m the Rehoboth church, a
part of whom aided in establishing the church in Swanzey, Massachusetts,
occurred in the same year.

During the Protectorate of Cromwell, all Dissenters enjoyed the largest
liberty of conscience, and, as a result, the church at Swansea grew from
forty-eight to three hundred souls. Around this centre of influence
sprang up several branch churches, and pastors were raised up to care
for them. Mr. Myles soon became the leader of his denomination in Wales,
and in 1651 he was sent as the representative of all the Baptist
churches in Wales to the Baptist ministers' meeting, at Glazier's Hall,
London, with a letter, giving an account of the peace, union, and
increase of the work. As a preacher and worker he had no equal in that
country, and his zeal enabled him to establish many new churches in his
native land. The act of the English Saint Bartholomew's Day, in 1662,
deprived Mr. Myles of the support which the government under Cromwell
had granted him, and he, with many others, chose the freedom of exile to
the tyranny of an unprincipled monarch. It would be interesting for us
to give an account of his leave-taking of his church at Swansea, and of
his associates in Christian labor, and to trace out his passage to
Massachusetts, and to relate the circumstances which led him to search
out and to find the little band of Baptists at Rehoboth. Surely some law
of spiritual gravitation or affinity, under the good hand of God, thus
raised up and brought this under-shepherd to the flock thus scattered in
the wilderness. Nicholas Tanner, Obadiah Brown, John Thomas, and others,
accompanied Mr. Myles in his exile from Swansea, Wales. The first that
is known of them in America was the formation of a Baptist church at the
house of John Butterworth in Rehoboth, whose residence is said to have
been near the Cove in the western part of the present town of East
Providence. Mr. Myles and his followers had probably learned at Boston,
or at Plymouth, of the treatment offered to Holmes and his party, ten
years before, and his sympathies led him to seek out and unite the
elements which persecution had scattered. Seven members made up this
infant church, namely: John Myles, pastor, James Brown, Nicholas Tanner,
Joseph Carpenter, John Butterworth, Eldad Kingsley, and Benjamin Alby.
The principles to which their assent was given were the same as those
held by the Welsh Baptists, as expounded by Mr. Myles. The original
record-bo