daughter.  Soon after the arrival of these gentlemen, a royal order for their arrest was sent to Boston.  If they had been arrested and sent back to England, their severed heads would soon have been placed over Temple Bar.  The king’s detectives hotly pursued them through the woodland paths of New England, and they would soon have been taken but for the aid they got from the people.  Many are the stories of their hairbreadth escapes.  Sometimes they took refuge in a cave on a mountain near New Haven, sometimes they hid in friendly cellars; and once, being hard put to it, they skulked under a wooden bridge, while their pursuers on horseback galloped by overhead.  After lurking about New Haven and Milford for two or three years, on hearing of the expected arrival of Colonel Nichols and his commission, they sought a more secluded hiding-place near Hadley, a village lately settled far up the Connecticut river, within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.  Here the avengers lost the trail, the pursuit was abandoned, and the weary regicides were presently forgotten.  The people of New Haven had been especially zealous in shielding the fugitives.  Mr. Davenport had not only harboured them in his own house, but on the Sabbath before their expected arrival he had preached a very bold sermon, openly advising his people to aid and comfort them as far as possible. [28] The colony, moreover, did not officially recognize the restoration of Charles II. to the throne until that event had been commonly known in New England for more than a year.  For these reasons the wrath of the king was specially roused against New Haven, when circumstances combined to enable him at once to punish this disloyal colony and deal a blow at the Confederacy.  We have seen that in restricting the suffrage to church members New Haven had followed the example of Massachusetts, but Connecticut had not; and at this time there was warm controversy between the two younger colonies as to the wisdom Of such a policy.  As yet none of the colonies save Massachusetts had obtained a charter, and Connecticut was naturally anxious to obtain one.  Whether through a complaisant spirit connected with this desire, or through mere accident, Connecticut had been prompt in acknowledging the restoration of Charles II.; and in August, 1661, she dispatched the younger Winthrop to England to apply for a charter.  Winthrop was a man of winning address and of wide culture.  His scientific tastes were a passport to the favour of the king at a time when the Royal Society was being founded, of which Winthrop himself was soon chosen a fellow.  In every way the occasion was an auspicious one.  The king looked upon the rise of the New England Confederacy with unfriendly eyes.  Massachusetts was as yet the only member of the league that was really troublesome; and there seemed to be no easier way to weaken her than to raise up a rival power by her side, and extend to it such privileges as might awaken her jealousy.  All the more would such a policy be likely to succeed if accompanied by measures of which Massachusetts must necessarily disapprove, and the suppression of New Haven would be such a measure. [Sidenote:  New Haven annexed to Connecticut]