Page 72 - American Stories, A History of the United States

of waiting passively for Judgment Day, the Puritans examined themselves for signs
of grace, for hints that God had placed them among his “elect.” A member of the 2.1
elect, they argued, would try to live according to Scripture, to battle sin and eradicate
corruption.
For the Puritans, the logic of everyday life was clear. If the Church of England 2.2
contained unscriptural elements—clerical vestments associated with Catholic ritual,
for example—then they must be eliminated. If the pope in Rome was in league with
the Antichrist foretold in the Bible, then Protestant kings should not ally with Catholic 2.3
states. If God condemned licentiousness and intoxication, then local officials should
punish whores, adulterers, and drunks. There was nothing improper about an occa-
sional beer or passionate physical love within marriage, but when sex and drink became 2.4
ends in themselves, the Puritans thought England’s ministers and magistrates should
speak out. Persons of this temperament were more combative than the Pilgrims had
been. They wanted to purify the Church of England from within, and before the 1630s
at least, separatism held little appeal for them.
From the Puritan perspective, James I and Charles I seemed unconcerned about
the spiritual state of the nation. James tolerated corruption within his court and
condoned gross public extravagance. Charles I persecuted Puritan ministers, forc-
ing them either to conform to his theology or lose their licenses to preach. As long
as Parliament met, Puritan voters in the various boroughs and counties of England
elected men sympathetic to their point of view. These outspoken representatives
criticized royal policies. Because of their defiance, Charles decided in 1629 to rule
England without Parliament and four years later named William Laud, who rep-
resented everything the Puritans detested, archbishop of Canterbury, the leading
position within the Church of England. The doors of reform slammed shut. The
corruption remained.
John Winthrop, the future governor of Massachusetts Bay, was caught up in these
events. Little about his background suggested such an auspicious future. He owned
a small manor in Suffolk, one that never produced sufficient income to support his
growing family. He dabbled in law. But the core of Winthrop’s life was a faith in God
so intense that his contemporaries immediately identified him as a Puritan. The Lord,
he concluded, was displeased with England. Time for reform was running out. In May
1629, he wrote to his wife, “I am verily perswaded God will bringe some heavye Afflic- Quick Check
tion upon this lande, and that speedylye.” He was, however, confident that the Lord Why did the Puritans choose to leave
would “provide a shelter and a hidinge place for us.” England?

“A City on a Hill”
A fleet bearing Puritan settlers, John Winthrop among them, departed England in
March 1630. By the end of the Puritan colony’s first year, almost 2,000 people had
arrived in Massachusetts Bay, and before the “Great Migration” concluded in the early Great migration Migration of
1640s, more than 16,000 men and women had arrived there. 16,000 Puritans from England to
Historians know a lot about the background of these settlers. Many of them orig- the Massachusetts Bay Colony
inated in an area northeast of London called East Anglia, where Puritan ideas had during the 1630s.
taken deep root. London, Kent, and the West Country also contributed to the stream
of emigrants. In some instances, entire villages were reestablished across the Atlantic.
Many Bay Colonists had been farmers in England, but a surprisingly large number
came from industrial centers, such as Norwich, where cloth was manufactured for the
export trade.
Whatever their backgrounds, they moved to Massachusetts as nuclear families—
fathers, mothers, and their dependent children—a form of migration strikingly differ-
ent from the one that peopled Virginia and Maryland. Moreover, because the settlers
had already formed families in England, the colony’s sex ratio was more balanced than
that found in the Chesapeake colonies. Finally, and perhaps more significantly, once
they had arrived in Massachusetts, these men and women survived. Indeed, their life
expectancy compares favorably to that of modern Americans. Many factors help explain
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