constantly in mind that these English colonizers represented no
single type of the national character. There were many men of
many minds even within the contracted cabin of the Mayflower. The
"sifted wheat" was by no means all of the same variety.

For Old England was never more torn by divergent thought and
subversive act than in the period between the death of Elizabeth
in 1603 and the Revolution of 1688. In this distracted time who
could say what was really "English"? Was it James the First or
Raleigh? Archbishop Laud or John Cotton? Charles the First or
Cromwell? Charles the Second or William Penn? Was it Churchman,
Presbyterian, Independent, Separatist, Quaker? One is tempted to
say that the title of Ben Jonson's comedy "Every Man in his
Humour" became the standard of action for two whole generations
of Englishmen, and that there is no common denominator for
emigrants of such varied pattern as Smith and Sandys of Virginia,
Morton of Merrymount, John Winthrop, "Sir" Christopher Gardiner
and Anne Hutchinson of Boston, and Roger Williams of Providence.
They seem as miscellaneous as "Kitchener's Army."

It is true that we can make certain distinctions. Virginia, as
has often been said, was more like a continuation of English
society, while New England represented a digression from English
society. There were then, as now, "stand-patters" and
"progressives." It was the second class who, while retaining very
conservative notions about property, developed a fearless
intellectual radicalism which has written itself into the history
of the United States. But to the student of early American
literature all such generalizations are of limited value. He is
dealing with individual men, not with "Cavalier" or "Roundhead"