Page:The founding of New England (1921).djvu/16

x to distinguish between its various elements, and to display the conflicting forces at work in the colonies themselves. The old conception of New England history, according to which that section was considered to have been settled by persecuted religious refugees, devoted to liberty of conscience, who, in the disputes with the mother-country, formed a united mass of liberty-loving patriots unanimously opposed to an unmitigated tyranny, has, happily, for many years, been passing. In his own narrative of the facts, based upon a fresh study of the sources, the author has tried to indicate that economic as well as religious factors played a very considerable part in the great migration during the early settlement period, in the course of which over sixty-five thousand Englishmen left their homes for various parts of the New World, of which number approximately only four thousand were to join the New England churches. He has also endeavored to exhibit the workings of the theocracy, and to show how, in the period treated, the domestic struggle against the tyranny exercised by the more bigoted members of the theocratic party was of greater importance in the history of liberty than the more dramatic contest with the mother-country.

While the local narrative is based wholly upon original records, much use has been made also of the rapidly increasing number of scholarly monographs upon particular topics, the indebtedness to which will be found more particularly set forth in the footnotes. It is true that many points—such as land-tenure, in spite of all that has been written upon it — yet remain to be cleared up before we can be quite sure that we understand a number of matters connected with colonial institutions. Nevertheless, so much work of this character has already been done, which has only in part found its way into popular accounts, that it seems as if the time had come for a serious attempt to recast the story of early New England, and to combine these results of recent research with the more modern spirit, in a new presentation of the period.