Henry Richard Fox
Vassall, is the present Lord Holland, Baron Holland in Lincolnshire, and
Foxley in Wilts." (Playfair's British Family Antiquities, Vol. II., p.
182.)]

[Footnote 21: Moore's Lives of the Governors of New Plymouth, pp.
228-230.]

CHAPTER III.

THE PURITANS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COMPANY AND THEIR GOVERNMENT,
COMMENCING IN 1629.

PART I.

FIRST SETTLEMENT--ROYAL CHARTER GRANTED.

English Puritanism, transferred from England to the head of
Massachusetts Bay in 1629, presents the same characteristics which it
developed in England. In Massachusetts it had no competitor; it
developed its principles and spirit without restraint; it was absolute
in power from 1629 to 1689, and during that sixty years it assumed
independence of the Government to which it owed its corporate existence;
it made it a penal crime for any emigrant to appeal to England against a
local decision of Courts or of Government; it permitted no oath of
allegiance to the King, nor the administration of the laws in his name;
it allowed no elective franchise to any Episcopalian, Presbyterian,
Baptist, Quaker, or Papist. Every non-member of the Congregational
Churches was compelled to pay taxes and bear all other Puritan burdens,
but was allowed no representation by franchise, much less by eligibility
for any office.

It has been seen that the "_Pilgrim_ Fathers" commenced their settlement
at New Plymouth in 1620--nine years before the "_Puritan_ Fathers"
commenced their settlement on the opposite side of Massachusetts Bay,
making Boston their ultimate seat of government. The Pilgrim Fathers and
their descendants were professedly congregational separatists from the
Church of England; they had fled by stealth, under severe sufferings,
from persecution in England to Holland, where they had resided eleven
years and upwards, and where they had learned the principles of
religious toleration and liberty--the fruit of Dutch Arminian advocacy
and suffering. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Company emigrated
directly from England, on leaving which they professed to be members of
the Church of England; their emigration commenced in 1628, the very year
that Charles the First, having quarrelled with and dissolved the last of
three Parliaments in less than four years, commenced his eleven years'
rule without a Parliament. During that eleven years a constant current
of emigration flowed from England to Massachusetts Bay, to the exten