ENGLISH INDEPENDENCY:-IV. THE NEW ENGLAND EMIGRATION, AND CHURCH OF NEW ENGLAND (1620-1640).

Not so! Populous Holland, with its towns and canals, was still at hand; but there was now another and wider refuge for Separatists, and for persecuted opinions of all sorts, in the world beyond the Atlantic.

"Why do you not take yourselves off to Virginia?" had been the taunt to the more troublesome English Puritans almost from the beginning of the reign of James, when much of the coastline of the present United States was still vaguely known by the name of Virginia, originally given to it by Raleigh. Some Puritans had actually been among the first settlers in this Virginia in 1608, and more would have gone if they had not been stopped by Bancroft. Not till about 1617, by which time what had been called "North Virginia' had begun to acquire the special name of NEW ENGLAND, does the notion of a colonization of those parts by Puritans in the mass appear to have dawned fully on any mind. It dawned first among the English Independents in exile in Holland, and chiefly among those of Robinson's congregation in Leyden. Although they had prospered in Holland, or at least managed to live there, they felt it "grievous to live from under the protection of the State of England;" they could not bear the thought of "losing their language and their name of English;" they disliked the laxness of the Dutch in the matter of the Sabbath, and feared for the morals of their children in consequence; and they concluded that, " if God would be pleased to discover some place unto them, though in America," they might by going thither "more glorify God, do more good to "their country, better provide for their posterity, and live to be more refreshed by their labours, than ever they could do in Holland, where they were." Accordingly, after a year or two of preparation, and negotiation with the English Government, there was founded the famous first colony of New England, known as The Settlement of New Plymouth (1620). The original settlers of this colony, the first Pilgrim Fathers of America,

were an express detachment of Independents from Holland, with others from England, organized by Robinson. They were sent across the Atlantic, as we have seen (Vol. I. 397, 380), with his blessing, and with his parting instructions for the preservation of their Independency. He would have gone with them himself, but for fear that the English Government would in that case have drawn back and prevented the emigration at the last moment. It was his intention, however, to follow when he could, and cast in his lot with the infant colony. That intention never took effect, and Robinson died in Holland while the colony was still struggling in its beginnings. But the men who superintended those beginnings were Robinson's emissaries, and imbued with his spirit; and, when the news of his death reached the colony in the fifth year of its existence, just as prosperity was beginning to reward the hardships and toil of the four preceding years, those who had so recently parted from him gathered together in their rude dwellings to speak of him, and there was sorrow that the one man of all the world to whom the rising society owed its origin, and whom it had longed most to welcome into the midst of it, had died without beholding the work of his hands. His chief substitute in the colony, and long its leading teacher, was William Brewster, a man somewhat older than Robinson, originally one of the English Separatists in Nottinghamshire, and afterwards a venerated elder in Robinson's church in Leyden, where he carried on also the business of a printer. He had studied at Cambridge University, and had been in employment about the English court in his youth.

From the landing of Robinson's first litt'e company of 102 emigrants from Holland and England on the American coast (Nov. 1620) to the meeting of the Long Parliament (Nov. 1640) was a period of exactly twenty years. During those twenty years, and especially after Laud's ascendancy in Church and State had made the condition of the Puritans in England

1 Hanbury's Memorials of Independents, I. 389-403 (where there is a list of the forty-one first adult male colonists); Palfrey's History of New

England, Vol. I. (1859) pp. 145-172, and pp. 224-5; Fletcher's Hist. of Independency, III. 78, 79.

more and more precarious, the emigration had gone on apace. Laud, indeed, did all he could to frustrate it, and to keep the Puritans at home to be dealt with, just as he tried, through the Dutch Government, to reach and control the English Separatists in Holland. Still, year after year, companies of English Puritans contrived to ship themselves off for the New World, intermingled with detachments of the residuary exiles in Holland, who had learnt to think of America as a more desirable refuge. In a satirical ballad of the year 1639 the advantages of New England are thus set forth by an English Puritan supposed to be addressing his neighbours :My brethren all, attend ye, And list to my relation; This is the day, mark what I say, Tends to your renovation.

Stay not among the wicked,

Lest that here with them you perish;

But let us to New England go,

And the Pagan people cherish.

Then for Truth's sake come along, come along;
Leave this place of superstition :
Wer't not for we that Brethren be,
You would sink into perdition.

There you may teach our hymns too
Without the law's controlment;
We need not fear the Bishops there,
Nor spiritual courts' enrolment.
The surplice shall not fright us,
Nay, nor superstition's blindness;
Nor scandals rise when we disguise,
And our sisters kiss in kindness.

Then for Truth's sake come along, &c.

For company I fear not :

There goes my cousin Hannah;

And Reuben so persuades to go
My cousin Joyce, Susanna,

With Abigail and Faithful;

And Ruth no doubt will come after ;
And Sarah kind won't stay behind,
My own cousin Constance' daughter.

Then for Truth's sake come along, &c.1

1 Quoted in Hanbury's Memorials (II. 41) from "The Rump; or, an Exact Collection of the choicest Poems and

Songs relating to the late times: By the most eminent Wits, from anno 1639 to anno 1661;" published 1662.

This is a ribald representation of what was a most serious and momentous fact. In the twenty years under notice, it is calculated, about 300 ships, carrying 4,000 families, at a cost of 200,000l., had gone over from English and Dutch ports, so that in 1640 the total immigrant population of New England consisted of 21,000 or 22,000 persons. By that time this sturdy little population had spread itself, in rough towns and villages, mostly with names taken from the dear English towns at home, along its selected portion of the American coast, seized or partly bought from the native Indians. It had also, in some consistency with the charters under which it had come out, but partly also on the spur of will and convenience, organised itself territorially into four distinct bodies-politic called Colonies, with one or two outlying settlements, not recognised yet as Colonies, but called only Plantations. It may be well to present to the eye a kind of wordmap of the infant New England that had thus formed itself, with a digest of historical particulars to the year 1640:

THE FOUR COLONIES.

I. NEW PLYMOUTH, founded 1620.-This colony, schemed by Robinson of Leyden, and founded by his emissaries and their associates from England, remained of small dimensions. Probably not more than 3,000 souls out of the total of 22,000 in New England belonged to it, aggregated chiefly in the original town of PLYMOUTH, but with other incipient townships in the neighbourhood, such as Duxbury and Marshfield. The constitution of the colony was democratic, i.e. the ultimate power was in the whole body of the admitted freemen of the colony, meeting periodically and determining matters by a majority of votes; the right to admit new-comers to the franchise, however, resting with those already in possession of it. The executive was in the hands of a Governor, with Assistants, elected annually by the freemen. The following is the list of the Governors of the colony from its commencement till 1640:- John Carver, one of Robinson's deacons at Leyden (1620-21); William Bradford, also one of Robinson's flock, and originally from Scrooby in Nottinghamshire (1621-32); Edward Winslow (1633); Thomas Prince (1634); William Bradford again (1635); Edward Winslow again (1636); William Bradford again (1637); Thomas Prince again (1638); William Bradford again (1639-43). The governorship, it will be noted, often came back to the same hands, and Bradford's tenures of it were long, as well as frequent.

II. MASSACHUSETTS, or MASSACHUSETTS BAY, founded 1629.-The original founders of this colony, immediately north of that of New Plymouth (both colonies lying within what is now the State of Massachusetts), were a mixed body of emigrants from England, but chiefly Puritans of the moderate or Presbyterian type, as distinct from the Separatists. Mr. John White, minister of Dorchester, known among the Puritans as "Patriarch White," had taken much interest in the foundation. The colony, reinforced by fresh arrivals, had by the year 1640 much outstripped that of New Plymouth in size, and may have included as many as 1,4000 souls out of the total of 22,000 constituting New England. The original settlement of the colony had been Salem; but, as the colonists increased and ranged out in quest of sites, some score of other townships had been formed, including Boston, Cambridge, Lynn, Concord, Ipswich, Watertown, Charlestown, Hingham, Dorchester, and Roxbury. Of all the towns of the colony BOSTON had become distinctly the capital, or seat of government. That government was on very much the same popular or democratic model as had been adopted in New Plymouth; with this important difference, that in Massachusetts Church-membership was a condition of the franchise. The executive was in the hands of Governors, Deputy-Governors, and Assistants, elected annually; and the following is the series of the earliest Governors :-John Winthrop the elder, a Suffolk man of old family, educated at Cambridge, and trained for the law (1629-33); Thomas Dudley (1634); John Haynes (1635); Henry Vane the younger (1636); John Winthrop again (1637-39); Thomas Dudley again (1640). Winthrop was the great man in the formation of Massachusetts, though Vane's brief visit to the colony and his year's governorship are worthy of recollection.

III. CONNECTICUT RIVER.-This colony, considerably to the south and west of Massachusetts and New Plymouth, was the result of a movement out of these colonies, in search of richer lands, which had begun about 1635. There had been much fighting with the Indians in establishing the new colony; and it had attained no great dimensions in 1640, numbering then perhaps less than 2,000 souls. Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut, and Wethersfield, Hartford, and Windsor, higher up the river, were among the first towns. The government was substantially as in Plymouth and Massachusetts, but without the Massachusetts rule requiring Church-membership as a qualification for the franchise. The executive consisted of Governors, Deputy-Governors, and Magistrates, elected annually. The first Governor, elected in 1639, was John Haynes, who had been Governor of Massachusetts in 1635; the second, elected in 1640, was Edward Hopkins.

IV. NEW HAVEN.-This name was first given to a single town or settlement founded, in 1638, at what had till then been called Quinnipiack, on a fine harbour in Long Island Sound, thirty miles west of Connecticut River, and verging on what were then the Dutch possessions in America. The founders were a small society