Fundamental Orders of Connecticut: Thomas Hooker's Kingless Constitution

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In 1634 Puritans frustrated by Massachusetts Bay, where only church members could vote and a small circle of ministers and magistrates held power, won permission to settle Windsor, Wethersfield and Hartford on the Connecticut River. In May 1638 the Reverend Thomas Hooker preached that the choice of leaders belongs to the people by God's allowance and that the people may set limits on their power. With the Massachusetts commission led by Roger Ludlow expired, Ludlow, John Haynes, John Mason and Thomas Welles drafted the Fundamental Orders in January 1639, in secret and without a record of debate, while Charles I was distracted at home.

The document created a general court with supreme authority, secret paper ballots and no land requirement to vote, and it never mentioned the king. Only freemen admitted by the magistrates could vote for governor, an oath of fidelity screened out dissenters and sins such as profanity were punished as crimes. In 1662 John Winthrop Jr. won a royal charter from Charles II that ratified the existing system, and in the 1680s colonists hid it from Edmund Andros in the Charter Oak. Historians still debate the first written constitution title against the Mayflower Compact and the 1619 Bohemian Confederacy.

Inhabitants could vote in town meetings, but only freemen could vote for the governor.
Voters ignored their own one-term limit to reelect John Winthrop Jr. repeatedly.
The orders barred officials in Hartford from interfering in local town laws.
Historian John Fiske promoted the orders as the first written constitution in the Western world.
Researcher Karolina Adamova argues the Bohemian Confederacy's 1619 articles came first.

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