The Connecticut River flows into Long Island Sound thirty-three miles
east of New Haven at Saybrook Point. Between is the venerable village
of Guilford, where Fitz Greene Halleck was born, and where the three
regicides were also for some time hidden. Out in front is the bold and
picturesque Sachem's Head, which got its name from a tragedy of the
Pequot War in 1637. The Mohican chief Uncas pursued a Pequot warrior
out on this point, and shooting him, put his head in the fork of an
oak tree, where it remained many years. The group of Thimble Islands
are off shore, having been repeatedly dug over by deluded individuals
searching for the buried treasures of Captain Kidd. Saybrook Point was
the place of earliest settlement in Connecticut. The first English
patent for lands on these coasts was granted to Lord Saye and Seal and
Lord Brooke, and the colony was given their double name. The original
settlement was planned with great care, as it was expected to become
the home of noted men, and a fort was built on an isolated hill at the
river's mouth. According to the British historian, it was to Saybrook
that Cromwell, Pym, Hampden and Haselrig, with their party of
malcontents, intended to emigrate when they were stopped by the order
of King Charles I. Had this migration been made, it might have greatly
changed the subsequent momentous events in England ending with the
execution of that king. A little westward of the old colonial fort
guarding the river entrance, a public square was laid out, where,
according to the town plan, their houses were to have been built. The
first Yale College at Saybrook was a narrow one-story house eighty
feet long, and looking much like a ropewalk, which was afterwards
removed, with the college, to New Haven. Its founders were pious men,
who in 1708 drew up the celebrated "Saybrook Platform," with a
declaration that "the churches must have a public profession of faith,
agreeable to which the instruction of the college shall be conducted."
The ancient fort at Saybrook, built by Plymouth people in 1635, stood
upon a steep and solitary knoll near the Connecticut River, which in
1872 was carried off bodily by a railroad to make embankments across
the adjacent lowlands. The earliest governor of the colony came out in
1636, Colonel Fenwick, afterwards one of the regicide judges. Old
Saybrook is now a quiet village, chiefly spread along one handsome
wide street, canopied over by the arching branches of its stately
elms, under which the distant vista view looks almost like a scene
through a veritable foliage tunnel. The broad Connecticut flows in
front, back and forth with the tide from the Sound, its restfulness in
keeping with the ancient town, as yet uninvaded by business bustle or
manufacturing energy. The Saybrook fort repelled the Pequots in 1637;
and afterwards, in the Connecticut boundary disputes with the Dutch at
New York, the latter, according to the veracious chronicler, marched
against it "brimful of wrath and cabbage," but seeing it would be
stoutly defended, he adds that "they thought best to desist before
attacking." The British captured it in 1814, and ascending the river
in a sudden raid, destroyed a large number of vessels.