INTRODUCTION. XXV
'equally unpromising, and boded ill for the future. In the first four years of his reign, Charles had summoned three Parliaments, which he had speedily dissolved, because they so scantil}^ supplied him with the money which he demanded, but preferred rather to occupy themselves with the rehearsal of their wrongs, which they finally embodied in the Petition of Right. Once more only after that did the Parliament meet, (in January, 1629,) to be then abruptly dissolved, and to remain in abeyance for nearly twelve years.
The position of those who proposed to go over to America was more disagreeable than dangerous. Their peril, if any, was prospective, not present. In this respect their case was very unlike that of the Separatists who colo- nized Pl3anouth. The Massachusetts men professed many years later that "our libertie to walke in the faith of the gofpell with all good confcience, according to the order of the gofpell, . . . was the caufe of our tranfporting our- felves with our wives, little ones, and our fubflance, from that pleafant land over the Atlantick ocean into the vail wildernefs." * But it is evident from the character of the first colonists, and the nature of their public acts, that they had a great politico-religious scheme to carry out. They came here to form a state which should be governed accord- ing to their own peculiar religious ideas ; not solely to seek an asylum from oppression.
On the 26th of August, 1629, Dudley, with eleven others, signed an agreement at Cambridge, whereby they pledged themselves to remove with their families to New England by the first of the next March, provided the whole govern- ment, together with the patent, should be legally transferred
- Hutchinson's Collection, p. 326.
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