Pilgrim and Puritan immigrants
Pilgrim and Puritan immigrants were key figures in the early colonization of America during the 17th century, motivated primarily by the desire for religious freedom. Rooted in the Protestant Reformation, the Puritans sought to purify the Church of England and faced persecution under King James I, leading some, known as Separatists, to break away entirely. In 1620, a group of these Pilgrims set sail on the Mayflower, establishing Plymouth Colony in present-day Massachusetts. They faced significant challenges during their settlement, yet their collaborative efforts resulted in the Mayflower Compact, a foundational document that promoted self-governance and civil law.
Meanwhile, the Puritan Great Migration from 1630 to 1640 saw over twenty thousand English citizens, primarily middle-class and educated, migrate to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This influx was spurred by increasing persecution from King Charles I and a desire for a community where they could freely practice their faith. The Puritans established a society characterized by family cohesion, shared values, and land distribution policies that provided stability. Their legacy has significantly influenced American culture, particularly in shaping concepts of governance and community.
Pilgrim and Puritan immigrants
Significance:During the mid-seventeenth century, thousands of English Puritans escaping from religious persecution immigrated to North America, where they established a society whose ideals and principles would become central to the American concept of civil and religious freedom.
Although the Puritans fled from England during the seventeenth century, the seeds of their migration were sown years earlier with the advent of the Protestant Reformation led by sixteenth-century theologians, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli. In England, King Henry VIII defied the pope by divorcing his Roman Catholic wife and marrying Anne Boleyn. Henry’s archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, continued to loosen Catholicism’s hold by forbidding church music, allowing priests to marry, replacing the Latin mass with services in English, and encouraging everyone to read the Bible. These changes within the Anglican Church opened the door to Puritanism, which advanced the foundational doctrine of predestination—the belief that all people were inherently sinful, and the notion that the God is revealed through a personal encounter with the Scriptures and not through the agency of a priest.
English Anti-Separatist Sentiment
During the reign of England’s King James I (r. 1603–25), the Separatists, an extreme sect within the Puritan community, wished to sever all ties with the Anglican Church and conduct their own services in accordance with what they claimed were biblical teachings. Their refusal to support the Church of England was illegal under the 1559 Act of Uniformity, which required English citizens to attend the state church. Regarding the Separatists as traitors, James pressured them to conform to the law.
In 1607, a group of Separatists from Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, left England to escape government persecution and eventually settled in Leiden, Holland. Although they enjoyed a prosperous life, they were concerned about the influence of Dutch culture upon their children. In order to preserve their English identity and religious freedom, they decided that they would sail for the Americas. Various sites were discussed, including Guiana, Virginia, and the Hudson River area. With the financial support of London merchants and adventurers, they eventually secured a land patent in New England.
The Mayflower and Plymouth Bay
On September 16, 1620, 102 passengers made up of Leideners and Strangers, non-Puritan colonists who were hired by the investors, set sail from Plymouth, England, in the Mayflower. A difficult crossing was made more so by friction between the Leideners and the Strangers, who were wary about living in a community dominated by those they viewed as religious extremists. In order for the new settlement to succeed, both groups realized they would have to work together and abide by the same laws.
After dropping anchor in Provincetown Bay in November 1620, forty-one male Separatists signed the Mayflower Compact. Exposed to the dangers of theocracy in England, as well as to advantages of a civil government in Holland, the Separatists were aware that formulating “just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices” that were applicable to every citizen was necessary for the colony’s survival. The Mayflower Compact, the forerunner of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, was the germ from which a democratic society based on the separation of church and state would blossom after the American Revolution.
Disembarking from the Mayflower on November 21, 1620, the Pilgrims settled in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. Their goal was to establish, in Governor William Bradford’s words, “a city upon a hill,” which they hoped would be a model Christian community founded on biblical principles. Their harsh life in Plymouth Bay gradually eroded the idealism of the colonists, and over the years families drifted to other areas of the region where they could make a better living. When Boston emerged as a major port and economic center, Plymouth diminished in importance and in population.
The Great Migration
During the years the Pilgrims were struggling to make their Massachusetts a utopia, Puritans in England were increasingly harassed. After succeeding his father, James I, in 1625, King Charles I viewed the Puritans as a threat to his government because they controlled Parliament. In 1629, he dissolved Parliament in an attempt to weaken the Puritans’ power, which left them open to further persecution. His actions launched the Great Puritan Migration, a mass exodus of English citizens to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. More than twenty thousand people crossed the Atlantic to settle in Massachusetts from 1630 to 1640. In 1640, however, Charles reconvened Parliament, and immigration dropped off sharply.
The Great Puritan Migration began with the sailing of the Winthrop Fleet, which comprised eleven ships carrying seven hundred passengers. Most of these immigrants were prosperous, middle class, and well educated. Their primary motivation for settling in the New World was their desire for religious freedom and not for material gain. They possessed a unique set of characteristics that contributed to their success as colonists: They traveled to America in family groups, were highly literate, enjoyed robust health, and were skilled workers who provided well for their typically large families. As the settlers expanded north and south of Boston, they took advantage of land distribution policies, allowing them to purchase large tracts of property that in many cases were kept in families for hundreds of years. The Puritan immigrants’ secure family life, shared social and religious values, and stable land distribution system provided a firm foundation on which to build a society whose cultural mores would shape American history in succeeding generations.
Bibliography
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. New England’s Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge UP, 1991.
Bradford, William. Of Plymouth Plantation. 1630. Reprint. Dover, 2006.
Daniels, Bruce C. New England Nation: The Country the Puritans Built. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Moore, Susan Hardman. Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home. Yale UP, 2007.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. Viking Press, 2006.