Page:Colonization and Christianity.djvu/357

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
AND CHRISTIANITY.
341

to the account of the colonists of Virginia. Lord Baltimore, who first colonised this province in the reign of Charles I., was a Catholic, who sought an asylum for his persecuted brethren of the same faith. Since the change of religion in England, the Catholics had experienced the bitterness of that persecution of which they, while in power, had been so liberal. This seems to have had an excellent effect upon some of them. Lord Baltimore and the colonists who went out with him, being most of them of good Catholic families, determined to allow liberty of conscience, and admitted people of all sorts. This gave great offence to their royalist neighbours in Virginia, who, not permitting any liberty of religious sentiment, found those whom they drove away by their severities flocking into Maryland, and being there well received, strengthening it at their expense. They therefore circulated all kinds of calumnies amongst the Indians against the Maryland Catholics, especially telling them that they were Spaniards—a name of horror to Indian ears. Alarmed by this representation, they fell on the colonists whom they had at first received with their usual kindness, laid waste their fields, massacred without mercy all that they could meet; and were not undeceived till after a long course of patient endurance and friendly representation.

The settlement of New England presents some new features. It was not merely a settlement of English Protestants, but of the Protestants of Protestants—the Puritans. A class of persons having thus made two removes from Popery; having not only protested against the errors of Rome, but against those of the very church which had seceded from Rome, and