Prayer.
Later he left the colony for New England.

This persecution, although not severe enough to stamp out dissent in
Virginia, could but arouse among the Puritans a profound dissatisfaction
with the existing government, and a desire to cooeperate with their
brethren of England in the great contest with the King. Although not
strong enough to raise the Parliamentary standard in the colony and to
seek religious freedom at the sword's point, the Puritans formed a
strong nucleus for a party of opposition to the King and his Governor.

Moreover, in addition to the comparatively small class of Puritans,
there must have been in the colony hundreds of men, loyal to the
established church, who yet desired a more liberal government both in
England and in Virginia. A strong middle class was developing which must
have looked with sympathy upon the cause of the English Commons and with
jealousy upon the power of the Virginia Governor and his Council. There
is positive evidence that many poor men had been coming to Virginia from
very early times, paying their own passage and establishing themselves
as peasant proprietors. Wills still preserved show the existence at this
period of many little farms of five or six hundred acres, scattered
among the great plantations of the wealthy. They were tilled, not by
servants or by slaves, but by the freemen that owned them. Depending for
food upon their own cattle, hogs, corn, fruit and vegetables, and for
the other necessities of life upon their little tobacco crops, the poor
farmers of Virginia were developing into intelligent and useful
citizens. They constituted the backbone of a distinct and powerful
middle class, which even at this early period, had to be reckoned with
by aristocracy and Governor and King.

This section of the population was constantly being recruited from the
ranks of the indentured servants. The plantations of the rich were
tilled chiefly by bonded laborers, brought from the mother country. So
long as land was plentiful in Virginia the chief need of the wealthy was
for labor. Wage earners could not supply this need, for the poor man
would not till the fields of others when he could have land of his own
almost for the asking. So the planters surmounted this difficulty by
bringing workmen to the colony under indenture, to work upon their farms
for a certain number of years. Many a poor Englishman, finding the
struggle for existence too severe at home, thus surrendered