John Winthrop, Jr., and the Narragansett Country

W X T HEN Governor John Winthrop, Jr., obtained a royal charter for Connecticut in i662, he not only secured his colony's legal status but also extensive boundary limits which impinged on the territory of all the neighboring plantations. No sooner had the charter passed the seals than the Connecticut leaders began to claim these boundaries, thereby involving themselves in simultaneous embranglements with New Haven, Rhode Island, and New Netherland. The success of the Connecticut government in annexing the New Haven colony has been well described.' Less has been said, however, about its near success in appropriating large parts of Rhode Island and New Netherland. The story of Connecticut's effort to seize the Narragansett Country from Rhode Island is particularly instructive because of the light it sheds on Winthrop's negotiations in England for the Connecticut charter and on his heated. rivalry with John Clarke, the Rhode Island agent. Previous commentators have generally supposed that Winthrop himself, being a notably highminded, tolerant, and conciliatory person, was only the unwitting handmaiden, so to speak, of Connecticut's expansionist policy.2 But when the evidence is pieced together, we must conclude that because of his appetite for real estate, Winthrop was chiefly responsible for starting the arid quarrel between the two colonies over the Narragansett Country-the most confused, petty, and time-consuming boundary dispute in all New England history. The Narragansett Country was a tract of roughly four hundred square