Thousands of English Puritans immigrated to North America in the early 17th century, with nearly all of them settling in New England. The Puritans were fervently religious members of the Church of England who resisted royal ecclesiastical policies because they thought the Church had not properly changed and still held too many of its Roman Catholic doctrinal foundations.
The majority of Puritans were said to as “non-separating Puritans” because they opposed the formation of congregations apart from the Church of England. These people were subsequently known as Nonconformists. A tiny fraction of “separating Puritans” supported founding congregations outside the Church. In 1620, a Separatist group known as the Pilgrims founded the Plymouth Colony.
The majority of Puritans settled in New England, although a minor number also settled in other English colonies across the Atlantic.(Source: )
The founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, the Saybrook Colony in 1635, the Connecticut Colony in 1636, and the New Haven Colony in 1638 were all spearheaded by Puritans. Expelled from Massachusetts for holding non-orthodox religious beliefs, the immigrants founded the colonies of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Prior to New Hampshire’s establishment as a crown colony in 1691, Puritans were also present there. Early in the 18th century, puritanism came to an end, and the much gentler Congregational church took its place before 1740.
Background (1533–1630) of History of the Puritans in North America
A Protestant movement known as puritanism first appeared in 16th-century England. Its aim was to rid the Church of England of all traces of Roman Catholic doctrine and customs in order to establish a holy society.[/2] Puritans were mostly accepted by the established church throughout Elizabeth I’s reign. The majority of English Protestants at the time shared Puritan goals, and many bishops and Privy Council members had Calvinist theologies.
The main area of contention between the Puritans and the church hierarchy concerned liturgical practices that the latter believed to be excessively Catholic, including the wearing of clerical vestments, the knelt position for receiving Holy Communion, and the cross sign at baptism.[/3]
The majority of Puritans broke away from the Church of England during James I’s reign because they could no longer wait for additional church reformations. These Separatists were susceptible to criminal prosecution because the law mandated that all individuals attend parish services; as a result, some, like Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, were put to death. Some Separatists moved to the Netherlands in order to avoid persecution and practice their religion openly. However, the majority of Puritans continued to belong to the Church of England.*[4]
Bishops grew less accepting of Puritan beliefs and more eager to impose the usage of contentious rituals throughout Charles I’s reign, undermining the foundations of Calvinist doctrine. Puritan preaching came under new restrictions, and some preachers lost their jobs or were suspended.
Migration to America (1620–1640)
The Plymouth Colony was founded in 1620 by a group of Separatists known as the Pilgrims who traveled to New England. Richard Clyfton, John Robinson, and William Brewster led a dissenting congregation at Scrooby that eventually became the Pilgrims. Members of this congregation were imprisoned or had their property seized as a result of persecution. The gang fled England and settled in the Dutch city of Leiden out of fear of more persecution.
Following their receipt of a patent from the London Company, the Pilgrims sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 and arrived at Plymouth Rock in New England.(6)(7) The Mayflower Compact, a social contract modeled after the church covenant the Pilgrims had formed in Scrooby and founded on Puritan political thought, is what the Pilgrims are most known for.(8)
Robert Cushman and Edward Winslow, two Pilgrim settlers of Plymouth Colony, thought that establishing a town on Cape Ann would be financially advantageous. As a result, they established the Dorchester Company and set ship for England in 1622 in search of a patent from the London Company allowing them to establish themselves.
After their successful application, they were given the Sheffield Patent, which was named for Edmund, Lord Sheffield, a member of the Plymouth Company. Roger Conant, who was succeeded as governor in 1628 or 1629 by John Endecott, led a group of fishermen from the later-named Gloucester area to construct Salem in 1626 based on this patent.
Following the conviction of other Puritans that New England could offer a place of religious safety, the venture was renamed the Massachusetts Bay Company. It was successful in getting a royal charter for the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from King Charles in March 1629. Under John Winthrop’s leadership, the first ships of the Great Puritan Migration traveled to the New World in 1630.10, 11,
Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony John Winthrop (1587/8-1649) led the Puritans throughout the Great Migration, which started in 1630.
Winthrop delivered a sermon titled “A Model of Christian Charity” during the crossing. In it, he informed his listeners that they had made a covenant with God, under which he would ensure their prosperity as long as they remained faithful to him.
The majority of the emigrant Puritans made their home in the New England region. On the other hand, the Puritan Great Migration was a massive and very brief movement. With the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, it got underway in earnest.
It came to an end in 1642 with the outbreak of the English Civil War, as King Charles I essentially stopped emigration to the colonies. His Privy Council formally limited emigration to obedient churchmen in December 1634.13] About 21,000 Puritans traveled to New England between 1629 and 1643.
Families were the main group of people who left during the Great Migration of Puritans to New England. More than 13,000 men, women, and children sailed to Massachusetts between 1630 and 1640. The Great Migration’s religious and political causes had an impact on the emigrants’ demographics. The Virginia colonies were populated mostly by groups of young men looking for economic gain, while Puritan ships carried “ordinary” people, including individuals, families, and both young and old.
Young adults were a rarity in New England settlements, with only 25% of the emigrants in their twenties when they boarded ships in the 1630s.
Compared to other colonies, the Puritan population of the New World was more evenly distributed over the English population’s age range. This indicated that the population composition of the Massachusetts Bay Colony remained largely normal. Only a small amount of intermarriage with Native women occurred in the Virginia colony, where the colonist men to woman ratio was 4:1 in the early decades and at least 2:1 in the later decades.
In contrast, there was virtually little mixing with Native Americans and women made up nearly half of the Puritan immigrants to the New World. Most of the families that visited Massachusetts Bay were families in progress, with parents who had not reached the end of their reproductive years and whose ongoing fertility contributed to the population increase of New England.
Other destinations
The 17th-century conflict between the powerful Church of England and different Presbyterian and Puritan factions spread throughout the English realm and led to both the Scotch-Irish emigration from Ireland to North America and the emigration from Bermuda, England’s second-oldest overseas territory. Before 1775, about 10,000 Bermudians left the island.
The majority of these were used to found American colonies or made contributions to settlements, particularly in the South. Many traveled to the Bahamas, where in 1648 many Bermudian Independent Puritan families, led by William Sayle, founded the colony of Eleuthera.In [14]
Under Cromwell’s leadership, emigration started up again in the 1650s, although it wasn’t very common as people didn’t need to flee English oppression any more.
Life in the New World
Up until the early 1700s, the New World was ruled by Puritans. That period can be divided into three periods: the period between 1630 and 1662, when John Cotton and Richard Mather led the country from its founding to the Restoration, a period of almost autonomous development and virtual independence; the period between 1662 and 1689, when Increase Mather led the country from the Restoration and the Halfway Covenant to the Glorious Revolution, a period of conflict with the British crown; and the period between 1689 and 1728, when Cotton Mather led the country from the overthrow of Edmund Andros (in which Cotton Mather participated) and the new charter, which Increase Mather mediated, until Cotton Mather’s death.In [16]
Religion
The Puritans founded Congregational churches in New England that followed Reformed theology. The churches in Massachusetts and Connecticut adopted the Savoy Declaration as a confessional statement in 1680 and 1708, respectively. It was a modification of the Westminster Confession of Faith.(17)
The Congregationalist polity of the Puritans during the seventeenth century is described in the Cambridge Platform.
All members of a congregation were required to sign a written document known as a church covenant, which outlined their commitment to upholding congregational beliefs, making decisions based solely on scripture, and submitting to church discipline. It was maintained that every congregation had the right to choose its own leaders and conduct its own business.
Puritans adopted the Calvinist Genevan model for church offices. Elder (also known as presbyter) and deacon were the two main positions. There were two kinds of elders at first. Teaching elders were the title given to ministers whose duties included sacrament administration and preaching. Two pastors would work in large churches, one as the pastor and the other as a teacher.
Reputable laymen would be chosen to serve as ruling elders for life. Alongside teaching elders, ruling elders oversaw the church. Although they were not able to perform sacramental duties, they may deliver sermons. Initially, deacons mostly took care of financial issues. By the middle of the 17th century, deacons had replaced lay elders in the majority of churches, and they helped the minister lead the congregation.
The primary tenet of Puritanism was that salvation is entirely dependent on grace, not merit gained via deeds of goodness. Puritans also held the belief that both men and women “could labor to make themselves appropriate vessels of saving grace” (emphasis in original).[21] They could read the Bible, pray, and carry out deeds of kindness to achieve this. Preparatism was the name given to this theory, which almost all Puritans subscribed to in one way or another.21]
Although different ministers gave varying descriptions of the conversion process, most of them agreed that it went through three crucial stages. The initial phase was feeling ashamed or saddened for transgressing God’s will. Justification or adoption, which is defined as a feeling of being accepted and pardoned by God as a result of Christ’s kindness, was the second stage.
According to Puritans, the elect or “visible saints” should make up churches. In order to guarantee that only individuals who had experienced regeneration were accepted as complete members, congregations in New England demanded that potential members submit a personal account of their conversion.[23] Church discipline and attendance at services were mandated for all settlers.[24] However, only complete members were permitted to partake in the Lord’s Supper.23]
The Puritans performed infant baptism, but the children could only be presented for baptism by church members who were in full communion. Children of members were entitled to baptism and were regarded as members of the church and covenant from birth. However, these kids wouldn’t be able to take advantage of all the church membership benefits until they could publicly declare their conversion.