nd the
aid which the merchants of Boston in Lincolnshire gave to the
realization of this project was acknowledged in the name of its
capital. At the moment when he was dissolving his third Parliament
Charles granted the charter which established the colony of
Massachusetts; and by the Puritans at large the grant was at once
regarded as a Providential call. Out of the failure of their great
constitutional struggle and the pressing danger to "godliness" in
England rose the dream of a land in the West where religion and liberty
could find a safe and lasting home. The Parliament was hardly dissolved
when "conclusions" for the establishment of a great colony on the other
side of the Atlantic were circulating among gentry and traders, and
descriptions of the new country of Massachusetts were talked over in
every Puritan household. The proposal was welcomed with the quiet, stern
enthusiasm which marked the temper of the time; but the words of a
well-known emigrant show how hard it was even for the sternest
enthusiasts to tear themselves from their native land. "I shall call
that my country," wrote the younger Winthrop in answer to feelings of
this sort, "where I may most glorify God and enjoy the presence of my
dearest friends." The answer was accepted, and the Puritan emigration
began on a scale such as England had never before seen. The two hundred
who first sailed for Salem were soon followed by John Winthrop with
eight hundred men; and seven hundred more followed ere the first year of
personal government had run its course. Nor were the emigrants, like
the earlier colonists of the South, "broken men," adventurers,
bankrupts, criminals; or simply poor men and artisans, like the Pilgrim
Fathers of the _Mayflower_. They were in great part men of the
professional and middle classes; some of them men of large landed
estate, some zealous clergymen like Cotton, Hooker, and Roger Williams,
some shrewd London lawyers, or young scholars from Oxford. The bulk were
God-fearing farmers from Lincolnshire and the Eastern counties. They
desired in fact "only the best" as sharers in their enterprise; men
driven forth from their fatherland not by earthly want, or by the greed
of gold, or by the lust of adventure, but by the fear of God, and the
zeal for a godly worship. But strong as was their zeal, it was not
without a wrench that they tore themselves from their English homes.
"Farewell, dear England!" was the cry which burst from the first