On the 26th of August twelve gentlemen, among the most eminent in the Puritan party, held a meeting at Cambridge, and resolved to lead a migration to New England, provided the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company and the government established under it could be transferred to that country.  On examination it appeared that no legal obstacle stood in the way.  Accordingly such of the old officers as did not wish to take part in the emigration resigned their places, which were forthwith filled by these new leaders.  For governor the choice fell upon John Winthrop, a wealthy gentleman from Groton in Suffolk, who was henceforth to occupy the foremost place among the founders of New England.  Winthrop was at this time forty-one years of age, having been born in the memorable year of the Armada.  He was a man of remarkable strength and beauty of character, grave and modest, intelligent and scholarlike, intensely religious and endowed with a moral sensitiveness that was almost morbid, yet liberal withal in his opinions and charitable in disposition.  When his life shall have been adequately written, as it never has been, he will be recognized as one of the very noblest figures in American history.  From early youth he had that same power of winning confidence and commanding respect for which Washington was so remarkable; and when he was selected as the Moses of the great Puritan exodus, there was a wide-spread feeling that extraordinary results were likely to come of such an enterprise.

In marked contrast to Winthrop stands the figure of the man associated with him as deputy-governor.  Thomas Dudley came of an ancient family, the history of which, alike in the old and in the new England, has not been altogether creditable.  He represented the elder branch of that Norman family, to the younger branch of which belonged the unfortunate husband of Lady Jane Grey and the unscrupulous husband of Amy Robsart.  There was, however, very little likeness to Elizabeth’s gay lover in grim Thomas Dudley.  His Puritanism was bleak and stern, and for Christian charity he was not eminent.  He had a foible for making verses, and at his death there was found in his pocket a poem of his, containing a quatrain wherein the intolerance of that age is neatly summed up:—­

“Let men of God in courts and churches watch O’er such as do a Toleration hatch, Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice To poison all with heresy and vice.”

Such was the spirit of most of the Puritans of that day, but in the manifestation of it there were great differences, and here was the strong contrast between Dudley and Winthrop,—­a contrast which shows itself in their portraits.  In that of Dudley we see the typical narrow-minded, strait-laced Calvinist for whom it is so much easier to entertain respect than affection.  In that of Winthrop we see a face expressive of what was finest in the age of Elizabeth,—­the face of a spiritual brother of Raleigh and Bacon.