See "Pitkin's History," pp.

42 and 47.] This happened in 1620, and from that time forwards the emigration went on.

The religious and political passions which ravaged the British Empire during the whole reign of Charles I drove fresh crowds of sectarians every year to the shores of America.

In England the stronghold of Puritanism was in the middle classes, and it was from the middle classes that the majority of the emigrants came.

The population of New England increased rapidly; and whilst the hierarchy of rank despotically classed the inhabitants of the mother-country, the colony continued to present the novel spectacle of a community homogeneous in all its parts.