the Church of England, ever manifesting toward those of a different
faith the spirit of intolerance characteristic of the age.

[1650]

During the civil war in England, Virginia, of course, sided with the
king. When Cromwell had assumed the reins of government he sent an
expedition to require the submission of the colony. An agreement was
made by which the authority of Parliament was acknowledged, while the
colony in return was left unmolested in the management of its own
affairs.

[Illustration: Signature of Berkeley.]

CHAPTER V.

PILGRIM AND PURITAN AT THE NORTH

[1612]

The Pilgrims who settled New England were Independents, peculiar in
their ecclesiastical tenet that the single congregation of godly
persons, however few or humble, regularly organized for Christ's work,
is of right, by divine appointment, the highest ecclesiastical authority
on earth. A church of this order existed in London by 1568; another,
possibly more than one, the "Brownists," by 1580. Barrowe and Greenwood
began a third in 1588, which, its founders being executed, went exiled
to Amsterdam in 1593, subsequently uniting with the Presbyterians there.
These churches, though independent, were not strictly democratic, like
those next to be named.

Soon after 1600 John Smyth gathered a church at Gainsborough in
Lincolnshire, England, which persecution likewise drove to Amsterdam.
Here Smyth seceded and founded a Baptist church, which, returning to
London in 1611 or 1612, became the first church of its kind known to
have existed in England. From Smyth's church at Gainsborough sprang one
at Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire, and this, too, exiled like its parent,
crossed to Holland, finding home in Leyden in 1607 and 1608. Of this
church John Robinson was pastor, and from its bosom came the Plymouth
Colony to New England.

[Illustration: Plymouth Harbor, England.]

[Illustration: Harbor of Provincetown, Cape Cod, where the Pilgrims
landed.]

[1620]

This little band set out for America with a patent from the Virginia
Company, according to James I.'s charter of 1606, but actually began
here as labor-share holders in a sub-corporation of a new organization,
the Plymouth Company, chartered in 1620. Launching in the Mayflower from
Plymouth, where they had paused in their way hither from Holland, they
arrived off the coast of Cape Cod in 1620, December 11th Old Style,
December 21st New Style, and began a settlement, to which they gave the