others it by no means renounced, because it knew its opponents to be wrong.

The Church of England, on the contrary, which had enjoyed its apostolic succession, its orders of priesthood, and its spiritual independence in all its primitive purity for six hundred years before the aggression of the Roman Pontiff, very properly retained its own original name, to which no other body of Christians had any title whatever. She threw off the domination she had been too feeble to resist, and the superstitions and human inventions that had been forced upon her, compiled her Liturgy, and settled her doctrine and ceremonies as nearly as possible in accordance with those she had held in those centuries that preceded the usurpation of Popery.

*

In some or in

all of these, furious zealots affected to think they discerned too great a resemblance still subsisting between the two Churches, and stigmatized the Prayer-book as antichristian, the surplice as a rag of Babylon, and the Holy Communion as the mass in English. These Protestants of various shades of opinion were known in Britain under the general name of Puritans, and as schism in

* A.D. 1689. The Upper House of Convocation sent down a bill to the Lower House, where the English Church I was denominated a "Protestant Church." The Lower House expunged the word "Protestant," declaring they were not in unison with Protestants.

spiritual things naturally leads to temporal disobedience, they were very soon regarded (with what truth their subsequent history discloses but too painfully) as disaffected subjects, and treated alternately with suspicion or severity. To this state of things may be attributed in a great degree the settlement of New England.

Individual enterprise had hitherto been found unequal to the task.

Mines of gold and silver constituted the main inducement, in the first instance, to explore the country. When the search for the precious metals was relaxed or abandoned, attention was directed to the furtrade and the fisheries, from which great wealth was derived. But the settlement of the country was a slow and expensive operation, not likely to yield an immediate return, and liable to be frustrated by a variety of circumstances.

One hundred and twenty years had elapsed since the discoveries of Cabot, and every attempt at colonization had failed. Combination, therefore, was resorted to, that success might be insured by a union of means and an increase of the number of adventurers. James the First who was anxious to enlarge the limits of his dominions, divided all that portion of the continent that stretches from the 34th to the 45th degree of latitude into two immense provinces, of nearly equal size, and denominated them Southern and Northern Virginia.

The first he granted to an association called the London Company, and the second to a number of persons of influence and property known as the Plymouth Company. The supreme government of the colonies that were to be settled in this spacious domain was ordered to be vested in a council resident in England, and the subordinate jurisdiction was committed to local boards. The northern portion which was surveyed in 1614, by Captain Smith, was named by him New England, and it is to a part of this country only that I shall have occasion to refer, at any length. To allure settlers, the climate and soil were extolled as consisting of a sort of terrestrial paradise, not merely capable of producing all the necessaries and conveniences of life, but as already richly furnished by the beautiful hand of nature! The air was said to be pure and salubrious, the country pleasant and delightful, full of goodly forests, fair valleys and fertile plains, abounding in vines, chesnuts, walnuts, and many other kinds of fruit.* The rivers stored with fish and environed with extensive meadows full of timber trees. In the rear of this wonderful coast, and at about the distance of one hundred miles, it was said "there was a vast lake containing four islands, having great store of stags, fallow deer, elks, roebucks, beavers and other

* See Belknap's "Life of Ferdinando Georges."

game, and offering the most delightful situation in the world for a residence." Whatever this inter

minable forest might contain, it was certain that the sea that washed its shores was filled with fish, and numerous and valuable cargoes were constantly arriving to silence the doubts and awaken the enterprise of the mercantile community The distracted and unsettled state of men's minds on the subject of religion led many enthusiasts to think of the country as an asylum, who gladly entered into an enterprise that offered at once the prospect of gain and an exemption from ecclesiastical control. Accordingly, two considerable parties of fanatical adventurers migrated thither-the Separatists of Leyden called Brownists, and English Nonconformists. The former settled at Plymouth, and the latter at Massachusetts Bay.

The means, character, and station of these two were widely different, and though they are often considered as one people, and erroneously spoken of under the general name of Pilgrims, it is necessary to bear this distinction in mind. The first are represented as men of great zeal but of little knowledge. Many of the others were gentlemen and scholars, whose humility was not the result of their poverty but their pride. The one had already separated from their Church and quitted their native country before they came to America. The others having more to lose, for they were

men of no inconsiderable fortune, were less frank in avowing their opinions and less precipitate in their conduct, and outwardly conformed to the ceremonies of the Established Church until their embarkation. They had not assumed the name of Puritans themselves, nor was it applied to them by others. Their dissent, as well as their real object in emigrating,* was so well concealed from their co-partners in trade in England and from the King's government, that they were not only not suspected of schism, but actually entrusted with the duty and enjoined as a condition of their Charter to spread the Gospel.

The Separatists of Leyden, on the contrary, were well-known Dissenters, who had fled to Holland to avoid the penalties of the law. They were followers of the celebrated Brown, from whom they derived their name. This enthusiast was a man of quality, connected with several noble families; and the defection of such a person is always hailed with delight by the vulgar, as an evidence of great manliness on the one hand and

* So habitual was their reserve to the English partners, and so effectually did they conceal or disguise their opinions, that at the very time they were plotting the downfall and death of Laud, that prelate assured the King that several bishops, of very extensive dioceses, had reported to him there was not a single Dissenter to be found within their jurisdiction.