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But the continuance in the revised statutes of the Saybrook Platform as the legalized constitution of the "Presbyterian, Congregational or Consociated Church," and the almost total absence of any provision for exempting Congregational Separatists from the taxes levied in its behalf, operated, notwithstanding the many acts of conciliation between these two types of churches, to revive at times the milder forms of persecution.
Such an act immediately followed the presentation of the report by the committee, whom the Saybrook convention, in accordance with the Court's previous command, sent to the Assembly. Having examined the Platform, the Legislature declared its strong approval of such a happy agreement, and in October, 1708, enacted that
The English named it Saybrook, in honor of lords Say and Brook, who were regarded as the leading English proprietors. Early the next year the Massachusetts people established a colony at Agawam, now Springfield. Thus, step by step, the English encroached upon the Dutch, until nearly the whole valley of the Connecticut was wrested from them.
Finding the fort at Saybrook so well defended, the Pequots fell upon the settlement at Wethersfield, killed a number of men working in the fields, and carried off two young girls.
In the month that witnessed the expulsion of the Clevelands, the minority of the original First Church voted that they were "The Church of Canterbury," and that those who had gone forth from among them in the January of the preceding year, 1743, as Congregationalists after the Cambridge Platform, had abrogated that of Saybrook.
The unjust laws of 1742-43 and of the following years were never formally repealed, but were quietly dropped out of the revision of the laws issued in 1750. Thenceforth the people began to tolerate variety in religious opinions with better grace, and the dominant authoritative rule of the Saybrook Platform began to wane, though for twenty years more it strove to assert its power.
It so happened that toleration was granted to the Separatists at the beginning of the Revolutionary struggle, and that the abrogation of the Saybrook Platform followed close upon its victorious end. Many influences, both religious and secular, had their part in bringing about these progressive steps toward religious freedom, toward full and free liberty of conscience.
Thomas Leffingwell, one of the settlers at Saybrook, "an enterprizing, bold man, loaded a canoe with beef, corn, and peas, and under cover of night paddled from Saybrook" around into the mouth of the Thames, or Pequot, River and succeeded in getting the provisions into the fort without the knowledge of the Narragansetts.
In dismay, they set fire to the royal fortress and to all the adjacent wigwams, and fled into the fastnesses of the forest. Captain Mason placed his wounded on board the vessels, obtained a supply of food and a slight re-enforcement, and then commenced his march for the fort at Saybrook, which was about twenty miles distant.
Before he would accept him as a guide, Lieutenant Lion Gardiner, commander of the fort at Saybrook, said to him, "You say you will help Captain Mason, but I will first see it; therefore send twenty men to Bass River, for there went six Indians there in a canoe, fetch them, dead or alive; and you shall go with Mason or else you shall not." Uncas went off with his men and found these Indians.
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