Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/97



taking possession of the Countrey for our Savior, and for our Soueraigne Lord the King of England."

The early relations between the new comers and the aborigines seem to have been of the most friendly character, and the Relation of the Successful Beginning of the Lord Baltimore's Plantation in Maryland, from which we have just quoted, is full of the praises of the climate, the soil, the flora and fauna, and the general goodliness of the land. An Eden it must have been in its primeval loveliness!

As ever in Eden, there were serpents. The world was not yet worthy of the lofty ideas of the founder of the Terra Mariæ. The first Provincial Assembly, which met in 1637-38, had many grave questions to discuss, and these grew only graver as the political situation in England became more complicated—the power of the King waning while that of the Puritans waxed.

In 1642, the Churchmen in Virginia passed a Conventicle Act, which bore so heavily upon the non-conforming Puritans that, in 1648, Governor Stone sent an invitation to the persecuted men to come and enjoy the liberties which, in the next year, were to go upon our Statute Books, and to be their glory forever,