The Great Migration carried thousands of English Puritans to New England during the 1630s. They did not simply flee persecution in search of individual religious freedom. Instead, they intended to establish disciplined Protestant communities governed through covenant, scripture and collective responsibility. Their settlements encouraged literacy, local government and political participation among selected colonists, while also enforcing conformity and expanding across Indigenous homelands.
The Puritan migration formed part of the wider religious and constitutional history of the British Atlantic. The previous article examined how the Glorious Revolution protected a Protestant political order while leaving the position of religious minorities unresolved.
What was Puritanism?
Puritanism emerged from the English Reformation during the late sixteenth century. Puritans accepted the Protestant break with Rome but believed that the Church of England still preserved too many Catholic ceremonies, institutions and assumptions.
They objected to practices such as elaborate vestments, ceremonial worship and the authority of bishops. They instead emphasised scripture, preaching, moral discipline and the direct examination of personal faith.
Puritanism was not one organised denomination. The term covered ministers, theologians, lay believers and political reformers who disagreed about church government, worship and the limits of obedience to the established Church.
Most Puritans remained members of the Church of England and sought to reform it from within. Others concluded that no true Christian congregation could remain inside an institution they considered corrupt. These more radical believers became known as Separatists.
