In November, 1635, he erected at the mouth of the river a fort called after Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brooke--Saybrook--which in the spring of 1636 he placed under the command of Lyon Gardiner, an expert military engineer, who had seen much service in the Netherlands.[57] Hardly had the English mounted two cannon on their slight fortification when a Dutch vessel sent from New Amsterdam on a sudden errand arrived in the river.

Finding themselves anticipated, the Dutch returned home, and the scheme of cutting off the English settlements on the upper Connecticut from the rest of New England was frustrated.[58] For a year the towns on the Connecticut, including Springfield, were governed by a commission issued by the general court of Massachusetts, in concert with John Winthrop, Jr., as a representative of the patentees.[59] When the year expired the commission was not renewed, but a general court representing the three towns of Massachusetts and consisting of six assistants and nine delegates, three for each town, was held at Hartford in May, 1637.

They became from this time a self-governing community under the name of Connecticut, and the union happened just in time to be of much service in repelling a great danger.
[Footnote 1: Clarke, _Ill Newes from New England_ (Mass.Hist.

Soc., _Collections_, 4th series, II., 1-113).] [Footnote 2: _R.I.Col.

Records_, I., 52.] [Footnote 3: _R.I.Col.