It is true that in trying to induce immigration they often
promised religious freedom, but when they came to execute this promise
they explained that it merely meant that the new-comers would not be
compelled to profess the Roman Catholic faith, but that they would not
be allowed the free exercise of their own religion, nor permitted to
build churches nor pay ministers. This was done with the express purpose
of weakening their faith, and rendering it easy to turn them from it,
and the Spaniards brought Irish priests into the country and placed them
among the American settlers with the avowed object of converting them.
[Footnote: Guyarre, III., 181, 200, 202.] Such toleration naturally
appealed very little to men who were accustomed to a liberty as complete
in matters ecclesiastical as in matters civil. When the Spanish
authorities, at Natchez, or elsewhere, published edicts interfering with
the free exercise of the Protestant religion, many of the settlers left,
[Footnote: Va. State Papers, IV., 30.] while in regions remote from the
Spanish centres of government the edicts were quietly disobeyed or
ignored.
Founding of New Madrid.
One of the many proposed colonies ultimately resulted in the founding of
a town which to this day bears the name of New Madrid.
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