The East India Company had
received its charter in 1600, and the naval defeat of Spain had opened
the sea to all men; but, with the doubtful exception of Newfoundland,
England secured no permanent footing outside the British Isles until
after the crowns of England and Scotland had been united.
This personal union can hardly be called part of the expansion of
England, but it had been prepared by some assimilation and cooperation
between the two peoples, and it was followed by a great deal more. The
plantation of Ulster by English and Scots after the flight of the Irish
earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell in 1607 is one illustration, and Nova
Scotia is another; but Virginia, the first colony of the empire, was a
purely English enterprise, and it cradled the first-born child of the
Mother of Parliaments. To Virginia men went for profit; principle drove
them to New England. The Pilgrim Fathers, who sailed in the
_Mayflower_ in 1620, had separated from the church and meant to
separate from the state, and to set up a polity the antithesis of that
of Laud and the Stuarts. But there was something in common between
them; the Puritans, too, wanted uniformity, and believed in their right
to compel all to think, or at least to worship, alike. Schism, however,
appeals with ill grace and little success to authority; and
dissentients from the dissenters formed Independent offshoots from New
England. But all these Puritan communities in the north were different
in character from Virginia in the south; they consisted of democratic
townships, Virginia of plantations worked by slaves.
Pages:
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112