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Puritans in Americans

In: Historical Events

Submitted By adsa
Words 353
Pages 2
Rebekah Smith
Professor Donald Mosseau
ENG-350
19 May 2015
Puritans in America Pursuing religious freedom in order to believe in what they want to without persecution and finding refuge, the Puritans set up a system of standards in the new America. In 1630, approximately
20,000 Puritans immigrated to the new America from England in order to gain liberty to worship
God as they desired (Morgan, 25). The Puritans first belief was predestination and that the bible was God's true law. The Separatists faction, who were the Pilgrims settled in the Plymouth Colony, had left the Church of England creating their own groups. The Separatists were the minority, and most
Puritans, who later on settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, desired to rearrange the Church from within. Puritans pledged to their religion with alternating points of fervor. Certain Puritans in Massachusetts Bay attended church as a regular becoming a church member while others only attended church meetings without converting (Morgan, 79). Regardless of status, it was mandatory that everyone attended meetings. Governor William Bradford as a child was caught up in the fervor of the Protestant reform. He became a dedicated member of one of the numerous separatist churches which was the “left wing” of Puritanism (Bradford, 143). For thirty years, Bradford was the governor of the
Plymouth colony. He helped stabilize and shape the political institutions of the first colony in
New England.

In the beginning of 1630, Governor John Winthrop accompanied almost 1000 colonists to the new America. The first of the parties stopped at Salem, but quickly established permanent settlement the Shawmut Peninsula of the Massachusetts Bay (known later as Boston),(Morgan,
115). With Winthrop as the Governor he was able to establish a government along with churches and at first made a deal with the local tribes for land, later deciding that God intended for the land to freely be taken by the English.

Works Cited
Morgan, Edmund S. The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop. Boston: Little, Brown, 1958. Print.
Bradford, William. Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647. S.l: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952. Print

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