Puritans and Censorship
Puritans were a group of dissenters from the Church of England in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, advocating for further reforms to eliminate Catholic influences and enhance the Protestant Reformation's theological principles. Facing persecution under King Charles I and Archbishop William Laud, many Puritans migrated to New England seeking the freedom to practice their beliefs. In this new context, they established the Massachusetts Bay Colony with the intention of creating a society based on their religious ideals, famously described as a "city upon a hill." However, once in power, the Puritans imposed their own strict form of censorship, allowing religious liberty only for themselves and harshly punishing dissenters. Those who challenged the Puritan establishment, like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, faced banishment, while Quakers encountered severe penalties, including execution, for defiance. This paradox of seeking freedom while enforcing rigid conformity illustrates the complexities of Puritan society and their approach to censorship within their own community.
Subject Terms
Puritans and Censorship
Definition: Protestant religious dissenters of late sixteenth and seventeenth century England, many of whom migrated to New England to protest the theology and practices of the Church of England
Significance: Victims of religious persecution in England, the members of this religious movement gained political power in New England that they used to censure religious beliefs that they opposed
Puritans were dissenters within the Church of England during the late sixteenth century and the seventeenth century. They believed that the Church of England had neither sufficiently purified itself of the lingering traces of Roman Catholicism nor sufficiently pursued the theological and ecclesiastical purifications in the church initiated by the Protestant Reformation. Especially during the early decades of the seventeenth century under King Charles I and his ecclesiastical ally, Archbishop William Laud, the Puritans suffered from various forms of censorship and religious persecution in response to their criticisms of the Anglican establishment. This harsh treatment ultimately encouraged thousands of Puritans to migrate to New England, where they attempted to fashion a society according to their own political and ecclesiastical vision. As John Winthrop, an early governor of the colony, described their project, the Puritans had set out to build a “city upon a hill” in the New World, governed by godly principles.
When the Puritans obtained political power in New England, they immediately imposed their own variety of censorship upon those who did not share their religious vision. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, established in the late 1620’s, pursued religious liberty for themselves but not for those who disagreed with them. According to Nathaniel Ward, a New England preacher, the only freedom granted to those who opposed the Puritan establishment in Massachusetts was the “free liberty to keep away from us.” Religious dissenters who declined to stay away from the Puritans found an inhospitable welcome. In 1630, for example, Phillip Ratcliff was sentenced by the Puritans to a whipping and—after having his ears cut off—banishment for saying “scandalous” things concerning the government and churches of the Bay Colony. Within a few years, the Puritans had banished religious dissenters such as Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson for vocally opposing particular aspects of the colony’s government and official theology. Toward the middle of the seventeenth century, Quakers began invading the colony and immediately earned the ire of the Puritan establishment. After unsuccessfully attempting to banish the Quakers, the Puritans resorted to the punishment of ear cropping for Quakers who violated their sentence of banishment by reentering the Colony. Even this punishment failed to discourage the Quakers, however, and in the 1650’s, the Puritans in Boston executed three Quakers by hanging.