realm. The navigator had outwitted the sovereign. Knowing his mean character, he had sent to his Amsterdam employers, by a trusty hand, all of his log-books, maps, charts, and a full account of his voyage and discoveries. These led to the commercial ventures between the Texel and the Hudson rivers which immediately followed, and which resulted in the planting of the City of New Amsterdam (now New York) at the mouth of the latter, and of New Orange (now Albany) at near the head of its navigable waters. These were the germs of the commonwealth of New Netherland, the domain of which is now known as the State of New York. The fate of Hudson, the last of the discoverers who revealed the Atlantic coast of the American continent to Europe, may be told in a few words. He sailed from England in the spring of 1610 on his fourth voyage in search of a polar ocean passage, this time in the northwest. He discovered, far up North America, the Bay that bears his name, and intended to winter there, but a majority of his crew became mutinous and compelled him to sail homeward. On the way he, his son and seven of his men who had remained faithful to him were seized, pinioned, placed in an open shallop and abandoned on the icy sea, where, of course, they soon perished. Abacuck Pricket, one of Hudson's crew, who was confined to the cabin with lameness at the time, in his published account of the circumstances, after relating how he opposed the cruel proceedings, says: "Now were all the poore men in the shallop, whose names are as followeth: Henrie Hudson, John Hudson, Arnold Lodlo, Sidrack Faner, Phillip Staffe, Thomas Woodhouse or Wydhouse, Adam Moore, Henrie King, Michael Bute. The carpenter got of them a Peece, and Powder, and Shot, and some Pikes, an Iron Pot, with some meale and other things. They stood out of the Ice, the Shallop being fast to the Sterne of the Ship, and so (when they were nigh out, for I cannot say they were cleane out) they cut her head fast from the Sterne of our Ship, then out with there Top-sayles, and toward the East they stood, in a cleare Sea." END OF BOOK I. CHAPTER I. ENGLAND AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY--HENRY THE EIGHTH AND THE CHURCH-DAWN OF THE AGE OF REASON-RURAL POPULATION OF ENGLAND~~~FURNITURE, COSTUME, METHODS OF AGRICULTURE, LEARNING AND FINE ARTS IN ENGLAND LONDON AND PLYMOUTH COMPANIES~~SETTLEMENTS ATTEMPTED IN NEW ENGLAND--ENGLISH SETTLERS ON THE JAMES RIVER-CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH-SETTLEMENT AT JAMESTOWN. T the beginning of the seventeenth century, when permanent English settlements were begun in America, the people of Great Britain had just passed from the reign of an age of Faith into that of an age of Reason. In the realm of the former, there was such absolute intellectual laziness, and indifference to the exercise of reason in speculative matters, that men accepted tenets in religion and politics, however absurd, as truths, and bestowed no thought upon them. Theology was like a cast-iron machine, utterly inflexible. It fashioned social life in its most minute details. The people were simply passive portions of that machine obedient to its ecclesiastic movers. The monastery governed the throne and its subjects as a rigid master, and for centuries there had been very little improvement in the condition of the inhabitants. At length the glare of the moral volcano which had suddenly burst out in Germany shot across Western Europe and the English Channel and awoke the British mind from its sluggish repose. Faith gave way to Reason. A secular revolt assumed formidable proportions, and at the close of the same year, when the right of private judgment was proclaimed at Spires, the English House of Commons-the representatives of the people-presented a petition to King Henry the Eighth, which contained the germs of the English reformation. It accused the clergy of disloyalty and immorality, and attributed the disorders which affected the realm to the malign influence of the ecclesiastics. The king presented this petition to the bishops for an answer. That answer was arrogant, and offensive to the House of Commons. The latter stood firm in the position of accuser and champion for the laity, and waged a bitter war with the clergy. Henry, stimulated by his love for Anne Boleyn and angered by the opposition of the church to his unholy scheme of divorcement from his queen, united with the Commons, and employed the resolute Thomas Cromwell to lead a movement for the disseverance of the civil government of England from the controlling spiritual power of Rome. Cromwell did so, with a high hand, sanctioned and assisted by the Parliament, for already the rule of the people through representatives was recognized. That body, by law, suppressed all the monasteries in the kingdom, confiscated their property, and compelled the ecclesiastics to work for their own sustenance. "Go spin, jades; go spin!" was the unfeeling remark of Cromwell to some aged nuns. By law, Henry was made the supreme head of the church in England-a pontiff of a church in rebellion--and so was established the principle that canon or ecclesiastical laws must be subservient to the civil laws. It was a new thing under the sun. England was now partially freed from a long political bondage, and the age of Reason dawned. The English mind was thoroughly aroused to action. Wonderful social changes followed; and during the reign of the adroit trimmer Queen Elizabeth, all classes had more freedom than ever before. Yet the laity were not wholly free. Henry had not specially changed the theology or the rituals of the church in England, and there appeared three powerful and antagonistic parties in the realm. These were the English party, or Churchmen, who adhered to and enforced the doctrines. and rituals of the Church of Rome, but who gave their allegiance to the |