a distance, as would render any control or responsibility over them wholly visionary. They were content therefore to get what they could, hoping, that the future might furnish more ample opportunities for success; that their usurpations of authority would not be closely watched; or that there might be a silent indulgence, until the policy of the crown might feel it a duty to yield, what it was now useless to contend for, as a dictate of wisdom and justice.[1] The charter did not include any clause providing for the free exercise of religion or the rights of conscience, (as has been often erroneously supposed;) and the monarch insisted upon an administration of the oath of supremacy to every person, who should inhabit in the colony; thus exhibiting a fixed determination to adhere to the severe maxims of conformity so characteristic of his reign.[2] The first emigrants, however, paid no attention to this circumstance; and the very first church planted by them was independent in all its forms, and repudiated every connexion with Episcopacy, or a liturgy.[3]
§ 65. But a bolder step was soon afterwards taken by the company itself. It was ascertained, that little success would attend the plantation, so long as its affairs were under the control of a distant government, knowing little of its wants and insensible to its difficulties.[4] Many persons, indeed, possessed of fortune and character, warmed with religious zeal, or suffering under religious intolerance, were ready to embark in the enterprise, if the corporation should be removed, so that the powers of government might be exercised by the