A Passage and a Letter from Governor Henry Vane, Jr. to Henry Vane, Sr., about the Estate of New England

The present face of things here is very tumultuous. The French continually encroach and by venting of pieces and powder strengthen the Natives for civil wars and gain all the trade. The Natives themselves are very treacherous, cruel, and cunning, and let slip no advantages of killing and pilfering if they may do it and not be discovered. The common report is also that the patent is damned, in which regard much unsettlement is like to grow amongst ourselves and great discouragement to the whole plantation, for those that are truly sincere and are come out to advance the kingdom of the Lord Jesus must either suffer in the cause or else labor for such retreat as God shall direct them to. In either of which cases, I do not doubt but within two years this plantation, which is now flourishing, would become desolate, and either possessed again with Indians or emptied by pestilence. For it is not trade that God will set up in these parts, but the profession of his truth, and, therefore, if God’s ends be not followed, men’s ends will never be blessed nor attained. 

[Henry Vane, Jr.]

• 1. Sir Henry Vane, the author's father, was the Comptroller of the Household from 1629 to 1639.  Wikipedia.