During the religious upheavals of the
16th century, a body of men and women called Puritans sought to
reform the Established Church of England from within. Essentially,
they demanded that the rituals and structures associated with Roman
Catholicism be replaced by simpler Protestant forms of faith and
worship. Their reformist ideas, by destroying the unity of the state
church, threatened to divide the people and to undermine royal authority.
In 1607 a small group of Separatists
-- a radical sect of Puritans who did not believe the Established
Church could ever be reformed -- departed for Leyden, Holland, where
the Dutch granted them asylum. However, the Calvinist Dutch restricted
them mainly to low-paid laboring jobs. Some members of the congregation
grew dissatisfied with this discrimination and resolved to emigrate
to the New World.
In 1620, a group of Leyden Puritans
secured a land patent from the Virginia Company, and a group of
101 men, women and children set out for Virginia on board the Mayflower.
A storm sent them far north and they landed in New England on Cape
Cod. Believing themselves outside the jurisdiction of any organized
government, the men drafted a formal agreement to abide by "just
and equal laws" drafted by leaders of their own choosing. This was
the Mayflower Compact.
In December the Mayflower reached Plymouth
harbor; the Pilgrims began to build their settlement during the
winter. Nearly half the colonists died of exposure and disease,
but neighboring Wampanoag Indians provided information that would
sustain them: how to grow maize. By the next fall, the Pilgrims
had a plentiful crop of corn, and a growing trade based on furs
and lumber.
A new wave of immigrants arrived on
the shores of Massachusetts Bay in 1630 bearing a grant from King
Charles I to establish a colony. Many of them were Puritans whose
religious practices were increasingly prohibited in England. Their
leader, John Winthrop, openly set out to create a "city upon a hill"
in the New World. By this he meant a place where Puritans would
live in strict accordance with their religious beliefs.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was to
play a significant role in the development of the entire New England
region, in part because Winthrop and his Puritan colleagues were
able to bring their charter with them. Thus the authority for the
colony's government resided in Massachusetts, not in England.
Under the charter's provisions, power
rested with the General Court, which was made up of "freemen" required
to be members of the Puritan Church. This guaranteed that the Puritans
would be the dominant political as well as religious force in the
colony. It was the General Court which elected the governor. For
most of the next generation, this would be John Winthrop.
The rigid orthodoxy of the Puritan
rule was not to everyone's liking. One of the first to challenge
the General Court openly was a young clergyman named Roger Williams,
who objected to the colony's seizure of Indian lands and its relations
with the Church of England.
Banished from Massachusetts Bay, he
purchased land from the Narragansett Indians in what is now Providence,
Rhode Island, in 1636. There he set up the first American colony
where complete separation of church and state as well as freedom
of religion was practiced.
So-called heretics like Williams were
not the only ones who left Massachusetts. Orthodox Puritans, seeking
better lands and opportunities, soon began leaving Massachusetts
Bay Colony. News of the fertility of the Connecticut River Valley,
for instance, attracted the interest of farmers having a difficult
time with poor land. By the early 1630s, many were ready to brave
the danger of Indian attack to obtain level ground and deep, rich
soil. These new communities often eliminated church membership as
a prerequisite for voting, thereby extending the franchise to ever
larger numbers of men.
At the same time, other settlements
began cropping up along the New Hampshire and Maine coasts, as more
and more immigrants sought the land and liberty the New World seemed
to offer.