Separatists and probably neither the government, nor the first patentees, foresaw how wide a departure from the economy of that Church would result from the emigration that was about to take place under its provisions.

yours, and dedicate myself to God and the company with the whole endeavours both of body and mind. The 'Conclusions' which you sent down are unanswerable; and it cannot but be a prosperous action which is so well allowed by the judgments of God's prophets, undertaken by so religious and wise worthies in Israel, and indented to God's glory in so special a service."*

It is surprising that a charter which conferred unlimited powers on the corporation, and secured no rights to the colonists, should have become the means of estab- Governor Winthrop had a fine estate lishing the freest of all the colonies. This which he sacrificed. Many others sacriwas partly owing to its empowering the ficed what were considered good estates corporation to fix what terms it pleased in England in those days. One of the for the admission of new members. The richest of the colonists was Isaac Johnson, corporation could increase or change its" the father of Boston. As a proof of his members with its own consent, and not being a man of wealth, it may be menbeing obliged to hold its meetings in Eng- tioned that, by his will, his funeral expenland, it was possible for it to emigrate, ses were limited to £250. His wife, the and thus to identify itself with the colo- Lady Arabella, was a daughter of the Earl ny which it was its main object to found. of Lincoln. In her devotedness to the This was actually done. As the corpora- cause of Christ," she came from a paration was entirely composed of Puritans, it dise of plenty into a wilderness of wants."t was not difficult, by means of resignations They were almost without exception godand new elections, to choose the govern- ly people, and when they embarked for or, deputy-governor, and assistants, from America were members of the Church of among such as were willing to leave Eng- England, being that in which they had been land as colonists. born and brought up. Though of the party that were opposed to what they considered Romish superstitions and errors, still cleaving in their conscientious convictions to the National Church; and though they could not in all points conform to it, yet they had not separated from it, but sought the welfare of their souls in its ministrations, whenever they possibly could hope to find it there. They lamented what they regarded as its defects, but not in a spirit of bitter hostility. This very plainly appears from the following letter addressed to the members of the Church of England, by Governor Winthrop and others, immediately after their embarcation, and when they were about to bid a long farewell to their native shores. It is conceived in a noble spirit:

The first object of the new company, on obtaining a royal charter, was to re-enforce the party which had gone out with Endicot and settled at Salem. The re-enforcement consisted of 200 emigrants, under the pastoral care of the Rev. Francis Higginson, an eminent Nonconformist minister, who was delighted to accept of the invitation to undertake that charge. By their arrival, which happened in June, the colony at Salem was increased to 300 persons; but diseases and the hardships incident to new settlements cut off, during the following winter, eighty of that number, who died only lamenting that they were not allowed to see the future glories of the colony. Among these was their beloved pastor, Mr Higginson, whose death was a great loss to the little community.

"The humble request of his majesty's The year following, namely, 1630, was loyal subjects, the Governor and the Coma glorious one for the colonization of New-pany, late gone for New-England, to the England. Having first taken every pre- rest of their brethren in the Church of paratory measure required for self-trans- England. portation, the corporation itself embarked, accompanied by a body of from 800 to 900 emigrants, among whom were several persons of large property and high standing in society. John Winthrop, one of the purest characters in England, had been chosen governor. Taken as a whole, it is thought that no single colony could ever be compared with them. One may form some idea of the elevated piety that pervaded the higher classes among the Puritans of that day from the language of the younger Winthrop: "I shall call that my country," said he to his father, "where I may most glorify God, and enjoy the presence of my dearest friends. Therefore herein I submit myself to God's will and

"Reverend Fathers and Brethren-The general rumour of this solemn enterprise, wherein ourselves, with others, through the providence of the Almighty, are engaged, as it may spare us the labour of imparting our occasion unto you, so it gives us the more encouragement to strengthen ourselves by the procurement of the prayers and blessings of the Lord's faithful servants; for which end we are bold to have recourse unto you, as those whom God hath placed nearest his throne of mercy, which, as it affords you the more opportunity, so it imposeth the greater bond upon you to intercede for his people in all their

* Winthrop's Journal, i., p. 359, 360.
† Judge Story's Centennial Discourse.

the hands of all the rest of our brethren, that they would at no time forget us in their private solicitations at the throne of grace.

ceive so well of our way as we could desire, we would entreat such not to despise us; nor to desert us in their prayers and affections, but to consider rather that they are so much the more bound to express the bowels of their compassion towards us, remembering always that both nature and grace doth ever bind us to relieve and rescue with our utmost and speediest power such as are dear to us, when we conceive them to be running uncomfortable hazards.

straits; we beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of the Lord Jesus, to consider us as your brethren, standing in very great need of your help, and earnestly imploring it. And howsoever your charity may have "If any there be who, through want of met with some occasion of discourage- clear intelligence of our course, or tenderment, through the misreport of our inten-ness of affection towards us, cannot contions, or through the disaffection or indiscretion of some of us, or, rather, among us-for we are not of those that dream of perfection in this world-yet we desire you would be pleased to take notice of the principles and body of our company, as those who esteem it our honour to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother, and cannot part from our native country, where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart, and many tears in our eyes; ever acknowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in the common salvation, we have received in her bosom, and sucked it from her breasts; we leave it not, therefore, as loathing that milk wherewith we were nourished there, but, blessing God for the parentage and education, as members of the same body, shall always rejoice in her good, and unfeignedly grieve for any sorrow that shall ever betide her; and while we have breath, sincerely desire and endeavour the continuance and abundance of her welfare, with the enlargement of her bounds in the kingdom of Christ Jesus.

"Be pleased, therefore, fathers and brethren, to help forward this work now in hand, which, if it prosper, you shall be the more glorious; howsoever, your judgment is with the Lord, and your reward with your God. It is a usual and laudable exercise of your charity to commend to the prayers of your congregations the necessities and straits of your private neighbours do the like for a church springing out of your own bowels. We conceive much hope that this remembrance of us, if it be frequent and fervent, will be a most prosperous gale in our sails, and provide such a passage and welcome for us from the God of the whole earth, as both we which shall find it, and yourselves, with the rest of our friends who shall hear of it, shall be much enlarged to bring in such daily returns of thanksgivings as the specialities of His providence and goodness may justly challenge at all our hands. You are not ignorant that the Spirit of God stirred up the Apostle Paul to make continual mention of the Church of Philippi (which was a colony from Rome); let the same Spirit, we beseech you, put you in mind, that are the Lord's remembrancers, to pray for us without ceasing (who are a weak colony from yourselves), making continual request for us to God in all your prayers.

"What we entreat of you that are the ministers of God, that we also crave at

"What goodness you shall extend to us on this or any other Christian kindness, we, your brethren in Christ Jesus, shall labour to repay in what duty we are or shall be able to perform, promising, so far as God shall enable us, to give Him no rest on your behalf, wishing our heads and hearts may be as fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare, when we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness, overshadowed with the spirit of supplication, through the manifold necessities and tribulations which may not altogether unexpectedly, nor, we hope, unprofitably befall us. And so commending you to the grace of God in Christ, we shall ever rest.

The ships that bore Winthrop and his companions across the Atlantic reached Massachusetts Bay in the following June and July. After having consoled the distresses and relieved the wants of the Salem colonists, the newly-arrived emigrants set about choosing a suitable place for a settlement; a task which occupied the less time,、 as the bay had been well explored by preceding visiters. The first landing was made at the spot where Charlestown now stands. A party having gone from that place up the Charles River to Watertown, there some of them resolved to settle; others preferred Dorchester; but the greater number resolved to occupy the peninsula upon which Boston now stands, the settlement receiving that name from part of the colonists having come from Boston in England. For a while they were lodged in cloth tents and wretched huts, and had to endure all kinds of hardship. To complete their trials, disease made its attacks, and carried off 200 of them at least before December. About a hundred lost heart, and went back to England. Many who had been accustomed in their native land to ease and plenty, and to all the refinements and luxuries of cultivated life, were now compelled to struggle with unforeseen wants and difficulties. Among those who sank under such hardships, and died, was the Lady Arabella Johnson. Her husband, too," the

religion took precedence of all other con- ally supported two ministers, one called the "Pascerns of public interest. The New- Eng-tor," and the other the "Teacher." The distinction land Fathers began with God, sought his blessing, and desired, first of all, to promote his worship. Immediately after landing they appointed a day for solemn fasting and prayer. The worship of God was commenced by them not in temples built with hands, but beneath the widespreading forest. The Rev. Mr. Wilson, the Rev. Mr. Philips, and other faithful ministers, had come out with them; and for these, as soon as the affairs of the colony became a little settled, a suitable pro

colony, they subscribed a solemn compact, and then drew up a Constitution on the most liberal principles. The magistrates and Legislature were to be chosen every year by ballot, the "towns" were to return representatives in proportion to their population, and all members of the "towns," on taking the oath of allegiance to the commonwealth, were to be allowed to vote at elections. Two centuries have since passed away, but Connecticut still rejoices in the same principles of civil polity.

The Pe

former, if war can ever be so.
quods brought it upon themselves by the
commission of repeated murders. In less
than six weeks, hostilities were brought to
a close by the annihilation of the tribe.
Two hundred only were left alive, and
these were either reduced to servitude by
the colonists, or incorporated among the
Mohigans and Narragansetts.

PLYMOUTH* Colony had been planted only three years when it began to have offshoots, one of which, in 1623, settled at Windsor, on the rich alluvial lands of the Connecticut, led thither, however, more by the advantages of the spot as a station for But before this colony had time to comtrading in fur, than by the nature of the plete its organization, the colonists had to soil. The report of its fertility having, at defend themselves and all that was dear to length, reached England, the Earl of War- them against their neighbours, the Pewick bought from the Council for New- quods. This was the first war that broke England, as we have seen that the Plym- out between the New-England settlers and outh Company was sometimes called, the the native tribes, and it must be allowed whole Valley of the Connecticut, which to have been a just one on the part of the purchase was, the year following, transferred to Lord Say and Seal, Lord Brooke, and John Hampden. Two years later, the Dutch, who, in right of discovery, claimed the whole of the Connecticut territory, sent an expedition from their settlement at Manhattan up the River Connecticut, and attempted to make good their claim by erecting a blockhouse, called Good Hope, at Hartford. In 1635, the younger Winthrop, the future benefactor of Connecticut, came from England with a commission from the proprietors to build a fort at the mouth of the river, and this he did soon after. Yet, even before his arrival, settlers from the neighbourhood of Boston had established themselves at Hartford, Windsor, and Weathersfield. Late in the fall of that year, a party of sixty persons, men, women, and children, set out for the Connecticut, and suffered much from the inclement weather of the winter that followed. In the following June, another party, amounting to about a hundred in number, including some of the best of the Massachusetts Bay settlers, left Boston for the Valley of the Connecticut. They were under the superintendence of Hayes, who had been one year governor of Boston, and of Hooker, who, as a preacher, was rivalled in the New World by none but Cotton, and even Cotton he excelled in force of character, kindliness of disposition, and magnanimity. Settling at the spot where Hartford now stands, they founded the colony of Connecticut. They, too, carried the ark of the Lord with them, and made religion the basis of their institutions. Three years sufficed for the framing of their political government. First, as had been done by the Plymouth

* Plymouth in America is often called New Plymouth by early writers, in speaking of New-England. I prefer the name by which exclusively the town is now known. The context will always enable the reader to distinguish it from Plymouth in England.

The colony of New-Haven was founded in 1638 by a body of Puritans, who, like all the rest, were of the school of Calvin, and whose religious teacher was the Rev. John Davenport. The excellent Theophilus Eaton was their first governor, and continued to be annually elected to that office for twenty years. Their first Sabbath, in the yet cool month of April, was spent under a branching oak, and there their pastor discoursed to them on the Saviour's " temptation in the wilderness." After spending a day in fasting and prayer, they laid the foundation of their civil government by simply covenanting that "all of them would be ordered by the rules which the Scriptures held forth to them." A title to their lands was purchased from the Indians. The following year, these disciples of "Him who was cradled in a manger" held their first Constituent Assembly in a barn. Having solemnly come to the conclusion that the Scriptures contain a perfect pattern of a commonwealth, according to that they aimed at constructing theirs. Purity of religious doctrine and discipline, freedom of religious worship, and the service and glory of God, were proclaimed as the great ends of the enterprise. God smiled upon it, so that in a few years the colony could show flourishing settlements rising along the Sound, and on the opposite shores of Long Island.

While the colonization of Connecticut was in progress, that of Rhode Island commenced. Roger Williams, a Puritan minister, had arrived in Boston the year im-.

|

mediately following its settlement by Win- Within twenty years from the planting of throp and his companions; but he soon the colony at Plymouth, all the other chief advanced doctrines on the rights of con- colonies of New-England were founded, science, and the nature and limits of hu- their governments organized, and the coast inan government, which were unaccepta- of the Atlantic, from the Kennebec River in ble to the civil and religious authorities of Maine almost to the Hudson in New-York, the colony. For two years he avoided marked by their various settlements. Offcoming into collision with his opponents shoots from these original stocks gradually by residing at Plymouth; but having been appeared, both at intervening points near invited to become pastor of a church in the ocean, and at such spots in the interior Salem, where he had preached for some as attracted settlers by superior fertility of time after his first coming to America, soil or other physical advantages. From he was ordered, at last, to return to Eng-time to time, little bands of adventurers land; whereupon, instead of complying, left the older homesteads, and wandered he sought refuge among the Narragansett Indians, then occupying a large part of the present State of Rhode Island. Having ever been the steady friend of the Indians, and defender of their rights, he was kindly received by the aged chief, Canonicus, and there, in 1636, he founded the city and plantation of Providence. Two years afterward, the beautiful island called Rhode Island, in Narragansett Bay, was bought from the Indians, by John Clarke, William Coddington, and their friends, when obliged to leave the Massachusetts colony, in consequence of the part which they had taken in the “Antinomian controversy," as it was called, and of which we shall have occasion to speak. These two colonies of Providence and Rhode Island, both founded on the principle of absolute religious freedom, naturally presented an asylum to all who disliked the rigid laws and practices of the Massachusetts colony in religious This rapid advance of the New-England matters; but many, it must be added, fled settlements, during the first twenty years thither only out of hatred to the stern mo- of their existence, must be ascribed, in a rality of the other colonies. Hence Rhode great measure, to the troubled condition Island, to this day, has a more mixed pop- and lowering prospects of the motherulation, as respects religious opinions and country during the same period. The depractices, than any other part of New-Eng-spotic principles of Charles I. as a monland. There is, however, no inconsiderable amount of sincere piety in the state, but the forms in which it manifests itself

are numerous.

forth in search of new abodes. Carrying their substance with them in wagons, and driving before them their cattle, sheep, and hogs, these simple groups wended through the tangled forest, crossed swamps and rivers, and traversed hill and dale, until some suitable resting-place appeared; the silence of the wilderness, meanwhile, was broken by the lowing of their cattle and the bleating of their sheep; as well as by the songs of Zion, with which the pilgrims beguiled the fatigues of the way. Everywhere nature had erected bethels for them, and from beneath the overshadowing oak, morning and night, their orisons ascended to the God of their salvation. Hope of future comfort sustained them amid present toils. They were cheered by the thought that the extension of their settlements was promoting also the extension of the kingdom of Christ.

arch, still more, perhaps, the religious intolerance of Archbishop Laud and his partisans, so fatally abetted by the king, drove thousands from England to the colonies, As early as 1623, small settlements were and hurried on the Revolution that soon folmade, under the grant to Mason, on the lowed at home. The same oppressive and banks of the Piscataqua, in New-Hamp- bigoted policy, indeed, that was convulsing shire; and, in point of date, both Ports- Great Britain, threatened the colonies also; mouth and Dover take precedence of Bos- but in 1639, just as they were on the eve ton. Most of the New-Hampshire settlers of an open collision, the government of came direct from England; some from the that country found itself so beset with difPlymouth colony. Exeter owed its found-ficulties at home, that New-England, hapation to the abandonment of Massachusetts by the Rev. Mr. Wheelwright and his immediate friends, on the occasion of the "Antinomian controversy."

The first permanent settlements made on "the Maine," as the continental part of the country was called, to distinguish it from the islands-and hence the name of the state-date as early, it would appear, as 1626. The settlers were from Plymouth, and no doubt carried with them the religious institutions cherished in that earliest of all the New-England colonies.

pily for its own sake, was forgotten.

Nor does the prosperity of the colonial settlements, during those twenty years, seem less remarkable than their multiplication and extension over the country. The huts in which the emigrants first found shelter gave place to well-built houses. Commerce made rapid advances. Large quantities of the country's natural productions, such as furs and lumber, were exported; grain was shipped to the West Indies, and fishing employed many hands. Ship-building was carried to such an ex