CHAPTER VIII. ROYAL GOVERNMENT

In November, 1620, there sailed into a quiet harbor on the coast of what is
now Massachusetts a ship named the Mayflower, having on board one hundred
and two English Non-conformists, men and women and with them a few
children. These latest colonists held a patent from the Virginia Company
and have left in writing a statement of their object: "We . . . having
undertaken, for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith,
and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in
the northern parts of Virginia--". The mental reservation is, of course,
"where perchance we may serve God as we will!" In England there obtained in
some quarters a suspicion that "they meant to make a free, popular State
there." Free -- Popular -- Public Good! These are words that began, in the
second quarter of the seventeenth century, to shine and ring. King and
people had reached the verge of a great struggle. The Virginia Company was
divided, as were other groups, into factions. The court party and the
country party found themselves distinctly opposed. The great, crowded
meetings of the Company Sessions rang with their divisions upon policies
small and large. Words and phrases, comprehensive, sonorous, heavy with the
future, rose and rolled beneath the roof of their great hall. There were
heard amid warm discussion: Kingdom and
Colony -- Spain -- Netherlands -- France -- Church and State -- Papists and
Schismatics -- Duties, Tithes, Excise Petitions of
Grievances -- Representation -- Right of Assembly. Several years earlier the
King had cried, "Choose the Devil, but not Sir Edwyn Sandys!" Now he
declared the Company "just a seminary to a seditious parliament!" All
London resounded with the clash of parties and opinions.* "Last week the
Earl of Warwick and the Lord Cavendish fell so foul at a Virginia . . .
court that the lie passed and repassed . . . . The factions . . . are grown