God for anything." The court judged the offence worthy of punishment because tending "to the dishonor of God Almighty and his Attributes, and against the holy written Profession and Religion, now allowed and profest by authority in his now Majesty of Great Britain's Dominions, and subverting of all the faithful and true believers and professors of the Protestant Church and Religion now by Law Established and Confirmed."

All that remains is simply to note that until the Revolution the care of the legislature was frequently directed toward the affairs of the establishment,1 both as affecting the colony at large and as touching individual parishes. In 1715 a new law of establishment was enacted, in which one clause bears witness to the influence of Jacobitism. It required every vestryman to make oath, "I do declare that it is not lawful on any pretence whatever to take up Arms against the King, and that I will not apugne the Liturgy of the Church of England." The act also assessed five shillings "" per Poll on all taxable persons" for support of the ministry, and imposed fines on all persons, "not dissenters," refusing to serve as wardens and vestrymen, when elected. The act of 1722 increased the stipend of country parsons from £50 to £100, and if this were not paid within twenty-one days, the parson was authorized to sue the receiver-general. This was in South Carolina, after the annulling of the charter in 1720, the institution of the royal government, and the division of the province. By the South Carolina act of 1756 the "Chapel on James Island is established as a Chapel of Ease in the parish of St. Andrew, and the rector of said parish is hereby obliged, enjoined, and required to preach and perform divine service in said Chapel of Ease, every fourth Sunday." If he, or any other person enjoined to serve in any Chapel of Ease, should neglect the duty, "the Public treasurer of the Province shall deduct £10" from the salary for every occasion of neglect.

1 North Carolina Reports, II, 207; VIII, 4, 45; IX, 1010; South Carolina Statutes, II, 339, 352; III, 11, 174, 485, 531, 650; IV, 3, 25.

The last act of civil authority over the Church in the southern division was so late as 1785, increasing the powers of the vestries in the parishes of St. Paul and St. Andrew, and requiring the vestry of the latter parish to repair their Church building. In North Carolina the last ecclesiastical act of the legislature was in 1774, and organized the parish of St. Bartholomew. In the fifty years preceding there had been various similar acts and others continuing the statute of establishment, but nothing of distinguishing character.

In the entire province after 1706, while the legislature consistently maintained the idea of a State-Church in various acts such as noted above, there was never again an approach to any other oppression than that which was involved in the tithes. The two parties struggled for power in the state with varying success, the line of partition between them being largely that of religious affiliations, yet they never again locked horns on the religious question. The dissenters in power respected the establishment, and the Churchmen respected the rights of dissent. As the decades passed away, and the country became more thickly settled, the asperities of the early contests ceased. The disproportion between the establishment and dissenters constantly increased and with it the popular unwillingness to pay taxes for a Church not their own. This was specially true of North Carolina. In the southern colony, the hold of the Church of England was much stronger, owing to the facts that its early settlers were of a more religious disposition, and that the English clergy were of a much higher character. But even in South Carolina the inequity of taxing three-fourths of the people, to support the Church of the other fourth, failed not to impress the minds of the leaders. Thus the province was prepared for that disestablishment, which followed soon upon the Revolution.

1 South Carolina Statutes, IV, 703.

V

THE PURITAN ESTABLISHMENTS

UNDER this head are grouped all the New England colonies, with the exception of Rhode Island. In them all the Congregational Church was established by law, with more or less of proscription of other forms of worship. This establishment was not by charter or by imposition of external authority, but by act of the colonial legislature at the beginning of the colonies, in conformity with the will of the great majority of the people. Each colony had a spirit of its own in its regard for the established order, in some instances sharply contrasting it with its neighbors. Theocratic Massachusetts and New Haven reverenced the order as the chosen instrument of God, with which a man could interfere only to his peril, and on conformity to which all civil rights depended. Plymouth and Connecticut loved it as a seemly thing and as conducive to religious and social prosperity, but at the same time recognized the claims of charity toward men of other minds. Of this spirit also was New Hampshire, though for half a century merged with Massachusetts, and afterward vexed by foolish royal governors attempting forcible conversion to the Church of England.

I. Plymouth

When the men of Scrooby fled to Holland from English persecution, they had no thought of giving up their English citizenship. From 1609 to 1617 they remained in quiet enjoyment of Dutch toleration. But, though never disturbed by the authorities for the sake of religion, they were unsatisfied to remain in a foreign land and become merged in popu

lation alien to their own English stock. Though driven out of England, they were still English at heart and desired to live and to bring up their children under the English flag.

With this desire strong within them they greeted the news of the planting of Virginia with the hope that in the bounds of this infant colony there might be found for them a place, where they could at once be subjects of their own king and enjoy religious freedom. So moved, in 1617, they sent Carver and Cushing to London with propositions toward settlement in Virginia. These propositions, while not evading the Separatist view of Church polity, yet asserted their agreement with the creed of the Anglican Church and their desire of spiritual communion with its members. In civil matters they declared their entire subjection to the king, with "obedience in all things; active, if the thing commanded be not against God's word; or passive, if it be." This first informal application to the Virginia company was favorably received, under the kindly influence of the secretary, Sir Edwin Sandys, a man of large liberality of spirit.

On the report of their agents the Pilgrims at Leyden, in December of the same year, transmitted by the hands of Robinson and Brewster their formal request of the company to be allowed to embark for Virginia. With this request was coupled a petition to the king, which brought temporary disaster to their enterprise. The petition sought a formal allowance to them of liberty in religious matters in their contemplated settlement in America. Strange to say, James, whose hatred for presbytery and addiction to prelacy were well known, hesitated as to the character of his reply. Both the king and Villiers seem at first to have looked upon the request with some degree of favor. At all events, they were unwilling to return a negative without advice. This advice they sought from the greatest man of the age, Lord Bacon, whose greatness was equalled, according to the epigram, by his meanness. His courtier-like sycophancy was abundantly able to silence a principle, which his philosophical intellect

might discern, in order to give voice to sentiments more pleasing to his royal master. It is hard to believe that so wise a man as Bacon could have failed to see that toleration at least could be demanded as a natural right; but he failed to express any such thought in his "Letter of Advice"-a letter which both disappointed the Pilgrims and established the administrative policy in religious matters through the colonial era. He says: "Discipline by bishops is fittest for monarchy of all others. The tenets of separatists and sectaries are full of schism and inconsistent with monarchy. The king will beware of Anabaptists, Brownists, and others of their kinds: a little connivency sets them on fire. For the discipline of the Church in those parts (the colonies) it will be necessary that it agree with that which is settled in England, else it will make a schism and rent in Christ's coat, which must be seamless, . . . and for that purpose it will be fit that they be subordinate to some bishop or bishoprick of this realm.... If any transplant themselves into plantations abroad who are known schismatics, outlaws, or criminal persons, they should be sent back upon the first notice: such persons are not fit to lay the foundation of a new colony." So Bacon demeaned himself to compose a variation on his master's favorite theme: "No Bishop, no King." James listened only too willingly to this advice and refused the petition of the Pilgrims.

But they were not discouraged by this failure, nor disposed to give up their project of removal to America. They presently entered into arrangements with a number of London merchants, as yet not incorporated into a chartered company, who were to act as agents for the colony. These merchants, afterward chartered as the "Plymouth Company," were to Plymouth provide means of transportation and to attend to matters of Company supply and the sale of such produce as the emigrants should send to England. They presumed upon no steps of government, nor marked out for the colonists any lines of either

1 Bacon, Works, VI, 438; Bancroft, History of United States, I, 304.