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.

This particular scheme originated in the fertile brain of one Col.