NOTE.—Since this chapter was completed Henry Harrisse’s _Jean et Sébastien Cabot_, Paris, 1882, has given us the fullest account of Agnese’s cartographical labors, with much other useful information about the maps from 1497 to 1550; and George Bancroft (_Magazine of American History_, 1883, pp. 459, 460), in defence of his latest revision, has controverted Dr. De Costa’s statement (Ibid., 1883, p. 300), that Gosnold had no permission from Ralegh, and has set forth his reasons for believing that Waymouth ascended the George’s River. De Costa replied to Bancroft in the _Mag. of Amer. Hist._, Aug., 1883, p. 143. CHAPTER VII. THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND.—PURITANS AND SEPARATISTS IN ENGLAND. BY GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS, _Vice-President of the Massachusetts Historical Society._ THERE is no occasion to offer any elaborate plea for making this theme the subject of a chapter of American history, however extended into detail or compressed in its dealing with general themes that history might be. In the origin and development, the strengthening and the triumph, of those agencies which transferred from the Old World to the New the trial of fresh ideas and the experiment with free institutions, the colonists of New England had the leading part. The influence and the institutions which have gone forth from them have had a prevailing sway on the northern half of this continent. Their enterprise—in its seemingly feeble, but from the first earnest and resolute, purpose—took its spring from religious dissension following upon the earlier stages of the Protestant Reformation in England. The grounds, occasions, and results of that dissension thus become the proper subject of a chapter in American history. It is certain that in tracing the early assertion in England of what may be called the principles of dissent from ecclesiastical authority, we are dealing with forces which have wrought effectively on this continent.