summer of 1629, however, a new colonizing movement began, with that special purpose.

77. This new movement was due to a new danger to Puritanism in England. For years, despite the strenuous efforts of the Puritans, the English Church had been carried farther and farther away from their ideals. Bishop Laud, the tireless leader of the High-church movement, was ardently supported by King Charles. All high ecclesiastical offices had been turned over to Laud's followers; and his "High Commission " Court, with dungeon and pillory, was now ready to drive Puritan pastors from their parishes.

The Puritans had rested their hope upon parliament. They made the great majority in the House of Commons; and with the meeting of the third parliament of Charles (1628), their reform seemed on the verge of success. That parliament extorted the King's assent to the great "Petition of Right";1 and then, in the winter of 1629, it began vigorously to regulate the church. But the King struck a despotic blow. March 2, he dissolved parliament, sent its leaders to the Tower, and entered upon a system of absolute rule. For eleven years no parliament was to meet in England. Religious reform and political liberty had gone down in common ruin, the end of which no man then could see.

The continent of Europe offered no hope. Every form of Protestantism there seemed doomed. Wallenstein's victorious troopers were turning the Protestant provinces of Germany into wilderness homes for wild beasts; and in France the great Richelieu had just crushed the Huguenots.

Accordingly, the more dauntless of the English Puritans turned their eyes to the New World. And there they saw a marvelous opportunity. At Plymouth was the colony of the Separatists, not large, but safely past the stage of experiment; while close by was the prosperous beginning of a commercial

1 The course of the Puritan struggle in England is told compactly in the Modern Progress, 186-197. Brief explanation of the events referred to in Germany and France can be found in the same text, 174-176.

§ 79] THE DANGER TO ENGLISH PURITANISM

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colony controlled by a Puritan company in England and managed on the spot by well-known Puritans like Endicott and Higginson. How natural to try to convert this Massachusetts into a refuge for Low-church Puritanism, such as Plymouth already was for "Puritans of the Separation."

78. But the leaders of this new movement had no idea of becoming part of a mere plantation governed by a distant proprietary company, however friendly. They were of the ruling aristocracy of England, — justices of their counties, and, on occasion, members of parliament. And so a number of them gathered, by long horseback journeys, and signed the famous Cambridge Agreement (August 25), promising one another solemnly that they would embark for Massachusetts with their families and fortunes, if they could find a way to take with them the charter and the "whole government.” 1

79. A proposal to transfer the government of the Company to America had been made a month before at the July meeting of the Company in London. The plan was novel to most of the members; but in September, after repeated debates, it was ap-. proved.2 Commercial motives faded beside the supreme desire to provide a safe refuge for Puritan principles.

The new men of the Cambridge Agreement now bought stock; many old stockholders drew out; the old officers resigned (since they did not wish to emigrate); and John Winthrop, the most prominent of the new men, was elected "governor" (October, 1629). The next spring, Winthrop led to Massachusetts a great Puritan migration, the most remarkable colonizing expedition that the world had ever seen.

Previously the governor had been Matthew Cradock, and his term would not have expired regularly until the next May. This position corresponded to that of "treasurer" in the London Company. It must not be confounded with the subordinate "governorship "held by Endicott, any more than Sandys' position as head of the London Company in 1619

1 Source Book, Nos. 58 b and 59.

2 For a detailed discussion on the transfer of the charter, cf. Source Book, No. 53, and comments at close.

is to be confounded with the position of Yeardley in Virginia. Winthrop was the second governor of the Company. When he came to America, he superseded Endicott (for whose separate office there was no

further need), and became governor of the colony also. The two offices merged.

For the first time a proprietary corporation removed to its colony. Colony and corporation merged. Massachusetts became a corporate colony and a Puritan commonwealth.

80. In May, 1629, Endicott had a hundred settlers at Salem: In June, when Higginson arrived with two hundred more (§ 75), another plantation was begun at at Charlestown.1 Now, in the summer of 1630, seventeen ships thousand brought two settlers to Massachusetts, and six new towns 2 were started.

But the immigrants found conditions sadly different from their expectations. Two hundred returned home in the ships that brought them, or sought better prospects in other colonies; and two hundred more died before December. Immediately

1 The next winter slew nearly a third of the colonists; and in June of 1630 Winthrop found the survivors starving and demoralized. Four fifths of them were servants of the Company; but they had accomplished nothing, and Winthrop thought it cheaper to free them than to feed them. There were also seven other little settlements along the coast like that of Blackstone at Boston - with a total population of some fifty souls. These scattered plantations were the remnants of the commercial attempts mentioned in § 58.

2 Boston, Dorchester, Watertown, Roxbury, and minor settlements at Lynn (Saugus) and Newtown (afterward Cambridge). There were also the two older towns, Salem and Charlestown. See map, p. 107.

§ 80]

"THE GREAT MIGRATION"

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on his arrival, Winthrop, in fear of famine before the next summer, wisely hurried back a ship for supplies. Its prompt return, in February, saved the colony. According to one story, Winthrop had just given his last measure of meal to a destitute neighbor.

Meantime the deserters spread such discouragement in England that for the next two years emigration to Massachusetts ceased. In 1633, however, it began again. Soon the shipmoney1 troubles gave it new impetus, and it went on, at the average volume of three thousand people a year, until the Long Parliament was summoned.

Thus the eleven years of "No Parliament" in England saw twenty-five thousand selected Englishmen transported to New England. This was the "Great Migration" of 1629-1640. In 1640 the movement stopped short.2 Says Winthrop, "The parliament in England setting upon a general reformation both in church and state, this caused all men to stay in England in expectation of a New World" there. Indeed, the migration turned the other way; and many of the boldest and best New England Puritans hurried back to the old home, now that there was a chance to fight for Puritan principles there.3

New England had no further immigration of consequence until after the Revolution. But this coming of the Puritans, during England's ten

use.

1 For English history in this period, see Modern Progress, 197 ff.

2 The sudden stop in immigration caused great industrial depression. Until that time the colony had been unable to raise sufficient supplies for its Newcomers brought money with them, and gladly paid for cattle and food the price in England plus the cost of transportation. In an instant this was changed. The colony had more of such supplies than it could use, and high freights made export impossible. Both Bradford and Winthrop lament the falling in prices, for a cow from £20 to £5, etc., without very clear ideas as to its cause. The phenomenon has been repeated many times on our moving frontier.

3 Winthrop's third son and one of his nephews went back and rose to the rank of general under Cromwell, while the Reverend Hugh Peter, - rather a troublesome busybody in the colony, became Cromwell's chaplain. Such facts help us to understand that the larger figures on the small New England stage, like Winthrop and his gallant son, John Winthrop, Jr., were fit companions for the greatest actors on the great European stage in that great day.

hopeless years, is one of the fruitful facts in history. The twenty-five thousand are the ancestors of about a sixth of our population to-day; and we owe to them much more than a sixth of our higher life in America. Said an old Puritan preacher, with high insight, God hath sifted a nation, that he might send choice grain into this wilderness.'

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81. True, motives were somewhat mixed. The twenty-five thousand immigrants were not all Puritans; and the Puritans were not all saints. Some little communities, like Marblehead, were made up wholly of rude fishermen with little interest in the Puritan movement; and the Puritan settlements themselves contained many "servants." 2 These were sometimes a bad lot, with the vices of an irresponsible, untrained, hopeless class.3

The great body of the Puritans themselves had been shopkeepers, artisans, and small farmers in England. They were plain, uneducated men who followed a trusted minister or an honored neighbor of the gentry class. Very largely, they came to get away from the pressure of poverty in their old homes. They felt keenly the force of Winthrop's argument:

"This Land growes weary of her Inhabitants, soe as man, who is the most pretious of God's creatures, is here . . . of less prise among us than an horse or a sheepe... Why then should we stand striving here . . (many men spending as much labour and coste to . . . keepe an acre or tuoe of Land as would procure many hundred as good or better in another Countrie) and in the meantime suffer a whole Continent, fruitfull and convenient, to lie waste?" (Source Book, No. 59, for the rest of this paper. Cf. also § 24.)

1 Cotton Mather tells how a preacher from another town, visiting Marblehead and praising their devotion to principle, was interrupted by a rough voice, "You think you are talking to the people of the Bay: we came here to catch fish."

2 Winthrop alone had some twenty male servants, some of them married. 3 On the voyage, cheats and drunkards from this class had to receive severe punishment. After reaching America, the better ones were sometimes demoralized. They saw vastly greater opportunity for free labor than they had ever dreamed; but they had ignorantly bound themselves to service through the best years of their lives. Brooding upon this led some to crime or suicide. (Find authority for these statements in the Source Book.)