The king closed the conference by declaring “that if any would not be quiet and show their obedience, they were worthy to be hanged.” Bancroft was made archbishop of Canterbury. The canons of the church now in force were revised and enlarged, and it was enacted that whoever should speak against the Thirty-nine Articles, or the established church, should be excommunicated, put beyond the benefit of law, and subjected to all kinds of injury and injustice. This law was enforced with bitter cruelty; 300 nonconformist ministers, many of whom had been pastors of their congregations for twenty or thirty years, were very soon silenced, while hundreds of brave and conscientious men were imprisoned, fined, and driven into exile. Among those who sought refuge in Holland was the well-known John Robinson, who is generally considered to be the father of the Puritans in New England, and thus the royal bigot and persecutor James became, through the overruling of God’s providence, the means of establishing puritanism on the broad, free soil of America. Through all the oppression and bigotry of this and the preceding reigns, the general intelligence had, however, greatly increased; the struggle between established authority and the growing spirit of popular liberty was becoming more and more determined. “The Bible,” says the author of the “History of Priestcraft,” “had been secretly making a mighty revolution in the popular mind. In the troubles and sufferings which kings and priests had inflicted, it had been the secret and precious companion; its poetry the most magnificent, its maxims the most profound, its promises the most momentous in the world, were not lost on the human heart; its doctrines became more clearly understood, and the spirit of man rose with its dignifying knowledge.” Enlightened, enfranchised, ennobled by the glorious teachings of this divine book, the victims of persecution became the unflinching promulgators of the truth and the liberty for which they suffered. Oppression, imprisonment, fines, spoiling of goods, and death, all were made the means of still further creating in the human soul a necessity for the liberty which was born through the Gospel. CHAPTER VII. THE PILGRIM FATHERS. Holland, which had exhibited a republican character in its conflict with catholic Spain, and the reformed church of which inclined to the opinions of Calvin, offered a desirable retreat for the persecuted Puritans of England; “and hither, in the fall of the year 1608,” says Thomas Prince, the worthy chronicler of New England, “fled divers of Mr. Robinson’s church from the north of England, which had been extremely harassed; some cast into prison, some burnt in their houses, some forced to leave their farms and families;” thither they fled accordingly, for the purity of worship and liberty of conscience.