Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/44

 12 New England and the Independents. [1593- It will be remembered that the original Virginian Company had two branches one the London Company whose fortunes we have traced, the other the so-called Plymouth Company. In 1607 the latter made an attempt to form a colony. The first expedition, commanded by George Popham and Ralegh Gilbert, landed at the mouth of the river Kennebec, in what is now Maine, but owing to climate and mismanage- ment almost immediately failed. The Company continued to exist, but without any of that energy and activity which marked the Virginian branch. Vessels were sent out to fish, to trade and to explore, but nothing further was done toward the establishment of a colony. The members of the Company seem to have regarded themselves simply as landholders with territorial rights and no specific obligations. In 1620 the Company was reorganised with a new patent, and was henceforth known as the New England Company. But the change does not appear to have brought with it wider schemes or any increase of energy. Colonisation on commercial principles and mainly, though not wholly, for motives of profit had, so far, failed in one instance and had won but incomplete success in another. Now a new force was to be brought into the field. In 1593 a congregation of Independents in London fled to Amsterdam in order to avoid the restrictions and penalties imposed by the English government on their worship. The results of the Hampton Court Conference made matters look even more gloomy for Nonconformists; and two other congregations fled to the Low Countries, one in 1606 from Scrooby, the other somewhat earlier from Gainsborough. It is with the former of these two that we have to deal. Their wanderings, their arrival in America, their early hardships and their later prosperity have been told by one of their chief members, William Bradford, with almost unsurpassable force, dignity, and candour. The refugees did not find the Low Countries altogether an acceptable home, mainly owing to a coarseness and dissoluteness of life, not to be wondered at in a country which had so long been the battle-ground of Western Europe. After some five or six years the leaders of the party began to think of a home beyond the Atlantic, where the members of the little flock might preserve their nationality as Englishmen and their separate individuality as a Church. After some deliberation as to the site for the colony it was decided to enter into negotiations with the Virginia Company. To this end two representatives were sent to England. In anticipation of possible opposition from the Crown, they were armed with a document in which their attitude to the civil power was set forth under seven heads. The document was an admission of the supremacy of the State in religious matters. We can hardly doubt that the concessions made in this document went beyond what a Puritan congregation would have been prepared to make if they had intended to remain in England. At the same time it may be taken as indicative of what we shall find abundantly proved, namely, the conciliatory and