George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 2, 17th edition.

[202] which had begun to yield to the progress of opinion.¹

Chap XIV} 1662.

Among the plebeian sects of Christianity, the singleminded simplicity with which the Baptists had, from their origin, asserted the enfranchisement of mind, and the equal rights of the humblest classes of society, naturally won converts in America at an early day. The legislature of Virginia, assembling soon after the

Dec.

return of Berkeley from a voyage that had been fruitless to the colony, declared to the world that there were scattered among the rude settlements of the Ancient Dominion ‘many schismatical persons, so averse to the established religion, and so filled with the newfangled conceits of their own heretical inventions, as to refuse to have their children baptized;’² and the novelty was punished by a heavy mulct. The freedom of the forests favored originality of thought; in spite of legislation, men listened to the voice within themselves as to the highest authority; and Quakers continued to multiply. Virginia, as if resolved to

663. Sept.

hasten the colonization of North Carolina, sharpened her laws against all separatists, punished their meetings by heavy fines, and ordered the more affluent to pay the forfeitures of the poor. The colony that should have opened its doors wide to all the persecuted, punished the ship-master that received non-conformists as passengers, and threatened such as resided in the colony with banishment.³ John Porter, the burgess for Lower Norfolk, was expelled from the assembly,

Sept. 12.

‘because he was well affected to the Quakers.’⁴ The legislature was equally friendly to the power