Note 135 — III. SIR EDMUND ANDROS.

Chalmers, Political Annals, 297, 298. General History of Connecticut, by a Gentleman of the Province (Rev. S. Peters, D. D.), London, 1781.

Peters’s account is as follows: “They resigned it (the charter) in propria forma, into the hands of Sir Edmund Andros at Hertford, in October, 1687, and were annexed to the Mass. Bay colony, in preference to New York, according to royal promise and their own petition. But the very night of the surrender of it, Samuel Wadsworth of Hertford, with the assistance of a mob, violently broke into the apartments of Sir Edmund, regained, carried off and hid the charter in the hollow of an elm, and in 1689, news arriving of an insurrection and overthrow of Andros at Boston, Robert Treat, who had been elected in 1687, was declared by the mob still to be Governor of Connecticut. He daringly summoned his old Assembly, who being convened, voted the charter to be valid in law, and that it could not be vacated by any power, without the consent of the General Assembly. They then voted, that Samuel Wadsworth should bring forth the charter; which he did in a solemn procession, attended by the High Sheriff, and delivered it to the Governor. The General Assembly voted their thanks to Wadsworth, and twenty shillings as a reward for stealing and hiding their charter in an elm.”