At the close of 1614, the Plymouth company employed Smith to make further explorations in America and to plant a colony. He sailed in the spring of 1615, but was driven back by a tempest. He sailed again on the 4th of July following. His crew became mutinous, and finally his vessel was captured by a French pirate, and they were all taken to France. Smith escaped to England, in an open boat, and arousing the sluggish energies of the Plymouth company and others, they planned vast schemes of colonization, and he was made admiral for life. Eager for gains, some of the members, joining with others, applied for a new charter. It was withheld for a long time. Finally, the king granted a charter [November 3, 1620] to forty of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the realm, who assumed the corporate title of THE COUNCIL OF PLYMOUTH, and superseded the original PLYMOUTH COMPANY. The vast domain of more than a million of square miles, lying between the fortieth and forty-eighth degree of north latitude, and westward to the South Sea, was conveyed to them, as absolute owners of the soil. It was the finest portion of the Continent, and now embraces the most flourishing States and Territories of our confederacy. This vast monopoly was unpropitious, in all its elements, to the founding of an empire. It was not the will of God that mere speculators and mercenary adventurers like these should people this broad land. The same year when that great commercial monopoly was formed [1620], a company of devout men and women in Holland, who had been driven from England by a persecuting government, came to the wilderness of the New World, not to seek gold and return, but to erect a tabernacle, where they might worship the Great God in honest simplicity and freedom, and to plant in the wilderness the foundation of a commonwealth, based upon truth and justice. Who were they? Let History answer.

Because the pope of Rome would not sanction an important measure desired by a greater part of the people, King Henry the Eighth of England defied the authority of the head of the Church, and, by the Act of Supremacy, Parliament also cast off the papal yoke. Yet religious freedom for the people was not a consequence, for the king was virtually pope of Great Britain. Heresy was a high crime; and expressions of freedom of thought and opinion were not tolerated. The doctrines and rituals of the Romish church were enforced, while the authority of the pope was denied. The people discovered that in exchanging spiritual masters, they had gained nothing, except that the thunders of excommunication had lost their effect upon the public mind, and thus one step toward emancipation was gained. Henry's son, Edward, established a more liberal Protestantism in England [1574], and soon the followers of Luther and Calvin drew the tangible line of doctrinal difference which existed between them. The former retained or allowed many of the ceremonials of the church of Rome; the latter were more austere, and demanded extreme simplicity in worship, and great purity of life. For this they were called PURITANS, in derision; a name which soon became honorable. When Parliament established a liturgy for the church, the Puritans refused conformity, for they acknowledged no authority but the Bible in matters of religion. They became a distinct and influential party in the State [1550], and were specially commended by the continental reformers.