[Sidenote:
Threefold danger in the year 1636]
That the government of Charles I. should view with a hostile eye the
growth of a Puritan state in New England is not at all surprising. (1.
From the king, who prepares to attack the infant colony but is fueled by
dissensions at home.) The only fit ground for wonder would seem to be
that Charles should have been willing at the outset to grant a charter
to the able and influential Puritans who organized the Company of
Massachusetts Bay. Probably, however, the king thought at first that it
would relieve him at home if a few dozen of the Puritan leaders could
be allowed to concentrate their minds upon a project of colonization in
America. It might divert attention for a moment from his own despotic
schemes. Very likely the scheme would prove a failure and the
Massachusetts colony incur a fate like that of Roanoke Island; and at
all events the wealth of the Puritans might better be sunk in a remote
and perilous enterprise than employed at home in organizing resistance
to the crown. Such, very likely, may have been the king's motive in
granting the Massachusetts charter two days after turning his Parliament
out of doors. But the events of the last half-dozen years had come to
present the case in a new light. The young colony was not languishing.
Pages:
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151