The most prominent among
them, Theophilus Eaton, was a member of the Company of Massachusetts
Bay. Their pastor, John Davenport, was an eloquent preacher and a man of
power. He was a graduate of Oxford, and in 1624 had been chosen vicar
of St. Stephen's parish, in Coleman street, London. When he heard that
Cotton and Hooker were about to sail for America, he sought earnestly to
turn them from what he deemed the error of their ways, but instead he
became converted himself and soon incurred the especial enmity of Laud,
so that it became necessary for him to flee to Amsterdam. In 1636 he
returned to England, and in concert with Eaton organized a scheme of
emigration that included men from Yorkshire, Hertfordshire, and Kent.
The leaders arrived in Boston in the midst of the Antinomian disputes,
and although Davenport won admiration for his skill in battling with
heresy, he may perhaps have deemed it preferable to lead his flock
to some new spot in the wilderness where such warfare might not be
required. The merchants desired a fine harbour and good commercial
situation, and the reports of the men who returned from hunting the
Pequots told them of just such a spot at Quinnipiack on Long Island
Sound. Here they could carry out their plan of putting into practice
a theocratic ideal even more rigid than that which obtained in
Massachusetts, and arrange their civil as well as ecclesiastical affairs
in accordance with rules to be obtained from a minute study of the
Scriptures.
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