Saybrook Colony

Saybrook Colony was a short-lived English colony at the mouth of the Connecticut River in present-day Old Saybrook, Connecticut. It was founded in 1635 by a group of Puritan noblemen, including Lord Saye and Sele and Lord Brooke, who hoped to create a political refuge from the personal rule of Charles I. They based their claim on a deed from Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, granting land from Narragansett Bay to the Pacific Ocean, and named the settlement after its two leading investors. John Winthrop the Younger was appointed first governor but soon left after failing to impose the colony's authority on neighbouring Connecticut settlers. Lion Gardiner remained in charge of the fort and defended it during the Pequot War. George Fenwick arrived as governor in 1639 but concluded that the venture had little future, and in 1644 he negotiated the colony's sale to Connecticut. Saybrook never became a large settlement, but its fort and its brief independent government left a lasting name on the Connecticut shoreline.