the first there were many Protestants in the colony, possibly a majority. Baltimore's instructions to the governor of the first expedition enjoined him to permit "no scandal or offense" to be given to any of the Protestants.

The

When the Puritan Commonwealth was established in England, the Puritans in Maryland tried to win control in that province. Lord Baltimore then persuaded Toleration the Assembly to enact the Toleration Act of 1649. Act of This great law, it is true, threatened death to all non-Christians (including Jews and any Unitarians of that day); but it provided that "no person ... professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall be in any wise molested or discountenanced for his or her religion.'

1649

statutes

against Catholics after 1688

At a later time the Catholics were persecuted cruelly in this colony that they had founded. After the English Persecuting Revolution of 1688, the Catholic Baltimore family was deprived of all political power; and, for a generation, Maryland became a royal province. In 1715 the Lord Baltimore of the day, having declared himself a convert to Protestantism, recovered his authority. Meantime the Episcopal Church had been established in Maryland and ferocious statutes, like those then in force in England, had been enacted against Catholics, to blacken the law books through the rest of the colonial period.

CHAPTER III

NEW ENGLAND AND THE PILGRIMS

After all that can be said for material and intellectual advantages, it remains true that moral causes determine the greatness of nations; and no nation ever started on its career with a larger proportion of strong characters or a higher level of moral earnestness than the English colonies in America. -LECKY, England in the Eighteenth Century, II, 2.

Next to the fugitives whom Moses led out of Egypt, the little shipload of outcasts who landed at Plymouth are destined to influence the future of mankind. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

If Columbus discovered a new continent, the Pilgrims discovered the New World. GOLDWIN SMITH.

IN 1620, roused by the success of the London Company at Jamestown, some members of the Plymouth branch of the old Virginia Company reorganized as "The The Council Council resident in Plymouth . . . for the plant- for New ing of New England," and a royal charter gave this body powers similar to those of the London Company, with a grant of all North America between the 40th parallel and the 48th.

England

And com

colonization

This "New England Council," or "Plymouth Council," sent out no colonists. Instead, it sold or granted tracts of land, with various privileges, to adventurers who undertook to found settlements. One such charter mercial it sold to agents representing the struggling Pil- attempts at grim colony, which, by accident, had been founded within the New England Council's territory (p. 53). Some small trading stations, also, were established under such grants; and in 1623 there came a more ambitious attempt. Robert Gorges, son of the most active member of the Plymouth Council, was granted lands near Boston harbor, with a charter empowering him to rule settlers "accord

ing to such lawes as shall be hereafter established by public authoritie of the state assembled in Parliament in New England." The Council also commissioned him "General Governor" of all settlements to be formed in their vast territory, which caused the feeble Pilgrim colony to dread his coming. He brought to Massachusetts Bay an excellent company, containing several "gentlemen, two clergymen, and selected farmers and mechanics; but

after one winter the colony broke up. The gentle Bradford, governor and historian of Plymouth, wrote with unusually grim humor that Gorges departed, "haveing scarce saluted the Cuntrie of his Government, not finding the state of things hear to answer his qualitie."

The forces at work so far in settling New England, except for the Pilgrims at Plymouth, were mainly commercial. But success was to come from a new force just ready to take up the work of colonization.

AND ENGLISH PURITANISM

49

This force was Puritanism. The "established" church in England was the Episcopalian. Within that church the dominant party had strong "High-church" leanings Puritanism and was ardently supported by the royal "head of

the church,". Elizabeth, James, Charles, in turn; but it was engaged in constant struggle with a large, aggressive Puritan element. Puritanism was much more than a religious sect. It was an ardent aspiration for reform in many lines. In politics, it stood for an advance in popular rights; in conduct, for stricter and higher morality; in theology, for the stern doctrines of Calvinism, which appealed powerfully to the strongest souls of that age; in church matters, for an extension of the "reformation" that had cut off the English Church from Rome.

Puritans

Two groups of English Puritans stood in sharp opposition to each other, the influential "Low-church" element within the church, and the despised Separatists "Lowoutside of it. The Low-churchmen had no wish church" to separate church and state. They wished one national church, a Low-church church, to which everybody within England should conform. They desired also to make the church a more far-reaching moral power. To that end they aimed to introduce more preaching into the service and to simplify ceremonies, to do away with the surplice, with the ring in the marriage service, with the sign of the cross in baptism, and perhaps with the prayer-book. Most of them did not care to change radically the government of the English Church, but some among them spoke with scant respect of bishops.

The Independents, or "Puritans of the Separation," believed that there should be no national church, but that religious societies should be wholly separate from the And the state. They wished each local religious organiza- Separatists tion a little democratic society independent in government even of other churches. To all other sects the The PilSeparatists seemed the most dangerous of radi- grims in cals, - mere anarchists in religion. They had been persecuted savagely by Queen Elizabeth, and some of

Holland

their societies had fled to Holland. In 1608, early in the reign of James, one of their few remaining churches - a little congregation from the village of Scrooby - managed to escape to that same land, "wher they heard was freedome of Religion for all men":

66

a countrie wher they must learn a new language and get their livings they knew not how . . . not acquainted with trads or traffique, by which that countrie doth subsist, but . . . used to a plaine countrie life and the inocente trade of husbandrey."

"1

They first settled in Amsterdam, but had no sooner begun to feel safe in some measure, through toil and industry, from "the grime and grisly face of povertie coming upon them like an armed man," than it seemed needful to move again, this time to Leyden; and

"being now hear pitchet, they fell to such trads and imployments as they best could, valewing peace and their spirituall comforte above all other riches. . . injoyinge much sweete and delightefull societie . . . in the wayes of God" . . . but subject to such "greate labor and hard fare" that "many that desired to be with them. . . and to enjoye the libertie of the gospell . . . chose the prisons in England rather than this libertie in Holland."

Reasons for removal to

After some ten years in Holland, the Pilgrims decided to remove once more, to the wilds of North America. Bradford gives three motives for this: an easier livelihood, especially for their children; the removal America of their children from what they considered the loose morals of easy-going Dutch society; and the preservation of their religious principles:

"Old age beganne to steale on many of them (and their greate and continuall labours . . . hastened it before the time). And many of their children that were of the best dispositions and gracious inclinations, haveing learnde to bear the yoake in their youth, and willing to bear parte of their parents burdens, were often times so oppressed with heavie labours that . . . their

1 William Bradford, in his History of Plymouth Plantation. The quoted passages in the following paragraphs upon Plymouth are from this source when no other authority is mentioned.