It cannot be asserted that their courage was the result of any
single, dominating motive, equally operative in all of the
colonies. Mrs. Hemans's familiar line about seeking "freedom to
worship God" was measurably true of the Pilgrims of Plymouth,
about whom she was writing. But the far more important Puritan
emigration to Massachusetts under Winthrop aimed not so much at
"freedom" as at the establishment of a theocracy according to the
Scriptures. These men straightway denied freedom of worship, not
only to newcomers who sought to join them, but to those members
of their own company who developed independent ways of thinking.
The list of motives for emigration ran the whole gamut, from
missionary fervor for converting the savages, down through a
commendable desire for gain, to the perhaps no less praiseworthy
wish to escape a debtor's prison or the pillory. A few of the
colonists were rich. Some were beggars or indentured servants.
Most of them belonged to the middle class. John Harvard was the
son of a butcher; Thomas Shepard, the son of a grocer; Roger
Williams, the son of a tailor.
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