingly excommunicated but despite her religious beliefs, she remains a valuable woman. "
Lady Moody decided to organize a new community in the New Netherland colony and settled on Long Island in 1643. She was expelled in September by the Mahican and found refuge at the Dutch people in the fort of New Amersfoort.
Gravesend was the first city with orthogonal plan of the New World, streets of which crossed all in right angle, divided into 28 districts among which each included a prize for a plantation, a batch for a village and equipped with all the facilities for a life in community.

William Thorne (Dorchester? 1617-1664?)
This religious activist who was a member of the the anabaptist community had arrived in New England by 1635, 4 years before Lady Deborah Moody. On May 2nd, 1638, he had become a free man of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, what granted him the voting right. He was seduced by the anabaptist ideas when he met Lady Moody and her friends arrived at Lynn in 1639.
On June 29th, 1641, Thorne served on a jury during a trial to Salem intended to judge members of the family of Anne Hutchinson but he was soon accused of helping prisoners to escape and he was sentenced in his turn. Pursued in 1643, he left Massachusetts together with Lady Moody for Long Island and the colony of New Netherlands.

Johan Printz (1591-1663)
Governor of New Sweden

December 25th, 1645 - through its Committee for the Foreign Plantations, the English Parliament signs an order to place the province of Maryland under the supervision of Protestants.

December, 1645 - An inventory conducted further to a fire in the property of New Sweden Governor Johan Printz in Tinicum Island, on the shores of the Delaware River, reveals that his personal stocks are larger than those of the Company he represents.

As the sale of fire arms and ammunition to the Indians was strictly prohibited, Governor Printz took care to provide them personally. His greed was such that he made on the other hand and for his own account big fur and tobacco business with English and Dutch merchants. The inventory made after loss of his property revealed a real fortune in gems, gold, silver and other values gathered in less than two years without his salary had been increased by the Company.

Whereas Printz swindled his employers, he showed merciless to settlers who, very often in distress and poverty came to break the rules. Knut Persson, a sick and desperate farmer had so tried to sell his gun to Indians through a friend. The affair could not have been done because the Indians had succeeded in stealing it and as Persson had died meanwhile, Printz required that his friend was sentenced to three-month hard labor in his service despite the opinion of the jury. Such examples were unfortunately many.

Johan Printz inspecting a gift of maze from Lenape Natives

Governor Printz grew rich at the expense of the settlers’ labor. The island of Tinicum had been offered to him as a present from Queen Christina of Sweden and he had been built a palace by settlers without them being paid. And when they were allowed to fit out their farm and make buildings for their own use, the governor seized them for the needs of his own plantations. When his palace, the Printz Hall was destroyed by fire, he rebuilt the more sumptuous by settlers who had to work gracefully on his plantations before they can take care of their own farm.

1645 - The intellectual activity in New England is marked by the publication of several books of reflection on religion and politics;
After living for three years in exile in Maine, Rev. John Wheelwright banished by the General Court of Massachusetts after supporting Anne Hutchinson, had just been restored in his rights by governor John Winthrop. He publishes a book entitled Mercurius Americanus in which he defends the positions of his sister-in-law Anne Hutchinson during the antinomian controversy.

John Winthrop publishes two books : « On Liberty” which discusses political liberties demanded by the citizens when they are threatened by the magistrates and A Declaration of Former Passages and Proceedings Betwixt the English and the Narragansets, a pamphlet expressing his position on the fact that the settlers should soon inflict a punishment on Narragansett for their war against the Mohegan.
In The Way of the Churches of Christ in New-England, one of his most important works, Minister and tribune John Cotton offers a description and scale advocacy for the government of " the Congregational Church” and the choice made by the new England for a close cooperation between church and state.

In his sermon written for the church of Cambridge (MA) and entitled New England's Lamentation for Old England's Present Errours, Thomas Shepard (1605-1649) highlights his non-compliance and his contribution to the theological debate of his time.
Roger Williams publishes finally " Christenings make not Christian ", a book involved in controversy against the Puritan Church of New England which highlights his talent for rethoric and the ideas which led him to be banished from Massachusetts.