Nevertheless, with their zealous Puritanism, their energy and industry, and the abilities of their Bradfords, Bradstreets, Winslows, Winthrops, Standishes, Endicotts, Hayneses, Hopkinses, Newmans, Williamses, and other prominent governors or assistant-governors, the Confederacy and the Plantations went on prosperously towards their ultimate, though yet unforeseen, destiny in the formation of the United States.

Cromwell, indeed, had a scheme which would have stopped that issue.

He had a scheme for fetching all the Puritans of New England back and planting them splendidly in Ireland.

Communications on the subject had passed as early as 1651, when Ireland had been just reconquered; but naturally without effect.

The New Englanders were not then too numerous perhaps to have been transported to Ireland bodily; but, as one of their historians says, "they had taken root." Their increase, however, for more than a century thenceforward was to be mainly within themselves, for new arrivals from England had become scarce.[1] II.