130 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE 
Very different from this was the actual course of 
events. Instead of this solid growth, we find within 
the first ten years after Winthrop’s arrival in Massa- 
chusetts Bay that while his colony was still in the 
weakness of infancy, even while its chief poverty, as 
John Cotton said, was poverty in men, the new 
arrivals instead of reinforcing it, marched off into the 
wilderness, heedless of danger, and formed new colo- 
nies for themselves. This phenomenon is so singular 
as to demand explanation, and the explanation is not 
far to seek. We shall find it in the guiding purpose 
which led the Puritans of that day to cross the ocean 
in quest of new homes. | 
What was that guiding purpose? This is a subject 
upon which cheap moralizing has abounded. We have 
been told that the Puritans came to New England in 
search of religious liberty, and that with reprehensible 
want of consistency, they proceeded to trample upon 
religious liberty as ruthlessly as any of the churches 
that had been left behind in the old world. We often 
hear it said that Mrs. Hemans laboured under a fond 
delusion when she wrote 
“ They have left unstained what there they found, 
Freedom to worship God.” 
By no means! cry the modern critics of the Puritans; 
their record in respect of religious freedom was as far 
as possible from stainless. From much of the modern 
writing on this well-worn theme one would almost sup- 
pose that religious bigotry had never existed in the 
world until the settlement of New England; one would 
almost be led to fancy that racks and thumb-screws 
and the stake had never been heard of. 
