troublesome. With a view to
more efficient self-defence, therefore, in 1643 the four colonies of
Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven formed themselves
into a league, under the style of "The United Colonies of New England."
These four little states now contained thirty-nine towns, with an
aggregate population of 24,000. To the northeast of Massachusetts,
which now extended to the Piscataqua, a small colony had at length been
constituted under a proprietary charter somewhat similar to that held by
the Calverts in Maryland. Of this new province or palatinate of Maine
the aged Sir Ferdinando Gorges was Lord Proprietary, and he had
undertaken not only to establish the Church of England there, but also
to introduce usages of feudal jurisdiction like those remaining in the
old country. Such a community was not likely to join the Confederacy;
apart from other reasons, its proprietary constitution and the feud
between the Puritans and Gorges would have been sufficient obstacles.

As for Rhode Island, on the other hand, it was regarded with strong
dislike by the other colonies. It was a curious and noteworthy
consequence of the circumstances under which this little state was
founded that for a long time it became the refuge of all the fanatical
and turbulent people who could not submit to the strict and orderly
governments of Connecticut or Massachusetts. All extremes met on
Narragansett bay. There were not only sensible advocates of religious
liberty, but theocrats as well who saw flaws in the theocracy of
other Puritans. The English world was then in a state of theological
fermentation. People who fancied themselves favoured with direct
revelations from Heaven; people who thought it right to keep the seventh
day of the week as a Sabbath instead of the first day; people who
cherished a special predilection for the Apocalypse and the Book of
Daniel; people with queer views about property and government; people
who advocated either too little marriage or too much marriage; all such
eccentric characters as are apt to come to the surface in periods of
religious excitement found in Rhode Island a favoured spot where they
could prophesy without let or hindrance. But the immediate practical
result of so much discordance in opinion was the impossibility of
founding a strong and well-ordered government. The early history of
Rhode Island was marked by enough of turbulence to suggest the question
whether, after all, at the