Produced by Stephen Hope, Barbara Kosker, Joseph Cooper and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND TEXTBOOK EDITION THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES ALLEN JOHNSON EDITOR GERHARD R. LOMER CHARLES W. JEFFERYS ASSISTANT EDITORS THE FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND A CHRONICLE OF THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTHS BY CHARLES M. ANDREWS [Illustration] NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK & CO. LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD: UNIVERSITY PRESS _Copyright, 1919, by Yale University Press_ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CONTENTS I. THE COMING OF THE PILGRIMS Page 1 II. THE BAY COLONY " 21 III. COMPLETING THE WORK OF SETTLEMENT " 45 IV. EARLY NEW ENGLAND LIFE " 72 V. AN ATTEMPT AT COLONIAL UNION " 88 VI. WINNING THE CHARTERS " 100 VII. MASSACHUSETTS DEFIANT " 116 VIII. WARS WITH THE INDIANS " 129 IX. THE BAY COLONY DISCIPLINED " 147 X. THE ANDROS REGIME IN NEW ENGLAND " 166 XI. THE END OF AN ERA " 194 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE " 201 INDEX " 205 THE FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND CHAPTER I THE COMING OF THE PILGRIMS The Pilgrims and Puritans, whose migration to the New World marks the beginning of permanent settlement in New England, were children of the same age as the enterprising and adventurous pioneers of England in Virginia, Bermuda, and the Caribbean. It was the age in which the foundations of the British Empire were being laid in the Western Continent. The "spacious times of great Elizabeth" had passed, but the new national spirit born of those times stirred within the English people. The Kingdom had enjoyed sixty years of domestic peace and prosperity, and Englishmen were eager to enter the lists for a share in the advantages which the New World offered to those who would venture therein. Both landowning and landholding classes, gentry and tenant farmers alike, were clamoring, the one for an increase of their landed estates, the other for freedom from the feudal restraints which still legally bound them. The land-hunger of neither class could be satisfied in a narrow island where the law and the lawgivers were in favor of the maintenance of feudal rights. The expectations of all were aroused by visions of wealth from the El Dorados of the West, or of profit from commercial enterprises which appealed to the cupidity of capitalists and led to investments that promised speedy and ample returns. A desire to improve social conditions and to solve the problem of the poor and the vagrant, which had become acute since the dissolution of the