SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TO 1660 23 
who had been a great asset to Virginia in the critical 
first years of that colony, and who gave New England 
its name, wrote a ‘ Description of New England,’ 
designed to further the work of its colonisation, which 
had so far hung fire. In this, as in other of his 
writings, he was eloquent as to the duty of convert- 
ing the heathen. ‘Religion, above all things, should 
move us (especially the clergy), if we were religious, 
to show our Faith by our works in converting those 
poor savages to the knowledge of God, seeing what 
pains the Spaniards take to bring them to their 
adulterated faith ’ ; and he deplored his countrymen’s 
‘ want of charity to these poor savages, whose country 
we challenge, use and possess.” It will be seen that 
something substantial was done in New England a 
little later towards bringing the Gospel to the heathen, 
but first attention must be given to the driving power 
of religion in the colonisation of that part of the coast 
of North America. 
In a eulogistic pamphlet on New England, written 
in 1689, the writer claimed that * New England differs 
from other foreign plantations in respect of the grounds 
and motives, inducing the first planters to remove into 
that American desert; other plantations were built 
upon wotldly interests, New England upon that 
which is purely religious . . .1 As to the Liturgy, 
Ceremonies, and Church Government by Bishops, 
they were and are Nonconformists.”2 New England, 
1 A Description of New England, by Captain John Smith (1616), 
The English Scholar’s Library, pp. 217 and 229. 
t Force’s Tracts, vol. iv : A Brief Relation of the State of New England 
from the beginning of that Plantation to this Present Year (London, 10689), 
p. 3.