The First New England Colonies

A company of English Puritans seeking freedom of worship lands by Cape Cod, and before going ashore signs a compact of self-government. Ten years later the larger colony of Massachusetts Bay arises nearby, with town meetings, compulsory schools and a college at Cambridge. The settlers read Scripture as a direct pattern, likening their voyage to the exodus from Egypt and the new land to the promised one. Relations with the Indian nations pass from the neighbourliness of the first years to wars and dispossession.