Note 73 — Chapter IV

Neal says: "Certainly never was country more obliged to a man than New England to Archbishop Laud, who by his cruel and arbitrary proceedings drove thousands of families out of the kingdom, and thereby stocked the Plantations with inhabitants, in the compass of a very few years, which otherwise could not have been done in an age." This was the sense of some of the greatest men in Parliament in their speeches in 1641. Mr. Tienns (afterwards Lord Hollis) said that "a certain number of ceremonies in the judgment of some men unlawful, and to be rejected of all the churches; in the judgment of all other Churches, and in the judgment of our own Church, but indifferent; yet what difference, yea, what distraction have those indifferent ceremonies raised among us? What has deprived us of so many thousands of Christians who desired, and in all other respects deserved, to hold communion with us? I say what has deprived us of them, and scattered them into I know not what places and corners of the world, but these indifferent ceremonies."—(Several other speeches to the same effect are quoted by Neal.)—History of New England, Vol. I., pp. 210-212.