The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the PeopleEggleston, Edward
History
The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the People
Eggleston, Edward
United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
During the period of the greatest excitement over the Hutchinson case
John Davenport, a noted Puritan minister of London, had been in
Massachusetts. Like many other emigrant divines of the time he brought
a migrant parish with him seeking a place to settle. Davenport arrived
in June, 1637, and took part against the Antinomians in the synod.
After examining every place offered them in Massachusetts, he and his
friends refused all and resolved to plant a new colony. The people
were Londoners and bent on trade, and Massachusetts had no suitable
place for their settlement left. The bitterness of the Hutchinson
controversy may have had influence in bringing them to this decision,
and the preparations of Laud to subject and control Massachusetts
perhaps had weight in driving them to seek a remoter settlement.
Davenport had ideals of his own, and the earthly paradise he sought to
found was not quite Cotton's nor was it Hooker's. He and his followers
planted the New Haven colony in 1638. In this little colony church and
state were more completely blended than in Massachusetts. The
government was by church members only, to the discontent of other
residents, and in 1644 New Haven adopted the laws of Moses in all
their rigor. The colony was united with Connecticut by royal charter
at the Restoration, after which the saints no longer sat upon thrones
judging the tribes of Israel.
CONCLUSION.
[Sidenote: Later English emigrations to New England.]
[Sidenote: Lord Maynard to Laud, 17 March, 1638, in Sainsbury.]
[Sidenote: Savage's Winthrop's Journal, i, 319, 320, 322.]
[Sidenote: Rushworth, i, Part II, 409, 718.]
[Sidenote: Josselyn's Rarities, 108.]
The emigration to New England from the mother country was quickened by
the troubles that preceded the civil war. In 1638 it reached its
greatest height, having been augmented perhaps by agricultural
distress. Fourteen ships bound for New England lay in the Thames at
one time in the spring of that year. There was alarm at the great
quantity of corn required for the emigrants, lest there should not be
enough left in London to last till harvest. "Divers clothiers of great
trading" resolved to "go suddenly," in which we may see, perhaps,
evidence of bad times in the commercial world. Some parishes it was
thought would be impoverished. Laud was asked to put a stop to the
migration; but the archbishop was busy trying to compel the Scots to
use the prayer book. Most of the lords of the Council were favorable
to New England; the customs officers purposely neglected to search for
contraband goods, and the ships, twenty in all, got away with or
without license, and brought three thousand passengers to Boston. But
the tide spent itself about this time, and by 1640 emigration to the
New England colonies had entirely ceased. About twenty-one thousand
two hundred people had been landed in all.
[Sidenote: Cavalier emigration to Virginia.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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