to endure the hardships of life in the wilderness, and the next year the enterprise was abandoned. Probably

no permanent settlement was made on the Maine coast before 1622. From that time on several fishing and trading communities were established at the island of Monhegan, at Saco, and several other points. But the people for a long time organized neither schools nor churches. This coast seems to have been a kind of dumping ground for people who could not endure the rigid discipline of Massachusetts.

The charter of the Province of Maine, given by Charles I. in 1639, required that the established church should be the Church of England, but it does not appear that any Episcopal church was planted there, though Richard Gibson, an Episcopal clergyman, appears to have tions between 1636 and

officiated in several planta1642. During those years

also several ministers from Massachusetts visited different points in Maine, and there seems to have been stated preaching for a time at Agamenticus, which is now York. Yet it is probable that the church in that town now generally regarded as the oldest in the State was not formed till 1673. When Mr. Wheelwright left Hampton, N. H., he went to the Province. of Maine, and in 1643 laid out the town of Wells. It is probable that he organized a church there, though no distinct record of it remains. The church which now exists there was formed about 1701.

Thomas Jenner was probably the first Congregational minister at Saco, where he remained from 1641 to 1646. But there was no great prosperity in the Maine settlements till they came under the government of Massachusetts about 1653. After that time

the towns were required to maintain public worship and to support ministers if they were able. But there was little Congregationalism in Maine till after the end of the seventeenth century.

Rhode Island gathered to itself the religious fanatics who were banished from Massachusetts. The first of these was Roger Williams, who settled at Providence in 1636. He there founded the first Baptist church in America in March, 1638, nearly three years after his arrival there. The church consisted of twelve members. One of them, Ezekiel Holman, first immersed Mr. Williams, who then immersed Mr. Holman and the others. Within four months, however, Williams left the church with three others, and renounced its baptism and ministry. A few years later the church divided over the question whether or not hands should be laid on the heads of newly baptized persons. There could not have been much enthusiasm among them for public worship, for no meeting house was built by them before the end of the century.

When Mrs. Hutchinson was banished from Massachusetts she intended joining her brother-in-law, Mr. Wheelwright, at Exeter, but for some unknown reason turned her footsteps toward Rhode Island. Her company included sixteen persons, led by Mr. John Clarke, who had been a London physician, and who had been disarmed in Boston as an antinomian. They settled first at Pocasset, but early in 1639 the colony removed to Newport, where they organized a Congregational church. Dr. Clarke officiated as minister, expecting that Mr. Wheelwright would come to be their pastor. However, Wheelwright did not seem to be in full

sympathy with their peculiar views, and in 1640 they secured the services of Robert Lenthall. Samuel Gorton was one of Mrs. Hutchinson's earliest sympathizers there, a man of honorable character, but by temperament a constant fomenter of strife. He soon managed to create a schism among Mrs. Hutchinson's followers, and made his way into Roger Williams' territory, who describes him as "bewitching and madding poor Providence." The disturbances he stirred up among the Indians and in Massachusetts colony do not claim place here, but they would serve to illustrate the reasons why no very friendly relations existed between the churches of Massachusetts and the church at Newport. After three or four years Dr. Clarke and several others with him became Baptists, and the church seems to have disbanded.

The oldest Congregational church in Rhode Island is probably that at Barrington, organized in 1670. Another church was formed at Bristol in 1687. The next was at Little Compton in 1704.

Long Island early attracted the attention of New Englanders. In 1640 a company from Lynn and Ipswich, having obtained a grant of land on the island. from Lord Stirling, and having made an agreement with the Indians, settled at Southampton. The emigrants had already organized a church before leaving Lynn, and secured Abraham Pierson as their pastor. In the same year also Southold was settled, the church having been gathered at New Haven with John Young as pastor. Other settlements on the island with Congregational churches were made between 1640 and 1660 at Hempstead, East Hampton, Newton, Crookhaven, Jamaica and one or two other

places. Some of these churches remained Congregational for a long time, that at Southold for nearly two hundred years; but they finally united with Presbytery. Congregationalism in the days of the early English settlements of the Atlantic Coast had a foothold at many points, stretching across the island groups also. In 1624 Henry Jacob, founder of the first permanent Congregational church in London, was called to settle in Virginia, but died soon after his arrival. In 1642 letters signed by seventy-one persons were received at Boston from Nansemond County, Virginia, asking for ministers, and saying that there were three parishes in Virginia ready to receive pastors from New England. Great interest was excited, and three ministers were selected to go as missionaries. They were cordially received, but were forbidden to preach because the Church of England was the established church of the colony. The people met, however, in private houses, and a Congregational church was formed, which in a few years numbered one hundred and eighteen communicants. But, their pastor hav ing been banished, and later the entire body, they removed to Maryland, near where now stands the city of Annapolis, and named their settlement Providence. There the church finally became extinct.

Congregationalists were scattered, in considerable numbers, among the early settlers of the island groups to the southeast of the mainland of North America ; and a church was organized on one of the Bermuda islands, another at New Providence, and a third on the island of Barbadoes; but the surroundings were not favorable to their growth, and in a few years they disappeared.