What push factors caused people to leave England for its colonies in the seventeenth century what pull factors drew them to particular colonies or regions?
The Great Puritan Migration was a period in the 17th century during which English puritans migrated to New England, the Chesapeake and the West Indies. Show
English migration to Massachusetts consisted of a few hundred pilgrims who went to Plymouth Colony in the 1620s and between 13,000 and 21,000 emigrants who went to the Massachusetts Bay Colony between 1630 and 1642. Why Did Puritans Leave England for the New World?The Puritans left England primarily due to religious persecution but also for economic reasons as well. England was in religious turmoil in the early 17th century, the religious climate was hostile and threatening, especially towards religious nonconformists like the puritans. The puritans were a sect of religious dissidents who felt the Church of England was too closely associated with the Catholic religion and needed to be reformed. There were two different types of Puritans at the time: separatists and non-separatists. The non-separatist Puritans wanted to remain in the church and reform it from within. The separatist Puritans felt the church was too corrupt to reform and instead wanted to separate from it. This was problematic for the separatists because, at that time, the church and state were one in England and the act of separating from the Church of England was considered treasonous. This prompted the separatists to leave England for the New World in order to escape potential punishment for their beliefs and to be able to worship more freely. In 1607, a sect of separatists from Yorkshire left England and moved to Leiden, Holland in search of religious freedom. Although they found freedom there, they eventually tired of their grueling jobs in Holland’s cloth industry. In 1619, after living in Holland for 12 years, these separatists sought out investors in England who would be willing to finance their journey to the New World. The group made a deal with the Plymouth Company who promised to finance their trip to North America to establish a colony. In return, the colony would repay the company by harvesting supplies, such as fur, timber and fish, to send back to England. In September of 1620, the separatists traveled to the New World on a rented cargo ship called the Mayflower and landed off the coast of Massachusetts in November, where they established Plymouth Colony, the first colony in New England. This event marks the beginning of the Great Puritan Migration. Embarkation of the Pilgrims, oil painting by Robert W. Weir, circa 1844 In 1623, the Dorchester Company founded a fishing settlement at Gloucester, Massachusetts in Cape Ann. This was the first of many “Old Planter” colonies in New England that were not a part of either the Plymouth Colony or the Massachusetts Bay Colony and were established by Puritans purely for financial reasons, mainly to catch fish to send to England and Spain for profit. The Gloucester settlement later failed in 1626 and the colonists migrated to the Salem area where they started a new settlement without obtaining permission from the king to do so. Although the Old Planter colonies were established as a business venture, one of the founders of the Cape Ann settlement, Reverend John White, also wanted the settlement to be a place of refuge for Puritans escaping religious persecution in England. In 1625, the religious climate in England worsened when King Charles I ascended the throne. Since King Charles had a catholic wife and favored the catholic religion, hostility towards the puritans and protestants alike greatly increased. This prompted many of the more moderate Puritans in England, such as the non-separatists, to finally leave the country. In 1628, the New England Company, the original name of the Massachusetts Bay Company, obtained a patent to settle Salem and took over the illegal settlement established there by the colonists from the failed Gloucester settlement in 1626. In 1629, the Puritans leaders of New England Company renamed their company the Massachusetts Bay Company and obtained a charter from King Charles I to engage in trade in New England. The charter neglected to say that the company had to remain in England to conduct the business so the company took a vote in August of that year and decided to move the entire company to New England. The Great Puritan Migration in the 1630s:Led by Puritan lawyer, John Winthrop, the company left England in April of 1630 and arrived in New England in June where they settled in what is now modern day Boston and established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colony became the largest colony in New England and was hugely successful. Arrival of the Winthrop Fleet, painting by William F. Halsall Some sources state that the reasons for the Massachusetts Bay colonist’s migration were far more complicated than just the quest for religious freedom. According to the book The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards, the Massachusetts Bay puritans felt a moral obligation to live the way God commanded and felt that by doing so they could serve as a religious example to others which, in turn, would help reform England and Christianity:
When the old planter colonies in New England began to fail, the Massachusetts Bay Colonists believed it to be a punishment from God for establishing a colony for financial reasons rather than religious ones, according to Cotton Mather in his book Magnalia:
The Massachusetts Bay Colony took over the Dorchester Company’s failed planter settlements, such as Gloucester, as well as some of the Plymouth Company’s failed settlements, such as Hull and Weymouth, in the 1630s and 40s. In the 1630s, droves of Puritans soon began to flock to New England, particularly after 1633, when King Charles appointed William Laud as the new Archbishop of Canterbury and he began rooting out nonconformity in the church. Laud launched a widespread crackdown on dissidents like the Puritans which led to a surge in Puritan migration to the colonies, according to the book Library of World History: Containing a Record of the Human Race:
Yet another source, the book Exile and Journey in Seventeenth-Century Literature, states that the Massachusetts Bay colonist’s reasons for migrating were even more varied than that and were also based on economic reasons:
Who Were The Puritan Migrants?Massachusetts Bay Colonists tended to be middle-class and usually migrated in family units, according to an article on the New England Historical Society website:
Although Puritan migrants came from almost every county in England, the greatest groups of these migrants came from Eastern and Southern England, particularly the East Anglian counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex; London, Hertfordshire and Kent; and the southwestern counties of Wiltshire, Somerset, Dorset, and Devon. According to the book, British Atlantic, American Frontier, two specific groups of migrants came from these areas:
Migrants who went to the Chesapeake and the West Indies tended to be indentured servants from London. A small fraction of indentured servants were also sent to New England too though, probably contracted to merchants and tradesman who themselves had emigrated from London and Boston, England. In fact, many of the migrants sent to the fishing settlements in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine were indentured servants contracted by merchants in Barnstable, Plymouth, and Dartmouth. What Brought the Great Puritan Migration to an End?A couple of factors brought the Great Puritan Migration to an end around 1640-1642. These factors were the establishment of the Long Parliament in 1640 and the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642. The Long Parliament, which was an English Parliament held from 1640 to 1660, restructured the government, limited the power of the king and punished King Charles’ advisers, such as Archbishop Laud, for their actions, according to the book Early European Civilizations:
According to the introduction of a 1908 edition of John Winthrop’s Journal, History of New England, 1630-1649, this had a big impact on Puritan migration to New England, and “immigration suddenly ceased; with the opening of the Long Parliament the grievances which had driven into exile so many of the non-conformists no longer pressed heavily.” Up to the time of the Long Parliament in 1640, the average number of emigrants to New England had been about 2,000 a year. This new power struggle within the English government then led to the English Civil War in 1642. Not only did the war also halt any further emigration to the colonies, but it is estimated that between 7 to 11 percent of colonists returned to England after the outbreak of the war, including nearly one-third of clergymen, to assist in the war effort. According to the book British Atlantic, American Frontier, English emigration stopped for the rest of the colonial period:
Even though English migration to the area was nonexistent for nearly two hundred years, the population of the New England colonies grew rapidly during that time. This was due to an equal balance of males and females in New England, a healthy environment that led to longer life spans and the trend of couples marrying at a young age and having large families of typically seven to eight children, with at least six or seven of those children surviving to adulthood. In 1650, the total population of New England was about 22,800 and by the middle of the next century it had grown to 360,000 and by 1770 it was about 581,000. Sources: What was a push factor that encouraged people to leave England?Push factors motivate people to leave their home countries. For example, religious persecution pushed the Puritans out of England. Pull factors attract people to a new location. For example, the promise of a better life and fertile soil may pull people to a new land.
For what reasons did the Puritan separatists from England chose to leave their new home in Holland?Thirty-five of the Pilgrims were members of the radical English Separatist Church, who traveled to America to escape the jurisdiction of the Church of England, which they found corrupt. Ten years earlier, English persecution had led a group of Separatists to flee to Holland in search of religious freedom.
What were the major factors that led England to begin colonization?Like the other European countries, England was motivated in part by the lure of both riches and the Northwest Passage. In 1606, King James I granted a charter to colonize Virginia to the Virginia Company of London, a joint-stock company of investors who believed there was a profit to be made.
Why did fewer Dutch than English immigrate to the American colonies describe both the push factors and the pull factors that contributed to the difference?Why did fewer Dutch than English immigrate to the American Colonies? Because the Dutch held most of the trade, the English moved to America in seek of better work. How did geography help Pennsylvania and New York prosper? They had a temperate climate, fertile soil, and a navigable river for trade.
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