godly ministers of the nation who profess under that of Independency; or
if those that profess under Presbytery shall be reproaching or speaking
evil of them, traducing and censuring of them, as I would not be willing
to see the day when England shall be in the power of the Presbytery to
impose upon the consciences of others that profess faith in Christ,--so I
will not endure any reproach to them." [Footnote: Speech made September,
1656. Carlyle's _Cromwell_, iv. 234.]

The number of clergymen among the emigrants to Massachusetts was very
large, and the character of the class who formed the colony was influenced
by them to an extraordinary degree. Many able pastors had been deprived in
England for non-conformity, and they had to choose between silence or
exile. To men of their temperament silence would have been intolerable;
and most must have depended upon their profession for support. America,
therefore, offered a convenient refuge. The motives are less obvious which
induced the leading laymen, some of whom were of fortune and consequence
at home, to face the hardships of the wilderness. Persecution cannot be
the explanation, for a government under which Hampden and Cromwell could
live and be returned to Parliament was not intolerable; nor does it appear
that any of them had been severely dealt with. The wish of the Puritan
party to have a place of retreat, should the worst befall, may have had
its weight with individuals, but probably the influence which swayed the
larger number was the personal ascendancy of their pastors, for that
ascendancy was complete. In a community so selected, men of the type of
Baillie must have vastly outnumbered those of the stamp of Cromwell, and
in point of fact their minds were generally cast in the ecclesiastical
mould and imbued with the ecclesiastical feeling. Governor Dudley
represented them well, and at his death some lines were found in his
pocket in which their spirit yet glows in all the fierceness of its
bigotry.