the formerly persecuted Quakers. During his tenure in 1674–75 the first public school was established and in 1680 the first Lieutenant-Governor was elected. In 1675 he was elected General-in-Chief of the entire military forces of the United Colonies, being the first native-born general. In 1675 the General Court ordered that four halberdiers (possibly as armed guards) should attend the governor and magistrates at elections and two during court sessions. The government maintained a state of readiness that was previously unknown in the colony. On September 9, 1675 he signed a Declaration of War made by the commissioners against the Indian leader known as King Philip. King Philip's War – cause and effect King Philip's War, also known variously as "Metacomet's War or Rebellion" was between various Indian groups in New England and English colonists and their Indian allies and lasted between 1675–1678. King Philip was killed by a Puritan militia company headed by Major Benjamin Church on August 12, 1676. On June 20, 1675 natives attacked colonial homesteads and war came to New England. King Philip (aka Metacomet) and Governor Winslow had allowed an acrimonious situation to get out of hand and the attack and the violence that followed surprised everyone – English and Indian alike. Edward Winslow had been a Pilgrim leader who made peace with the native peoples and treated them honorably. But his son Josiah, who became the colony's military commander about 1659, did not have a good relations with the Indians, and had a different view of them than his father did. Eventually the colonials no longer held the opinion, as they had for many years, of needing the help of the Indians for their survival. Many younger colonists especially began to see the Indians as an impediment to the development of the lands that they largely now saw as their own. King Philip began his relationship with the English with the best interests of all at heart, but greed played a part in his thinking and he eventually was involved in a large scale transfer of native lands to the colonists, helped by a questionable character, Leiden-born Thomas Willet, who wrongly portrayed himself a friend to all parties. From the 1650s to 1665–75, the sale of Indian lands to the colonists had increased greatly, from what was fourteen Indian land deeds registered in Plymouth court in the 1650s to a total of seventy-six deeds recorded