It was a fortunate miscalculation that brought the Pilgrims to New England.  Had they ventured upon the lands between the Hudson and the Delaware, they would probably have fared worse.  They would soon have come into collision with the Dutch, and not far from that neighbourhood dwelt the Susquehannocks, at that time one of the most powerful and ferocious tribes on the continent.  For the present the new-comers were less likely to be molested in the Wampanoag country than anywhere else.  In the course of the year 1621 they obtained their grant from the Plymouth Company.  This grant was not made to them directly but to the joint-stock company of merchant adventurers with whom they were associated.  But the alliance between the Pilgrims and these London merchants was not altogether comfortable; there was too much divergence between their aims.  In 1627 the settlers, wishing to be entirely independent, bought up all the stock and paid for it by instalments from the fruits of their labour.  By 1633 they had paid every penny, and become the undisputed owners of the country they had occupied.

Such was the humble beginning of that great Puritan exodus from England to America which had so much to do with founding and peopling the United States.  These Pilgrims of the Mayflower were but the pioneers of a mighty host.  Historically their enterprise is interesting not so much for what it achieved as for what it suggested.  Of itself the Plymouth colony could hardly have become a wealthy and powerful state.  Its growth was extremely slow.  After ten years its numbers were but three hundred.  In 1643, when the exodus had come to an end, and the New England Confederacy was formed, the population of Plymouth was but three thousand.  In an established community, indeed, such a rate of increase would be rapid, but it was not sufficient to raise in New England a power which could overcome Indians and Dutchmen and Frenchmen, and assert its will in opposition to the crown.  It is when we view the founding of Plymouth in relation to what came afterward, that it assumes the importance which belongs to the beginning of a new era.

We have thus seen how it was that the political aspirations of James I. toward absolute sovereignty resulted in the beginnings of the Puritan exodus to America.  In the next chapter we shall see how the still more arbitrary policy of his ill-fated son all at once gave new dimensions to that exodus and resulted in the speedy planting of a high-spirited and powerful New England.

CHAPTER III.

THE PLANTING OF NEW ENGLAND.