ested and instructed, it is that which concerns the first planting of the Church on this Continent. By means of School books, Tales, Poems and Anniversary Orations, the belief has been wrought into the common mind of Americans, that not only the love of liberty, but that education, civilization, the Gospel and all the institutions of Christianity were first brought to this country, and here planted and nourished, by the Puritans, flying from the oppression and persecution of the Church of England. To say nothing of the romance, which represents these Pilgrims from Holland, where they had dwelt in peace and quietness for eleven years, as flying from the cruelty of that Church, to whose "every Article" they did assent wholly," it is high time that Churchmen were more familiar with the facts of their own history, and of the first planting of the Gospel in this New World.

A popular historian,† echoing the common sentiment in reference to the landing of the Pilgrim fathers, says, "It was the origin of New England; it was the planting of New England institutions. Inquisitive historians have loved to mark every vestige of the Pilgrims; poets of the purest minds have commemorated their virtues; the noblest genius has been called into exercise to display their merits worthily, and to trace the consequences of this daring enterprise." And so it has come to be a bold and startling heresy, not to believe that the Mayflower brought the first ray of Gospel light, and the true germ of Civil Liberty to this benighted land, or to doubt for a moment that Plymouth and Salem are the true Meccas of this New World.

The truth is, however, that the first legislative representative Assembly held in America, was under the auspices of the London Company in 1619, in the Choir of the Jamestown Church, with the Minister of the Church for Chaplain, and the Prayer Book to guide their devotions. Bancroft can not help, with all his prejudices, acknowledging that,

* "Seven Articles of the Church of Leyden."

+ Bancroft.

"The London Company merits the praise of having auspicated liberty in America. On this ordinance Virginia created the superstructure of her liberties. Its influences were wide and enduring, and can be traced through all her history. It constituted the plantation in its infancy a nursery of freemen, and succeeding generations learned to cherish institutions which were as old as the prosperity of their fathers. It may be doubted whether any public act during the reign of James was of more permanent or pervading influence, and it reflects glory on Sir Edwin Sandys, the Earl of Southampton, and the patriot party of England, [all Churchmen,] that, though they were unable to establish guarantees of a liberal administration at home, they were careful to connect popular freedom inseparably with the life, prosperity and state of Society in Virginia."

Let it be known then that "American Liberty" was born and well nursed, before the "blarney stone of New England" was ever heard of.

There is something to be said concerning this subject, that pertains to a very different system from that which was brought to New England in 1620, and which will carry the reader back to a much earlier date. But how few of the present age and generation know anything of the early efforts of the members of the Church of England, towards establishing the pure and Apostolic Faith in this new found world, and consecrating to God's glory the first settlement of the British name in America? Of those "daring enterprises" little or nothing has ever been said by way of eulogy. Indeed there has been a studied silence in regard to them, in all our popular histories. Neither poetry, nor romance, nor oratory have been employed to magnify the piety and heroism of the patrons and leaders of those early ventures in the cause of Christ, or to preserve in their posterity a grateful remembrance of their virtues. And yet, men of higher purpose, of holier zeal, or of a more self-sacrificing spirit, have been rarely found in any age of the Church. We, who now enjoy the fruits of their faith and devotion, have been too long content with this ignorance of their history, and indifference to their memory. To give a complete account of their labors and achievements, will be impossible in the present undertaking. The most we can hope

for will be the partial rescue of their memories from the shameful forgetfulness into which they have fallen.

The title of our Article, and the list of works placed at the head, will indicate its purpose, as well as point out the period to which we shall confine our attention. The work of the Rev. Mr. Anderson, the second edition of which appeared in 1856, is a most valuable contribution to the early history of the Church in this country, and we shall have the most frequent occasion to refer to its contents.

It is to the religious and Missionary zeal, manifested in the first settlement of the American Continent by Englishmen, that we desire now to call attention. It is very commonly thought, that this whole work was in the hands of those who had no higher purpose than worldly gain and ambition, or an escape from the restraints of civilized and Christian society, to the wild license of a new country. But no one can become familiar with the history of these events, without learning, that a genuine love for the souls of those who were sitting in darkness, and a holy zeal for the extension of the Church of Christ, was the animating spirit with many of the early promoters of American colonization.

This was a period of sad contentions, civil and religious, at home, and of threatening national jealousies and conflicts abroad. It was a most unpromising time either for Missionary effort or commercial enterprise. And it must ever be a cause of animating gratitude, to every lover of our pure and Apostolic Faith, that amid the confessed religious declension of that period, and in spite of the restraints imposed upon the Church by a vacillating and faithless State Government, there were found men of such true Christian zeal, as to undertake the planting of the Church of Christ in this far off wilderness. Still it will not surprise us, that such a work should have been undertaken, when we come to know the devout and earnest character of those Clergymen and Laymen of the Church of England, who were among its chief promoters.

That many persons should have been drawn into the enter

*See Church Review, Oct. No. for 1857.

prise of settling a new country, whose purpose was less devoted, may well be supposed. Indeed it were hardly possible, in the nature of things, that this should not be so. The bravery, the virtue and the patriotism of the leading spirits in any great movement for a country's good, are rarely found in the same measure in all the subordinates. And that the mere love of adventure, or the hope of retrieving their broken fortunes in this new land of promise, induced many to join the early expeditions to this country, can not be doubted. But the point we have in view, is to bring to light that nobler purpose which animated many of the leaders of this undertaking, and to shew that the conversion of the natives, and the establishing of the Church of Christ, was with them the first and controlling motive.

Neither do we mean to say, that after years did not witness a sad falling away in the execution of this noble design. When a faithless king had wrested from the Virginia Company the Charter under which they had begun a Mission in behalf of the Church, and turned an enterprise which had been conducted in a spirit of the loftiest devotion and selfsacrifice, into an instrument for the accomplishment of his own sinister purposes, then indeed the glory of this enterprise was sullied. When the interested courtiers of the king, and the corrupt and ambitious politicians that surrounded his throne obtained a voice in those councils which had been influenced by the devoted sons of the Church, then came, not only "a black and melancholy chasm in the place of order and arrangement," but a sad decline in the whole spirit and purpose of the work.

As we proceed, we desire to call special attention to this point. It was in A.D., 1624, that, in the arbitrary and tyrannical exercise of the prerogative of the Crown, the charter of the Company that had undertaken the settlement of Virginia was abrogated, and its spiritual interests greatly damaged.

Before speaking of those efforts which resulted in the permanent settlement of this country, we desire to trace briefly this same religious and missionary element in the early voyages of discovery, by the English, while they had as yet ob

repress.

tained no permanent lodgment in the Western continent. The work of Colonization was slow, and met with many disappointments and failures: but it was prosecuted with a spirit of hopefulness and determination, that no discouragements could A melancholy interest attaches to one of the earliest voyages undertaken in this religious spirit. And it is a matter of no little satisfaction that we have on record the name of the Clergyman of the Reformed Church of England, who thus early undertook to be a Missionary to distant lands. This was "Master Richard Stafford," who, in 1553, in the reign of Edward VI., accompanied an expedition under Sir Hugh Willoughby, undertaken by a company of "merchant adventurers for the discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands and places unknown."

The regulations laid down for the godly deportment of the men composing this company, and the provision made for the "devout reading of the Word of God, and for daily public prayer, morning and evening," shew the spirit of piety that actuated the leaders of this undertaking. Its fate however was a sad one. Two of the vessels, including the one in which the minister sailed, were frozen up in a haven of Russian Lapland, and there was not a single survivor of either crew to tell the story of their sufferings or of their death. In these, however, they were provided with the word of God, and the Ordinances and Ministrations of his Church, by the godly foresight of those who had commissioned them to their fatal errand. This expedition had hardly sailed, when the English nation were called to mourn the early death of the pious young King, under whose auspices, and by whose commands it had gone forth.

The bitter reign of Mary could be expected to produce little, either in the way of commercial enterprise, or of propagating the reformed Faith; but, in the account of a voyage undertaken by Pet and Jackman in the early part of Elizabeth's reign, for the discovery of Cathay, we have incidental notice of the provision made for divine worship, in the direction to "observe good order in their daily service, and to pray unto God," as the only means of their prosperity. There is abun