Free Penguin History of the United States of America by Hugh Brogan Page B

William Laud, created bishop in 1621, Bishop of London in 1628, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. Over-zealous and over-sure of himself he was, in the end, to do as much as any man (next the King) to bring down the old order in England; but before that he mightily helped to bring about another important work, the Great Migration of thousands of Puritans to New England, there to be free of him and hold up the model of a Reformed church to their unhappy countrymen at home.
    Other impulses too pushed them westwards, as they had pushed the Virginians before: impulses which, throughout this time, were speckling the Atlantic coast, from Newfoundland southwards, with white men’s habitations. As a result of the depression, land-hunger and the quest for trade were stronger than ever. Not only that, it was an era when mounting incompetence and remoteness were driving the Stuart monarchy into ruinously arbitrary courses: it was not so good to be an Englishman as it had been. But there can be no doubt that the religious impulse, as such, was predominant, indeed sufficient by itself to account for this ‘Puritan Hegira’. 18 It was intimately connected, of course, with the other forces mentioned. Two-fifths of the emigrants seem to have come from the cloth counties. The King’s incompetent despotism was a seamless web, oppressing the political and economic as well as the religious life of his subjects, with Star Chamber as well as High Commission, since religion, labour and politics were interfused. But none of this need have been true, and the Puritans would still have sailed. Laud silenced the godly preachers, enforced conformity, frustrated all attempts to puritanize the Church of England from within. More and more the Puritans found God’s work to be hampered in England; they must pursue it elsewhere.
    It is unnecessary to elaborate the process which led to the great decision. The propaganda of a generation had pointed the way, and the Pilgrims had made it seem practicable. Laud made the matter urgent. Earlier efforts were crowned and superseded by the foundation, in 1629, of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which inherited a struggling plantation at Naumkeag (now Salem) in New England; and in 1630 it put a fleet to sea of eleven ships, carrying 700 passengers, 240 cows, sixty horses, the royal charter of theCompany (so that self-government was legally possible in New England) 19 and a leader, the Governor of the Company and the colony, John Winthrop (1588–1650), the first great American.
    Winthrop was of the same astonishing gentry generation as Pym, Hampden and Oliver Cromwell; nor was his achievement less than theirs. Like Cromwell, he was a decaying gentleman: his estate, Groton in Suffolk, was at the heart of the region injured by the decline of the Old Draperies. Like Cromwell, though he was far from being an ordinary man, an ordinary man could have been made out of him. His natural tastes were those of a straightforward countryman: he liked food, drink and field sports; was extremely uxorious (four wives, sixteen children); hated London. Like Cromwell, his soul had early been fired by Puritanism; like Cromwell, he had little or no sense of humour; like Cromwell, his chance came at the age of forty.
    There the resemblance ceases. There were traces of a high generosity and an intellectual distinction in Winthrop which Cromwell never attained. There was no whiff of sulphur about him, none of the Cromwellian blind groping to his destiny. Winthrop was eminently reasonable. He wrestled intelligently with his temptations, in the process discovering the great strength of his character and the joys of a life of challenge. His days were marked throughout by an earnest and honest attempt to mould himself and his society according to the will of God. But he made no impossible demands of himself and his fellows. His religion reflected his character, as a man’s religion always does, rather more than it shaped it.
    Winthrop was able,