them. "We are well weaned," John Robinson wrote, "from the
delicate milk of the mother-country, and inured to the difficulties
of a strange land; the people are industrious and frugal. We
are knit together as a body in a most sacred covenant of the
Lord, of the violation whereof we make great conscience, and
by virtue whereof, we hold ourselves strictly tied to all care
of each other's good and of the whole. It is not with us, as with
men whom small things can discourage."

By 1629, the worst difficulties had been overcome, and the
struggle for mere existence had ended. The little colony, made up
chiefly of hard working men, had passed through every phase of
suffering. Sickness and famine had done their worst. The settlers
were thoroughly acclimated, and as they prospered, more and more
the eyes of Puritan England turned toward them, with a longing for
the same freedom. Laud's hand was heavy and growing heavier, and
as privileges lessened, and one after another found fine, or
pillory, or banishment awaiting every expression of thought, the
eagerness grew and intensified. As yet there had been no
separation from the Mother Church. It had simply "divided into two
great parties, the Prelatical or Hierarchical, headed by Laud, and
the Nonconformist or Puritan." For the latter, Calvin had become
the sole authority, and even as early as 1603, their preachers
made up more than a ninth of the clergy. The points of disagreement
increased steadily, each fresh severity from the Prelatical party
being met by determined resistance, and a stubborn resolution
never to yield an inch of the new convictions. No clearer
presentation of the case is to be found anywhere than in Mason's
life of Milton, the poet's life being absolutely contemporaneous
with the cause, and his own experience came to be that of hundreds.