American Colonies: The Settling of North America

The 16th and 17th centuries saw titanic shifts in England’s religious environment. In the 1530s, Henry VIII rejected Catholicism and became the head of the new Church of England (Anglicanism), entwining church and state. Religious dissenters of the new church thus became increasingly religiously and politically problematic.

One such sect were the Puritans, “a broad movement of diverse people who shared the conviction that the Protestant Reformation remained incomplete in England” (160). Puritans rejected the Anglican and Catholic emphasis on priests, encouraging instead a one-on-one relationship with God via the Bible. Increasingly marginalized in England, and hearing from John Smith of fantastic opportunities in America, some Puritans considered moving. They wanted to form a “City upon a Hill, an inspirational set of reformed churches conspicuous to the mother country” (167). When Charles I dissolved Parliament and solidified monarchical power in 1629, Puritan Separatists (now called Pilgrims) began emigrating in earnest.

In 1630 the “Great Migration” of Puritans began under the leadership of John Winthrop and the Massachusetts Bay Company (165). Once settled in their proprietary colony of Massachusetts, these leaders “established the most radical government in the European world: a republic, where the Puritan men elected their governor, deputy governor, and legislature (known at the General Court)” (165).