THE FIRST COMERS 



131 



our houses, and take away our children to be offered to the Idol, as 

 they have done iu t'other countrys. 



The country where you live (that is to say New England) is in great 

 estime ; I and a grat many others, Protestants, intend to go there. A Haven 

 Tell us, if you please, what advantage we can have there, and particu- 

 larly the boors who are accoustumed to plow the ground. If somebody 

 of your country would hazard to come here with a ship to fetch in our 

 French Protestants, he would make great gain. 



Five years previous, iu 1680, some commissiouers dele- 

 gated by the Protestauts of La Rochelle had visited Bostou 

 aud gaiued permissiou for a number of their couutrymen 

 to settle in Massachusetts. But the jd rejected emigration 

 was given up, though two years later twelve persons did 

 find their way to Boston, coming by way of London. 

 They were 6lie Charrou, Frangois Basset, Marie Tissau 

 Par6 and her three daughters, and a widow named 

 Guerry, with her two sons, her son-in-law and two small 

 children. This little company was very hospitably re- 

 ceived by the good people of Boston. They were in abso- 

 lute poverty ; so great was their destitution, and so sym- 

 pathetic were the people for the sufferings which they had 

 undergone for conscience' sake, that the governor and coun- 

 cil recommended that on a certain day all the churches 

 of the neighbourhood should take up a collection to relieve 

 their distress, referring to them as ' ' these Christian suf- 

 ferers." At such a welcome these forlorn pilgrims must 

 have indeed thought that they had at last reached the 

 Promised Laud, and it was probably the news of their 

 kindly reception which caused the Rochellese to look with 

 such yearning eyes towards Boston and Massachusetts. 



Boston 

 Hospitality 



V 



Nor had they any cause to be disappointed when, in 

 1686, a company of them reached the colony. The first 

 ship arrived iu July of that year, coming by way of St. 

 Christopher's. In granting their application for admis- 

 sion to the colony, the council passed an order including 



Free Citizen- 

 ship Granted 



