24 RELIGION, COLONISING AND TRADE 
destined to have vital influence on the fortunes of the 
British Empire, began in effect with the emigration of 
the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620. Winthrop, who went 
out ten years later to be the first governor for the 
Massachusetts Bay Company, after it had been decided 
to remove the Company’s seat of government from 
England to America, was as heart whole as any Pilgrim 
Father in devotion to religion; but, as men of low 
estate going forth into the wilderness at the call of 
God, the emigrants of the Mayflower have been a 
beacon in history ; they are, perhaps, the most perfect 
illustration of colonising from religious motives 
simply and solely, and of those motives producing cen- 
trifugal action, not only in the first removal from the 
old home, but also after arrival in the new. New 
England became a scene of varieties of creed—a field 
not of religious tolerance and comprehension but 
of religious differences. According to Heylyn, the 
biographer of Archbishop Laud, the Puritan refugees 
in the Netherlands found that © the country was too 
narrow for them, and the brethren of the Separation 
desited elbow room for fear of interfering with one 
another.” Therefore they went to New England. 
‘The growth of old Rome and New England,’ he 
continued, ‘had the like foundation, both sanctu- 
aries for such of the neighbouring nations as longed 
for novelties and innovations both in Church and 
State.” 1 
The exact opposite to what New England stood 
Y Cyprianus Anglicus, or The History of the Life and Death of the Most 
Reverend and Renowned Prelate William, by Divine Providence Lord 
Archbishop of Canterbury, etc. (1671), by P. Heylyn, D.D., Part II, 
Book IV, ann. 1638, pp. 345-6.