Note 329 — Chapter X

During the year 1635 we find the name of John Hampden joined with those of six other gentlemen of family and fortune, who united with the Lords Say and Brooke in making a purchase from the Earl of Warwick of an extensive grant of land in a wide wilderness then called Virginia, but which now forms a part of the State of Connecticut. That these transatlantic possessions were designed by the associates ultimately, or under certain contingencies, to serve as an asylum to themselves and a home to their posterity, there is no room to doubt; but it is evident that nothing short of circumstances constituting a moral necessity would have urged persons of their rank, fortunes, and habits of life to encounter the perils, privations, and hardships attendant upon the pioneers of civilization in that inhospitable clime. Accordingly, they for the present contented themselves with sending out an agent to take possession of these territories and to build a fort. This was done, and the town called Saybrook, from the united names of the two noble proprietors, still preserves the memory of the enterprise. They finally abandoned the whole design, and sold the land in 1636, probably.—Miss Aikin's Life of Charles I., p. 471. Bancroft, vol. i., p. 384.