CHAPTER XV.
THE ANGEL OF DELIVERANCE.
Strange that when nature loved to trace As if for God a dwelling place, And every charm of grace hath mixed Within the paradise she fixed, There man, enamoured of distress, Should mar it into wilderness.
-- BYRON.
On the restoration of monarchy in England, in 1660, the Connecticut colonists entertained serious fears regarding the future.

Their sturdy republicanism and independent action in the past might be mortally offensive to the new monarch.

The general assembly of Connecticut, therefore, resolved to make a formal acknowledgment of their alliance to the crown and ask the king for a charter.

A petition was accordingly framed and signed in May, 1661, and Governor John Winthrop bore it to England.

He was a son of Winthrop of Massachusetts, and was a man of rare attainments and courtly manners.