John Winthrop the Younger in the context of "Saybrook Colony"

The Saybrook Colony was a short-lived English colony established in New England in 1635 at the mouth of the Connecticut River in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Saybrook was founded by a group of Puritan noblemen as a potential political refuge from the personal rule of Charles I. They claimed possession of the land via a deed of conveyance from Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, which granted the colony the land from the Narragansett Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Saybrook was named in honor of two of its primary investors: Lord Saye and Sele and Lord Brooke. John Winthrop the Younger was contracted as the colony's first governor, but he quickly left Saybrook after failing to enforce its authority over Connecticut's settlers. Lion Gardiner was left in charge of Saybrook's considerable fort when Winthrop left, defending it when it was besieged during the Pequot War. Governor George Fenwick arrived in the colony in 1639, but he quickly saw it as a lost cause. Fenwick negotiated the colony's sale to Connecticut in 1644 after interest in colonization dried up due to the investors' involvement in the English Civil War. The colony's founding document was the Warwick Patent, which was used to justify the existence of the Connecticut Colony, as Connecticut did not get a formal charter until 1662.