Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/224

204 receive no alteration these forty-five years or more?" But James was resolute against changes in Church discipline, and matters took their natural course. The first congregation of nonconformists crossed the sea to Holland, where they might feel free to follow their ideal life and develop those principles of a free worship for which they had struggled in vain at home. Thence they sailed to the New World. The beautiful, if pathetic story of the Pilgrim Fathers is well known; every detail of the terrible voyage, of the stout hearts and calm endurance of the stricken travellers to the little settlement of New Plymouth, is familiar. And "over the wintry sea, to the desolate shores of New England," our ancestors carried the manners and customs of their country. As time went on, more and more Nonconformists sailed across the broad Atlantic to make new homes. In 1630 some thousand men of education and culture, of fortune and position, left their English hearths, their estates, their friends, for the privilege of worshipping God as they chose in a new land. "Farewell, dear England; farewell the Church of God in England. We do not go to New England