The last member of this famous group, Sir Harry Vane junior, was at this time but twenty-three,[895] and he came out much against the wishes of a father who stood as high in the confidence of the queen of England as Strafford did in the affections of the king.[896] “Let him go,” said Charles to the perturbed courtier, when he learned that Harry had turned Puritan and proposed to emigrate—“Let him go; my word for’t, he’ll soon sicken on’t and be back, if you give him consent to remain in those parts for three years.”[897] So the devout boy embarked. On reaching Boston, he was saluted with enthusiasm. His high birth, his sacrifices, his Puritanism, his splendid talents, every thing about him, served to enlist the sober Pilgrims in his favor; and this effect was heightened by his personal beauty, singular learning, and ingratiating manners.[898] As the Bostonians knew him better they liked him better; soon he was the most popular man in the colony; and in 1636 he was elected to fill the gubernatorial chair—elected over the heads of Winthrop, and Dudley, and the elders of our Israel, which they might and did look upon as a freak of democratic strategy quite superfluous.[899] The first public act of the three friends was, to placate a long smouldering feud between Winthrop and Dudley. Winthrop was accused of over-leniency in his politics; Dudley was charged with undue severity. A friendly convention was held; the questions at issue were kindly talked over. Vane and Peters counselled mutual forbearance; and the quarrel ended with a “loving reconciliation” never afterwards broken.[900] Some little time after Winthrop and Dudley, under Vane’s auspices, had given each other the kiss of peace and gone home arm in arm, with the fire of their differences definitively quenched, measures were matured to plant a college in New England. Nothing more finely exhibits the wisdom of the Pilgrim Fathers than their watchful and ample provision for education, which Bacon has fitly termed the “sheet-anchor of peaceful commonwealths.” In their estimation, its importance was second to nothing but religion, whose handmaid it was. They longed to rear a race of cultured men—to plant a school which should elbow out of America those wicked universities which were then the pests of Europe—vicious sinks which Beza called _Flabella Satanæ_, Satan’s fans; and which Luther styled _Cathedras pestilentiæ et antichristi luminaria_, seats of pestilence and beacons of antichrist; where, under the tuition of the Jesuits, immorality was made a fine art, and ferocity was taught as a cardinal virtue.