of New York, all of what is now New England, was a wilderness. As early
as 1607 an attempt was made to settle it and a colony was planted on the
coast of Maine by two members of the Plymouth Company, Sir John Popham,
Lord Chief Justice of England, and Sir Ferdinando Gorges, governor of
Plymouth. But the colonists were half starved and frozen, and in the
spring of 1608 gladly went home to England.

Six years later John Smith, the hero of Virginia, explored and mapped
the coast from the Penobscot to Cape Cod. He called the country New
England; one of the rivers, the Charles; and two of the promontories,
Cape Elizabeth and Cape Ann. Three times he attempted to lead out a
colony; but that work was reserved for other men.

%31. The Separatists.%--The reign of Queen Elizabeth had witnessed in
England the rise of a religious sect which insisted that certain changes
should be made in the government and ceremonials of the Established or
State Church of England. This they called purifying the Church, and in
consequence they were themselves called Puritans.[1] At first they did
not intend to form a new sect; but in 1580 one of their ministers, named
Robert Brown, urged them to separate from the Church of England, and
soon gathered about him a great number of followers, who were called
Separatists or Brownists. They boldly asserted their right to worship as
they pleased, and put their doctrines into practice. So hot a
persecution followed, that in 1608 a party, led by William Brewster and
John Robinson, fled from Scrooby, a little village in northern England,
to Amsterdam, in Holland; but soon went on to Leyden, where they dwelt
eleven years.[2]

[Footnote 1: Read Fiske's _Beginnings of New England_, pp. 50-71. The
teacher may read "Rise and Development of Puritanism" in Eggleston's