powers of preaching, who had in England suffered much from Laud and the High Commission. As all were of one mind, on landing on the shores of New England they got rid of prelacy and the book of common prayer, and would not suffer public practice of the episcopal forms of worship, partly because they regarded it as a survival of popery, and partly because they feared that such a congregation would stir ill-will at the court and bring bishops from England.

From the outset there was a difference in character between the Puritan States of New England and the State of Virginia, which persisted until the great struggle that well-nigh led to the separation of the north and south of the American confederation.

Between four and five thousand English settlers had built their wooden houses along the winding shores between Cape Ann and Cape Cod for about thirty miles. They were distributed in sixteen little townships, as they had to hold together for protection against the Indians who were beginning to cause alarm. They were raising crops of maize, wheat, and rye, were building corn mills, and were cutting roads through the forests. They had herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and numerous swine, and had begun a trade in beavers' skins, cured fish, and lumber.

The favourable situation on a peninsula with a fine and capacious harbour had already gained for Boston the dignity of the chief town. The slope towards the sea was dotted by some hundred cabins with their little enclosures, and the church with mud walls and thatched roof. On the northern hill stood a

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windmill, while on the broad top of the southern eminence a wooden fort guarded the narrow approach to the harbour within the still bay.

The area then available was less than a thousand acres. Connected with the mainland by a narrow neck, it had neither wood nor meadow land around it; but the sea which scattered spray on its shores secured the peninsula from the attacks of the Indians and the prowlings of wild beasts. One of the fairest of the American cities, with a population of 450,000, the lofty buildings of Boston dwarf the hills that once gave their naked outlines to the setting sun, and stately squares and streets now cover the salt marches of the shore.

The governor and his assistants, who had been nominated in England, were men of condition who had contributed largely to the making of the colony. With the assent of the other settlers they filled vacancies in their number, made laws and administered justice. This independent power lasted no longer than three years, for a house of deputies appeared in 1634, who arranged that the governor and his assistants should be elected every year by the freemen, and that by ballot. No one could vote as a freeman who had not been admitted a member of the church. John Winthrop was succeeded by Thomas Dudley. The struggle between the wealthy class who wished to keep power in their own hands and the inferior sort of settlers had already begun. The latter were jealous of the way the lands were being distributed, while Winthrop wished some tracts to be kept for common ground or reserved for new-comers. When Henry Vane arrived in the new community, the early struggles

and hardships that had followed landing on the wild shore had been surmounted. The colonists found many new duties to occupy their attention. They had begun to regard the new country as their home and their heritage, and the word brought by new-comers of the doings in England helped to banish all desire to return.

If their daily life was hard to these Puritans of the West, it was simple and natural, a manly fight with rugged nature. They felt that they had escaped from the petty tyranny of the prelates, and they did not feel the rigid creed which was stiffening around them, because it fitted them at the time. Society of an intellectual though grave and formal caste was not wanting. In these rude cabins there were men who had gained renown for their learning and eloquence in England and in Holland, and who might have been still sitting in honoured places in the old country had their conscience given them quiet. There were gentlemen of good estate who had left a country whose liberties seemed to have gone; there were captains who in the war with the Pequot Indians showed the skill which they had gained in the Thirty Years' War: all united in a deep hatred of the affectations and compromises introduced into the Church of England to turn aside the Reformation. Men like these were not easy to govern: they were jealous of their liberty, and though stubborn in maintaining their own views against persecution, they were little disposed to allow others to dissent from them. And yet a full accordance of opinion was impossible; each man claimed, at least in theory, the right to shape his own opinions and conduct by what he

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read in or out of the books of the Old and New Testament.

The extreme seriousness of their lives, the gravity of demeanour, the habitual dwelling upon the life beyond the grave darkened by a gloomy creed, the bareness and poverty of their abodes, the absence or disdain of all the lighter amusements, the very dead level of concord in religious dogmas induced a dismal tone of mind. The letters and sermons of these old Puritans are full of prodigies, strange sights, guns fired in the air, warning voices, and apparitions. The superstitious lore which had followed them from England took vivid and terrible shapes against the dark background of the unknown limitless wilderness: around their clearings was the pathless forest whence during the night came the howlings of wolves and other wild beasts, and sometimes the yells of savage men. These exiles seemed ever on the watch for judgments and tokens of the presence of God or the spiteful tricks of the devil: every calamity, every strange disease which happened to their adversaries, was a sign of the divine wrath: every misfortune to themselves was a trial and a chastening. Winthrop records in his Diary that a man who had sold milk on board a ship crossing the Atlantic for twopence a quart became distracted after he landed, which was traced to his selfishly taking advantage of the scarcity of cows on board. The sagacious governor, however, had doubts whether, under the circumstances, twopence was too high a price for the milk. The company of the ship Charles having disturbed Mr Peter preaching by hooting or hallooing, in their

E

return they were set upon by the Turks and divers of them killed.'

As the magistrates, urged on by the clergy, were disposed to be severe with malefactors and to punish many immoralities and indulgences, it was natural that there should be a call for a written law specifying the offences for which men might be condemned. The charter, however, scarcely allowed them to make laws different from those of England, and in the new colony people were punished for doing things which Laud and the High Commission were anxious to promote and encourage. Winthrop sagaciously observed that they should not try to frame a code, but let customs set into precedents and then harden into law. Though much led by their ministers, the settlers in Massachusetts from the beginning treated marriage as a civil contract to be performed by laymen, probably in opposition to the Catholics, who regarded marriage as a sacrament. In the days of Elizabeth the Brownists had objected to the use of the ring in marriage.

In the administration of justice the magistrates were guided by the Mosaic Code designed for the Israelites three thousand years before. When the Levite copied in the edict, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," he never dreamed that hundreds of thousands of innocent men and women should through this line suffer a death made even crueller than that of the Mosaic Code. Indeed, these stern men did nothing to soften the harshness of the Israelitish law. Fornication was not thought to be treated with sufficient severity by Moses; whipping and loss of franchise were added. Adultery was punished with death both

History of New England, vol. ii., pp. 20 and 22.