[Sidenote: The "Fundamental Orders of Connecticut" (1639).]
The first written constitution known to history was that by which the
republic of Connecticut was organized in 1639. At first the affairs
of the Connecticut settlements had been directed by a commission
appointed by the General Court of Massachusetts, but on the 14th of
January, 1639, all the freemen of the three river towns--Windsor,
Hartford, and Wethersfield--assembled at Hartford, and drew up a
written constitution, consisting of eleven articles, in which the
frame of government then and there adopted was distinctly described.
This document, known as the "Fundamental Orders of Connecticut",
created the government under which the people of Connecticut lived for
nearly two centuries before they deemed it necessary to amend it. The
charter granted to Connecticut by Charles II. in 1662 was simply a
royal recognition of the government actually in operation since the
adoption of the Fundamental Orders.
[Sidenote: Germinal development of the colonial charter toward the
modern state constitution.]
In those colonies which had charters these documents served, to a
certain extent, the purposes of a written constitution.
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