It is to the same influence that religious liberty in England has been enlarged from time to time; and, at this day, it is to the exertions and influence of liberal Churchmen, both in and out of Parliament, more than to any independent influence of Puritan dissenters, that civil and religious liberty are making gradual and great progress in Great Britain and Ireland--a liberty which, I believe, would ere this have been complete but for the prescriptive, intolerant and persecuting spirit and practice of the Puritans of the seventeenth century.
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 58: It appears that the cause of dissatisfaction among the Puritan clergy of the Church, and of the emigration of many of them and of their lay friends to New England, was not the Prayer Book worship of the Church (abolished by Endicot at Massachusetts Bay), but the enforced reading of the Book of Sports, in connection with "the rigorous proceedings to enforce ceremonies;" for Rushworth, Vol.II., Second Part, page 460, Anno 1636, quoted by the American antiquarian, Hazard, Vol.

I., p.

440, states as follows: "The severe censures in the _Star Chamber_, and the greatness of the fines and the rigorous proceedings to impose ceremonies, the suspending and silencing of multitudes of ministers, for not reading in the Church the Book of Sports to be exercised on the Lord's Day, caused many of the nation, both ministers and others, to sell their estates, and set sail for New England (a late Plantation in America), where they held a Plantation by patent from the Crown."] [Footnote 59: History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, Vol.

I., pp.
19, 20.

It appears, however, that within a month after Mr.Winthrop's arrival at Massachusetts Bay, both he and the Deputy-Governor Dudley joined the new Endicot and Higginson Church; for Mr.Holmes in his Annals says: "A fleet of 14 sail, with men, women and children, and provisions, having been prepared early in the year to make a firm plantation in New England, 12 of the ships arrived early in July [1630] at Charlestown.