churches should control any one church:--such were some of the provisions.
The colonies were availing themselves of the unique opportunity afforded
by their emancipation, in the wilderness, from the tyranny and obstruction
of old-world traditions and licensed abuses.

By the increasing body of their brethren in England, meanwhile, New
England was looked upon as a sort of New Jerusalem, and letters from the
leaders were passed from hand to hand like messages from saints. Up to the
time when Charles and Laud were checked by Parliament, the tide of
emigration set so strongly toward the American shores that measures were
taken by the King to arrest it; by 1638, there were in New England more
than twenty-one thousand colonists. The rise of the power of Parliament
stopped the influx; but the succeeding twenty years of peace gave the
much-needed chance for quiet and well-considered growth and development.
The singular prudence and foresight of Winthrop and others in authority,
during this interregnum, was showed by their declining to accept certain
apparent advantages proffered them in love and good faith by their English
friends. A new patent was offered them in place of their royal charter;
but the colonists perceived that the reign of Parliament was destined to
be temporary, and wisely refused. Other suggestions, likely to lead to
future entanglements, were rejected; among them, a proposition from
Cromwell that they should all come over and occupy Ireland. This is as
curious as that other alleged incident of Cromwell and Hampden having been
stopped by Laud when they had embarked for New England, and being forced
to remain in the country which soon after owed to them its freedom from
kingly and episcopal tyranny.

Material prosperity began to show itself in the new country, now that the
first metaphysical problems were in the way of settlement. In Salem they
were building ships, cotton was manufactured in Boston; the export trade