previous next
[411] America could long be safe against the designs of des-
Chap X.} 1637 April 30.
potism. A proclamation was issued to prevent the emigration of Puritans;1 the king refused his dissenting subjects the security of the wilderness.

It was probably a foreboding of these dangers, which induced the legislation of Massachusetts to exaggerate the necessity of domestic union.2 In England the proclamation was but little regarded. The Puritans, hemmed in by dangers on every side, and at that time having no prospect of ultimate success, desired at any rate to escape from their native country. The privy council interfered to stay a squadron of eight ships, which were in the Thames, preparing to embark for

1638 May 1.
New England.3 It has been said that Hampden and Cromwell were on board this fleet.4 The English ministry of that day might willingly have exiled Hampden; no original authors, except royalists writing on hearsay, allude to the design imputed to him; in America there exists no evidence of his expected arrival; the remark of Hutchinson5 refers to the well-known schemes of Lord Say and Seal and Lord Brooke; there are no circumstances in the lives of Hampden and Cromwell corroborating the story, but many to establish its improbability; there came over, during this summer, twenty ships, and at least three thousand persons;6 and had Hampden designed to

1 Hazard, i. 421.

2 Colony Laws, edition of 1660, 73 III. Mass. Hist. Coll. III. 398.

3 Rushworth, II. 409. Hazard, i. 122

4 Bates and Dugdale, in Neal's Puritans, II. 349. C. Mather, b. i. c. v. s. 7. Neal's N. E. i. 168. Chalmers, 160, 161. Robertson, b. x. Hume, c. LIII Belknap, II. 229. Grahame's U. S. i. 299. Lord Nugent, in his Hampden, i. 254, should not have repeated the error. Edinburgh Review, No. 108. Russel's Cromwell, i. 51. Godwin, in his History of the Commonwealth, i. 11, 12, reproves the conduct which he unjustly imputes to Hampden. The pretended design was indeed unlike Hampden.

5 Hutchinson, i. 44.

6 Winthrop, i. 268.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
New England (United States) (1)
Massachusetts (Massachusetts, United States) (1)
Hampden (Massachusetts, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Hampden (6)
Neal (2)
Anne Hutchinson (2)
Hazard (2)
Richard Cromwell (2)
John Winthrop (1)
Russel (1)
Robertson (1)
Edinburgh Review (1)
C. Mather (1)
Hume (1)
N. Y. Hist (1)
Grahame (1)
Godwin (1)
Dugdale (1)
Hist Coll (1)
Chalmers (1)
Belknap (1)
Bates (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1660 AD (1)
1638 AD (1)
1637 AD (1)
May 1st (1)
April 30th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: