For a moment the danger seemed alarming; but, as Winthrop says, “the Lord frustrated their design.”  It was noted as a special providence that the ship in which Gorges was to sail was hardly off the stocks when it fell to pieces.  Then the most indefatigable enemy of the colony, John Mason, suddenly died.  The king issued his famous writ of ship-money and set all England by the ears; and, to crown all, the attempt to read the Episcopal liturgy at St. Giles’s church in Edinburgh led straight to the Solemn League and Covenant.  Amid the first mutterings of the Great Rebellion the proceedings against Massachusetts were dropped, and the unheeded colony went on thriving in its independent course.  Possibly too some locks at Whitehall may have been turned with golden keys, [9] for the company was rich, and the king was ever open to such arguments.  But when the news of his evil designs had first reached Boston the people of the infant colony showed no readiness to yield to intimidation.  In their measures there was a decided smack of what was to be realized a hundred and forty years later.  Orders were immediately issued for fortifying Castle Island in the harbour and the heights at Charlestown and Dorchester.  Militia companies were put in training, and a beacon was set up on the highest hill in Boston, to give prompt notice to all the surrounding country of any approaching enemy.

While the ill will of the home government thus kept the colonists in a state of alarm, there were causes of strife at work at their very doors, of which they were fain to rid themselves as soon as possible.  Among all the Puritans who came to New England there is no more interesting figure than the learned, quick-witted pugnacious Welshman, Roger Williams.  He was over-fond of logical subtleties and delighted in controversy.  There was scarcely any subject about which he did not wrangle, from the sinfulness of persecution to the propriety of women wearing veils in church.  Yet, with all this love of controversy, there has perhaps never lived a more gentle and kindly soul.  Within five years from the settlement of Massachusetts this young preacher had announced the true principles of religious liberty with a clearness of insight quite remarkable in that age.  Roger Williams had been aided in securing an education by the great lawyer Sir Edward Coke, and had lately taken his degree at Pembroke College, Cambridge; but the boldness with which he declared his opinions had aroused the hostility of Laud, and in 1631 he had come over to Plymouth, whence he removed two years later to Salem, and became pastor of the church there.  The views of Williams, if logically carried out, involved the entire separation of church from state, the equal protection of all forms of religious faith, the repeal of all laws compelling attendance on public worship, the abolition of tithes and of all forced contributions to the support of religion.  Such views are to-day quite generally adopted by the