time a troop of exiled believers, who termed themselves pilgrims, and who in fact were seeking a refuge in Virginia, had been driven further north, where they founded New Plymouth. After existing for ten years, the colony reckoned no more than three hundred members, and it still lacked legal recognition. But the increasing ecclesiastical oppression which prevailed in England now impelled a number of families of some property and position in Suffolk, Rutland, Lincolnshire, and Northamptonshire, to turn their steps in the same direction. Their principal object was to erect a bulwark in these distant regions against the kingdom of Antichrist, which was being extended by the [A.D. 1637.] Jesuits[77]. For they thought that they had to fear lest the English Church also should fall a victim to the ruin which had overtaken so many others. How much better, they imagined, would the faithful in the Palatinate and in Rochelle have done, if they had seized the right moment to secure an asylum for the exercise of their religion on the other side of the ocean! That country in which they could best serve God seemed to them their fatherland. As it conduced to their safety that they should not cross the sea as fugitives without rights, they obtained for themselves a transfer of Massachusetts Bay and the neighbouring territory, drawn up according to the forms of English law. But even this was not enough to satisfy them, for they did not wish to be governed from England, after the fashion of other colonies. They did not decide on transplanting themselves until they had received by charter the right of transferring the government of the colony to the other continent. John Winthrop, if not in wealth, in which some others surpassed him, yet in descent and position the most distinguished among those who conducted the enterprise was the first governor of the society and of the colony. In the year 1630 the emigrants, numbering about 1500, crossed to America in seventeen ships, sailing from different ports. But year by year other expeditions followed them[78]. For on this side of the water the pre-eminence accorded to the English Church was constantly becoming more decided, while on that side Presbyterianism, in the strict form in which it was now embodied, had free scope. In the year 1638 the colonists were reckoned at 50,000, and they had already established a number of settlements in the country. And this colony even then appeared a place of refuge for political exiles. We must certainly reject as unfounded what has been so often related and repeated, that Hampden and Pym were hindered by the government itself from going to America: but it is true that they had entertained the thought of going. Their names are found on the list of [A.D. 1637.] those to whom the Earl of Warwick assigned as a settlement a large tract of coast which he had acquired[79].