ct theory.

On October 28, 1647, there was laid before the assembled Council of
Cromwell's army a draft, worked out by the Levellers, of a new
constitution for England,[69] which later, greatly enlarged and
modified,[70] was delivered to Parliament with the request that it be
laid before the entire English people for signature.[71] In this
remarkable document the power of Parliament was set forth as limited in
a manner similar to that later adopted by the Americans, and particulars
were enumerated which in future should not lie within the legislative
power of the people's representatives. The first thing named was matters
of religion, which were to be committed exclusively to the command of
conscience.[72] They were reckoned among the inherent rights, the
"native rights", which the people were firmly resolved to maintain with
their utmost strength against all attacks.[73]

Here for the first and last time in England was an inherent right of
religious liberty asserted in a proposed law. This right is recognized
to-day in England in legal practice, but not in any expressly formulated
principle.[74]

The religious conditions in England's North American colonies developed
differently.

The compact is celebrated which the persecuted and exiled Pilgrim
Fathers concluded on board the Mayflower, November 11, 1620, before the
founding of New Plymouth. Forty-one men on that occasion signed an act
in which, for the glory of God, the advancement of the Christian faith,
and the honor of their king and country, they declare their purpose to
found a colony. They thereupon mutually promised one another to unite
themselves into a civil body politic, and, for the maintenance of good
order and accomplishment of their proposed object, to make laws, to
appoint officers, and to subject themselves to these.[75]

Therewith began the series of "Plantation Covenants" which the English
settlers, according to their ecclesiastical and political ideas,
believed it necessary to make on founding a new colony. Here they are
only to be considered in their connection with religious liberty.

In 1629 Salem, the second colony in Massachusetts, was founded by
Puritans. Unmindful of the persecutions they themselves had suffered in
their native land, they turned impatiently against such as did not agree
with them in their religious ideas. Roger Williams, a young Independent,
landed in Massachusetts in 1631 and was at once chosen by the community
in Sal