American History

The Pilgrims and the Massachusetts Bay Company

American History for the Masses

Photo by I Do Nothing But Love on Unsplash

During the 16th century, English Calvinists led a protestant movement called Puritanism in England. Its name was derived from its adherents’ desire to purify the Anglican church of Roman Catholic practices. English monarchs of the early 17th century persecuted the Puritans, and so the Puritans began to look for a new place to practice their faith.

One Puritan group, called Separatists, because they thought the Church of England was so incapable of being reformed that they had to abandon it, left England around this time. First, they went to the Netherlands but ultimately decided to start fresh in the New World. In 1620, they set sail for Virginia, but their ship, the Mayflower, went off course and they landed in modern-day Massachusetts. Because winter was approaching, they decided to settle where they had landed. This settlement was called Plymouth.

While on board, the travelers, called Pilgrims and led by William Bradford, signed an agreement establishing a “body politic” and a basic legal system for the colony. That agreement the Mayflower Compact, is important not only because it created a legal authority and an assembly, but also because it asserted that the government’s power derives from the consent of the governed and not from God, as some monarchists known as Absolutists believed.

Like the earlier settlers in Jamestown, the Pilgrims received life-saving assistance from local Native Americans. To the Pilgrims’ great fortune, they had happened to land at the site of a Patuxet village that had been wiped out by disease; one inhabitant of that village, a man named Tisquantum, better known as Squanto, had been spared this fate because he had been captured years before and brought to Europe as an enslaved person. He wound up in London, where he learned English and then returned to his homeland only to find it depopulated. Shortly thereafter, the Pilgrims arrived, and Squanto became their interpreter and taught them how best to plant in their new home.

In 1629, a larger and more powerful colony called Massachusetts Bay was established by Congregationalists (Puritans who wanted to reform the Anglican church from within.) This began what is known as The Great Puritan Migration, which lasted from 1629 to 1642. Led by Governor John Winthrop, Massachusetts Bay developed along Puritan ideals. While on board the ship, Arabella, Winthrop delivered a now-famous sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity,” urging the colonists to be a city upon a hill- a model for others to look up to. All Puritans believed they had a covenant with God, and the concept of covenants was central to their entire philosophy, in both political and religious terms. Government was to be a covenant among the people; work was to serve a communal ideal, and, of course, the Puritan church was always to be served. This is why both the Separatists, and the Congregationalists did not tolerate religious freedom in their colonies, even though both had experienced and fled religious persecution.

The settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were strict Calvinists, and the Calvinist principles dictated their daily lives. For example, much has been written about the “protestant work ethic” and its relationship to the eventual development of a market economy. In fact, some historians believe the roots of the Civil War can be traced back to the founding of the Chesapeake region and New England, as a plantation economy dependent on slave labor developed in the Chesapeake and subsequent Southern colonies, while New England became the commercial center.

Two major incidents during the first half of the 17th century demonstrated Puritan religious intolerance. Roger Williams, a minister in the Salem Bay settlement taught a number of controversial principles, among them that the church and state should be separate. The Puritans banished Williams, who subsequently moved to modern-day Rhode Island and founded a new colony. Rhode Island’s charter allowed the free exercise of religion, and it did not require voters to be church members. Anne Hutchinson was a prominent proponent of antinomianism, the belief that faith and God’s grace, as opposed to the observance of moral law and performance of good deeds- suffice to earn one a place among the “elect.” Her teachings challenged Puritan beliefs and the authority of the Puritan clergy. The fact that she was an intelligent, well-educated, and powerful woman in a resolutely patriarchal society turned many against her. She was tried for heresy, convicted, and banished.

Puritan immigration to New England came to a near halt between 1649 and 1660, the years during which Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector of England. Cromwell’s reign represented the culmination of the English Civil Wars, which the Puritans won. During Interregnum (literally “between kings”), Puritans had little motive to move to the New World. Everything they wanted, freedom to practice their religion, as well as representation in the government, was available to them in England. With the restoration of the Stuarts, many English Puritan again immigrated to the New World. Not coincidentally, these immigrants brought with them some of the republican ideals of the revolution.

The lives of English settlers in New England and the Chesapeake differed considerably. Entire families tended to immigrate to New England; in the Chesapeake, immigrants were often single males. The climate in New England was more hospitable, and so New Englanders tended to live longer and have larger families than Chesapeake residents. A stronger sense of community, and the absence of tobacco as a cash crop, led New Englanders to settle in larger towns that were closer to one another; those in the Chesapeake lived in smaller, more spread-out farming communities. While both groups were religious, the New Englanders were definitely more religious, settling near meeting-houses. Another important difference between New England and the Chesapeake was in the use of slavery. New England farms were small and required less labor. Slavery was rare. Farms in middle and southern colonies were much larger, requiring large numbers of enslaved Africans. In fact, at one time, South Carolina had a larger proportion of enslaved Africans than of European settlers.

References and Further Reading

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