46

BRITISH COLONIAL POLICY

in 1620, delegates from the puritans resident at Leyden proceeded to England to obtain leave of settlement from the Virginia Company, their case was favourably presented by the Secretary of State, Sir Robert Naunton. That the King preferred that their nonconformity should be connived at, rather than expressly recognized, is not surprising ; neither was the failure of the grant from the Virginia Company in any way due to religious objections. On the contrary, after the charter was granted to the Plymouth Company for New England, the Mayflower emigrants obtained (as we have seen), without difficulty, from that Company, a patent for the lands on which they had settled. With respect to the Massachusetts Bay Company, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, one of the founders of the Plymouth Company, writes that when the action of King Charles 1 “took all hope of reformation of church government from many, not affecting episcopal jurisdiction, nor the usual practice of the common prayers of the Church . . . some of the discreeter sort, to avoid what they found themselves subject unto, made use of their friends to procure from 1628. the Council of the Affairs of New England to settle a Colony within their limits.” In these circumstances in the following year, no difficulty seems to have been experienced in obtaining the Royal Charter, nor (as we have noted) is any mention made of religious conformity in the document itself, In 1633, moreover, the Massachusetts Colony was arraigned before the Privy Council, one charge being that it had become wholly separate from the Church and laws of England, and yet at the termination of the proceedings the King said 2 that he would have “ them severely punished who did abuse his governour and the plantation,” and it was learned from members of the Privy Council, says Winthrop, 3 “ that his Majesty did not intend to impose the ceremonies of the Church of England upon us ; for that it was considered that it was the freedom from such things that made people come over to us ; and it was credibly informed to the

1 Gorges’ “ Briefe Narrative, &c.,” Mass. Hist. So., 3rd ser., Vol. VI.

2 Winthrop, Hist, of N. England, Vol. I. p. 123. 3 Vol. I. p. 100.