Even this captain of yours--who knows?--at last might have won me,
Old and rough as he is, but now it never can happen."

John Alden pressed the suit in behalf of his soldier friend, secretly
hoping, it is to be feared, that Priscilla would not take him too much in
earnest, when, continues Longfellow:

"Archly the maiden smiled, and with eyes over-running with laughter.
Said, in a tremulous voice: 'Why don't you speak for yourself, John?'"

John did not speak for himself--at least not directly, on that occasion,
but he did later on, and shortly afterward the marriage of John Alden and
Priscilla Mullins was celebrated with all the display that the Plymouth
settlers could afford. Captain Standish did not blame Alden, but he did
not remain long near the scene of his disappointment, moving, in 1626, to
Duxbury, Massachusetts. He lived to a hale old age, respected both for
his private virtues and his public services.

CHAPTER VI.

The Puritan Immigration--Wealth and Learning Seek These Shores--Charter
Restrictions Dead Letters--A Stubborn Struggle for Self-government--
Methods of Election--The Early Government an Oligarchy--The Charter of
1691--New Hampshire and Maine--The New Haven Theocracy--Hartford's
Constitution--The United Colonies--The Clergy and Politics--Every
Election Sermon a Declaration of Independence.

John Endicott's settlement at Salem, and the large immigration which
followed the granting of a royal patent to the Massachusetts Bay Company,
together with the transfer of the charter and corporate powers of the
company from England to Massachusetts, led to the growth of a powerful
Puritan commonwealth which overshadowed and ultimately absorbed the
feeble settlement at Plymouth. The natal day of New England was that on
which John Winthrop landed at Salem, with nine hundred immigrants in the
summer of 1630, bringing not merely virtue, muscle and brawn, such as
carried the Pilgrims through their appalling experience, but wealth and
substance, learning and art, men to command as well as men to obey. From
that time, except during the season of depression which followed King
Philip's war, New England went steadily forward in population, prosperity
and political power. Her rulers were well able to meet and defeat their
would-be oppressors in the field of diplomacy, and now defying, now
ignoring and again pretending to yield to royal dictation, Massachusetts
never gave up the principles which