10. At last the time came for a large increase of their numbers from home. In 1630 seven hundred emigrants set sail for the land of freedom in the West; for Charles I. was now on the throne and had begun his arbitrary rule. Before the assembling of the Long Parliament (1640), which carried on the struggle that ended with the execution of the king, no less than two hundred emigrant ships, carrying twenty thousand Englishmen, had crossed the Atlantic. Nor were these men the waifs and strays, the mere wreckage of society, but men of means and character, ready to risk all for the privilege of serving God according to their conscience. As the ships bore them away out of sight of their native land, they remembered it, not with feelings of bitterness for the ill treatment they had received on account of their religion, but as the home of their fathers. As its shores faded from their sight there arose from every heart the tender cry, "Farewell, dear England!"
1. We have now sketched out the circumstances attending the planting of our first two colonies—Virginia and New England. Between these two colonies was planted another, called Maryland, in honour of Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I.
2. Maryland was in most respects a highly-favoured colony. It was founded, in 1633, by Lord Baltimore, who seems to have risen above most men of his age in his readiness to tolerate men of a different faith from his own. Baltimore declared himself a Catholic, and was desirous of providing a home in America for men of his creed, since they were debarred from the free exercise of their religion in England. Neither Virginia nor New England would have suited his purpose; none but members of the Church of England were welcomed in the former, and none but Puritans of the strictest order were tolerated in the latter.
3. It was otherwise ordered in Maryland. "No person within this province," ran the earliest law of the colony, "professing to be a Christian, shall be in any way troubled or molested for his or her religion, or in the free exercise thereof." Due consideration also was shown to the rights of the natives. The first act of the governor was to purchase land from the Indians, and with their consent he took possession of a village, which he named St. Mary's. The settlers then went resolutely to work, learning all they could from the natives, whose goodwill it was easy to gain by presents of cloth and axes, of hoes and knives.
The Indian women taught the wives of the new comers to make bread of maize; the warriors of the tribe gave many valuable hints in hunting and fishing. Thus the foundation of Maryland was peacefully and happily laid. In six months it advanced more than Virginia had done in as many years.
4. In the course of the next hundred years such progress was made in building up a new English nation on the other side of the Atlantic, that no less than thirteen flourishing colonies, including the three already mentioned, were established in what is now the United States. But as these colonies have long ceased to form part of our empire we do not propose to give here any further details respecting them. We cannot, however, but feel proud of the fact that the great American nation has sprung mainly from our race, that it speaks our language, that its laws are based on ours, and that it inherits our love of justice and freedom.
5. Whilst the colonies that have since grown into the United States were taking root, our countrymen settled in some of the American islands, which have since become valuable possessions. An English vessel bound for Virginia, when it was an infant colony, happened to be wrecked on one of the Bermuda islands. The Bermudas form a cluster of a hundred small islands, and in one of the recesses of the inland sea, which they enclose, is a splendid harbour with an entrance so narrow as to render it beyond the reach of attack. Seeing the value of these islands as a secure refuge for our shipping in the North Atlantic, the shipwrecked mariner took possession in the name of King James, and ever since they have remained in our hands as a military post and naval station of no mean importance.
6. In the West India Islands also the English, in spite of the Spaniards, gained a footing, Barbados being their earliest settlement in that quarter. The first recorded visit of Englishmen was in the year 1605, when the crew of the "Olive Blossom" landed, and erected a cross as a memorial of the event, cutting at the same time upon the bark of a tree, "James, King of England and of this island." Barbados was the first English colony in which the sugar-cane was planted, and sugar soon became a great source of wealth to the planters. The civil war in the reign of Charles I. induced many Englishmen to cast in their lot with the settlers of this little island in the summer seas. Many of the West India Islands have changed hands more than once, but Barbados from its first settlement, in 1624, has remained in our possession.
7. Jamaica, the largest of our West India colonies, fell as easily as a ripe fruit into English hands in the days of Cromwell's rule. Cromwell took great pride in his new colony, and aided the colonists very materially by sending some thousands of Scottish prisoners of war after his victory at Worcester, to work in the sugar plantations. These men after a few years became free labourers, and many worked their way, as Scotsmen know how, to high place and fortune.