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feeble influence compared with the consequences of
the attempt at a permanent establishment near
Cape Ann; for
White, a minister of
Dorchester, a Puritan, but not a separatist, breathed into the enterprise a higher principle than that of the desire of gain.
Roger Conant, having already left New Plymouth for
Nantasket, through a brother in
England, who was a friend of
White, obtained the agency of the adventure.
A year's experience proved to the company, that their speculation must change its form, or it would produce no results; the merchants, therefore, paid with honest liberality all the persons whom they had employed, and abandoned the unprofitable scheme.
But
Conant, a man of extraordinary vigor, ‘inspired as it were by some superior instinct,’ and confiding in the active friendship of
White, succeeded in breathing a portion
of his sublime courage into his three companions; and, making choice of
Salem, as opening a convenient place of refuge for the exiles for religion, they resolved to remain as the sentinels of Puritanism on the
Bay of
Massachusetts.
1
The design of a plantation was now ripening in the mind of
White and his associates in the south-west of
England.
About the same time, some friends in
Lincolnshire fell into discourse about
New England; im-
agination swelled with the thought of planting the pure gospel among the quiet shades of
America; it seemed better to depend on the benevolence of uncultivated nature and the care of
Providence, than to endure the constraints of the
English laws and the severities of the
English hierarchy.
