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can be little doubt that they had reference to it, and were prompted by the desire of eminent persons, disposed to the most radical reforms in church government, to resist the Presbyterian influence, which was expected to prove strong in that body.' Oliver Cromwell, Nathaniel Fiennes, Sir Arthur Hazelrigg, and Oliver St. John were among the signers of the letter.

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Davenport would have gone, but could not obtain the consent of his church. Cotton was of the same mind, but was not inclined to go alone. And Hooker, who at the time was engaged upon a plan of church government for New England on the Congregational or Independent model, "liked not the business, nor thought it any sufficient call for them to go three thousand miles." There was no doubt an apprehension of getting involved in the ecclesiastical politics of the mother country, whatever might there be the ultimate turn of events. Presbytery would never take root in New England. A feeble attempt to introduce it at Boston, after the meeting of the Assembly of Divines, by some persons from abroad, only served to show how alien the system was from the sentiments and habits of the place."

Mission to

It was certainly far from being through any indisposition to influence the great affairs then in progress in England, that the invitations addressed to the ministers were declined. Little time had passed, after the temper of King Charles's last Parliament began England. to manifest itself, when Hugh Peter of Salem and Thomas Welde of Roxbury, with William Hibbens, a merchant of Boston, were appointed "to go for England upon some weighty occasions for the good of the country, as was conceived.” 4

1641. June 2.

1 Winthrop, II. 76; comp. 137. 2 Ibid., II. 76.

3 Hutchinson, I. 112. I have observed no mention of this transaction earlier than Hutchinson's.

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is perhaps not owing to accident that their instructions have not been preserved. Winthrop says: "They [the General Court] thought fit to send some chosen men into England to congratulate the happy success there, and to satisfy our creditors of the true cause why we could not make so current payment now as in former years we had done, and to be ready to make use of any opportunity God should offer for the good of the country here, as also to give any advice, as it should be required, for the settling of the right form of church discipline there; but with this caution, that they should not seek supply of our wants in any dishonorable way, as by begging or the like, for we were resolved to wait upon the Lord in the use of all means which were lawful and honorable." 1 It may be presumed to have been through the influence of these envoys, that an Act of Parliament was passed relieving all March 10. commodities carried between England and New England from the payment of "any custom, subsidy, taxation, imposition, or other duty," till the further order of the House of Commons.2

1 Winthrop, II. 31; comp. 25, 26. It is probable that Winthrop (II. 42) refers to a proceeding of these agents, when he writes, in September, 1641: “Some of our people, being then in London, preferred a petition to the Lords' House, for redress of that restraint which had been put upon ships and passengers to New England; whereupon an order was made that we should enjoy all our liberties, &c., according to our patent; whereby our patent, which had been condemned, and called in upon an erroneous judgment in a quo warranto, was now implicitly revived and confirmed." While commemorating the benefit, he is, however, careful to add: "This petition was preferred without warrant from our Court." (Comp. above, p. 543.) He

1643.

It is also known, that

did not like to have the question moved, or to have anything done which could be construed as a recognition, on the part of Massachusetts, of foreign authority. On this point his vigilance never relaxed. "Some of our friends there [in England] wrote to us advice to send over some to solicit for us in the Parliament, giving us hope that we might obtain much, &c. But, consulting about it, we declined the motion, for this consideration, that, if we should put ourselves under the protection of the Parliament, we must then be subject to all such laws as they should make, or at least such as they might impose upon us." (Winthrop, II, 25.)

2 See Hazard, I. 494.—In the use of a remarkable phraseology, this Act calls New England "that kingdom," as if

part of their business was to collect funds for the preaching of the Gospel to the natives.1 On the trial of Hugh Peter after the Restoration, a witness testified to having heard him say, that he had been sent from New England "to promote the interest of reformation, by stirring up the war, and driving it on "; 2 and, with due allowance on” for the language, this cannot be deemed unlikely to have been true. Neither Peter nor his clerical companion ever returned to America. For twenty years the former was a busy actor in the revolutionary movements of the time, till the restoration of Charles the Second brought him to the block. Welde, whose agency was less prominent, though not inconsiderable, was, on the restitution of the old order of things, ejected from a church which he had been serving, and is believed to have died soon after.

1662.

Discontinuance of

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One all-important consequence of the meeting of the Long Parliament had been immediately apparent in relation to New England. It put a final stop to the emigration. At the end of ten years from Winemigration. throp's arrival, about twenty-one thousand Englishmen, or four thousand families, including the few hundreds who were here before him, had come over, in three hundred vessels, at a cost of two hundred thousand pounds sterling. During the century and a quarter that

1640.

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acknowledging it to be an independent power. The preamble recites, that "the plantations in New England have, by the blessing of Almighty God, had good and prosperous success, without any public charge to this state.”

1 In the Bodleian Library at Oxford is a collection of manuscript papers of Welde, chiefly relating to this part of his commission. A copy is in the Library of Harvard College. The reader of them infers that the business of evangelizing the Indians was not prominent among Welde's objects, and still less among those of Peter.

2 Account of the Trial of Twentynine Regicides, 170.

3 "The Parliament of England setting upon a general reformation both of church and state, the Earl of Strafford being beheaded, and the Archbishop, our great enemy, and many others of the great officers and judges, bishops and others, imprisoned and called to account, this caused all men to stay in England in expectation of a new world." (Winthrop, II. 31.)

4 "The number of ships," says Johnson, "that transported passengers in this space of time [“fifteen years' space to

passed between that time and the publication of the first volume of Hutchinson's History, it is believed that "more had gone from hence to England, than had come from thence hither";1 nor did anything that can be called an immigration occur again till after Boston was two hundred years old. From the day of the summoning of Charles's fifth Parliament, there was the prospect of a fair field to fight out the battle of freedom at home, and the expatriation of patriotic English ceased with the existence of its motive.

Return of

to England.

Nor did the tide of emigration merely stop flowing. It turned back. The ranks of opposition, civil and military, in the parent country, were swelled by accessions from New England. Stephen Winthrop, son of the Governor, became one of the Parliament's Major- emigrants Generals; Robert Sedgwick, of Charlestown, one of Cromwell's; and John Leverett (subsequently Governor of Massachusetts) one of his subalterns, having left the colony for that purpose at an early period of the troubles. Stoughton, the Massachusetts leader in the Pequot war, and George Fenwick, of Saybrook, went over to command regiments in the Parliament's ser

the year 1643"], as is supposed, is 298. Men, women, and children, passing over this wide ocean, as near as at present can be gathered, is also supposed to be 21,200, or thereabout." (WonderWorking Providence, Chap. XIV.) The whole sum expended in their establishment in New England, including the transportation of themselves and of their effects, and the cost of their arms and ammunition, of their materials for building, and of their food till they had time to produce it, was estimated in that generation at one hundred ninetytwo thousand pound, besides that which the Adventurers laid out in England." (Ibid., Chap. XIII.) This estimate of

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expense was approved, in the third following generation, by that very intelligent and well-informed writer, Jeremiah Dummer. (Defence of the NewEngland Charters, 13; comp.Oldmixon, British Empire, &c., I. 81; Hutchinson, History, I. 91.) Dummer restricts the estimated expenditure to "the single province of the Massachusetts Bay."

1 Hutchinson, Preface, vii.

2 Fenwick attained various honors. He was one of the Board of Commissioners for Plantations; a Commissioner for the treaty with Scotland in 1646; a Commissioner for regulating the affairs of Scotland in 1651; and Governor of Berwick in 1652. In 1656 he

vice. Samuel Desborough, of Guilford, was, by the Protector, made Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland. Hugh Peter and Thomas Welde, sent over by Massachusetts to look after its affairs, both rose to influence with Cromwell, and the former, as his chaplain, walked by the Protector's Secretary, John Milton, at his funeral.1 Edward Hopkins, Governor of Connecticut, became a member of Parliament, Warden of the Fleet, and Commissioner for the Navy and Admiralty. Edward Winslow, of Plymouth, was made one of the Commissioners in command of the naval force sent by the Protector against Jamaica, and lost his life in that service. George Downing, one of the nine graduates at the first Commencement of Harvard College, became ScoutmasterGeneral of the English army in Scotland, and afterwards ambassador of Cromwell to the Low Countries, perhaps the most important civil post in the public service. Benjamin Woodbridge, another of the academical firstfruits of New England, was made chaplain to Charles the Second, when that prince, in the time of his troubles, professed to have renounced Episcopacy. Of other NewEngland ministers, John Woodbridge, of Newbury, was chaplain to the Commissioners of Parliament sent to the Isle of Wight to treat with King Charles; and William Hook, of New Haven, was one of the chaplains of Cromwell. Hoadly, of Guilford, grandfather of the much more famous Bishop Hoadly, became chaplain to Cromwell's garrison in Edinburgh Castle, when chaplains of garrisons were men of some trust and power. Other persons, already or afterwards ministers, returned to England to be employed in less important spheres.2 Between

was returned to Parliament, and was
excluded from it by the Protector.
died soon after.

He

2

Among them may be named Samuel Mather, John Knowles, John Allen, Thomas Allen, John Bulkley, Giles

1 Diary of Thomas Burton, Esq., Firmin, Henry Whitefield, Henry But&c., II. 524.

ler, Nathaniel Brewster, William Ames,

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