Puritan

2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History 1500-1750

A Puritan of 16th and 17th century England was an associate of any number of disparate religious groups advocating for more "purity" of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and group piety. Puritans felt that the English Reformation had not gone far enough, and that the Church of England was tolerant of practices which they associated with the church of Rome. The word "Puritan" was originally an alternate term for "Cathar" and was a pejorative used to characterize them as extremists similar to the Cathari of France. The Puritans sometimes cooperated with presbyterians, who put forth a number of proposals for "further reformation" in order to keep the Church of England more closely in line with the Reformed Churches on the Continent.

Background

The Puritan movement can be traced back to the Vestments Controversy in the reign of Edward VI, although the term "Puritan" was not coined until the 1560s, when it appears as a term of abuse for those who proposed further reforms than those adopted by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement of 1559. Throughout the reign of Elizabeth I, the Puritan movement involved both a political and a social component. Politically, the movement attempted, mostly unsuccessfully, to have Parliament pass legislation to replace episcopacy with presbyterianism, and to alter the 1559 Book of Common Prayer to remove elements considered odious by the Puritans. Socially, the Puritan movement called for a greater commitment to Jesus Christ on the part of its members and for greater levels of personal holiness. By the end of Elizabeth's reign, the Puritans constituted a distinct social group within the Church of England who regarded themselves as the godly, and who held out little hope for their neighbours who remained attached to " popish superstitions" and worldliness. However, most Puritans were non-Separating Puritans who remained within the Church of England, and only a small number of Puritans became Separating Puritans or Separatists who left the Church of England altogether. Although the Puritan movement was occasionally subjected to suppression by the bishops of the Church of England, in many places, individual ministers were able to omit disliked portions of the Book of Common Prayer and to be especially attentive to the needs of the godly.

Congregationalism

The Church of England as a whole was Calvinist, as seen in the 39 Articles, the Anglican Homilies, and in John Calvin's correspondence with Edward VI and Thomas Cranmer. The Puritan movement was distinctive from the rest of the church in theology more prescriptive than Calvinism, in legalism, theonomy, and especially – congregationalism. Puritan worship was plain, resembling a secular lecture with women strictly segregated from men, and tight control was exercised over the personal habits of members of Puritan congregations to enforce piety. Theology was clearly rooted in the humanism of the Age of Enlightenment. Puritans were dismayed in 1625 when Charles I became king and was determined to eliminate the "excesses" of Puritanism from the Church of England. His close advisor, William Laud, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, moved the Church of England in a direction away from Puritanism and rigorously enforced the law against ministers who deviated from the Book of Common Prayer, or who violated the ban on preaching about predestination. As a result, many Puritans participated in the Great Migration, founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a Puritan haven far from the prying eyes of Laud and the other bishops. The Puritan movement in England allied itself with the cause of "England's ancient liberties" - the unpopularity of Laud and the suppression of Puritanism was a major factor leading to the English Civil War, during which the Puritans formed the backbone of the parliamentary side.

Fragmentation

The Puritan movement began to fracture with the calling of the Westminster Assembly in 1643. Whereas previously, the Puritan movement was associated with Presbyterians and others that sought further reforms in the Church of England, at the Westminster Assembly, it became necessary to work out the details. Doctrinally, the Assembly was able to agree to the Westminster Confession of Faith (which thus provides a good overview of the Puritan theological position, although some Puritans would reject portions of it, e.g. the Baptists rejected its teaching on infant baptism). However, the Westminster Divines were bitterly divided over questions of church polity, and divided into factions supporting moderate episcopacy, presbyterianism, congregationalism, and Erastianism. Although the Assembly eventually decided on presbyterianism, the fact that Oliver Cromwell was an Independent who favoured religious toleration meant that presbyterianism was never imposed on the Church of England, resulting in the English Interregnum being a period of religious diversity and experimentation. At the time of the English Restoration (1660), the Church of England was also restored to its pre-Civil War constitution and the Puritans were again forced out of the Church of England by the Great Ejection of 1662. By this point, the term "Puritan" was replaced by the term Dissenter to describe those who "dissented" from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Forced from the Church of England, Dissenters established their own denominations in the 1660s and 1670s. The government initially attempted to suppress these organizations by the Clarendon Code. The Whigs argued that the Dissenters should be allowed to worship outside of the Church of England. This position ultimately prevailed when the Toleration Act was passed in the wake of the Glorious Revolution (1689). As a result, a number of denominations were legally organized in the 1690s. The term Nonconformist generally replaced the term "Dissenter" from the middle of the eighteenth century.

Terminology

Originally used to describe a third-century sect of strictly legalistic heretics, the word "Puritan" is now applied unevenly to a number of Protestant churches (and religious groups within the Anglican Church) from the late 16th century to the present. Puritans did not originally use the term for themselves. It was a term of abuse that first surfaced in the 1560s. "Precisemen" and "Precisions" were other early antagonistic terms for Puritans who preferred to call themselves "the godly." The word "Puritan" thus always referred to a type of religious belief, rather than a particular religious sect. To reflect that the term encompasses a variety of ecclesiastical bodies and theological positions, scholars today increasingly prefer to use the term as a common noun or adjective: "puritan" rather than "Puritan."

The single theological momentum most consistently defined by the term "Puritan" was Reformed or Calvinist and led to the founding of the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Independent or Congregationalist churches; In the United States, the church and religious culture of the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony formed the basis of post-colonial American Congregationalism, specifically the Congregational Church proper. The term Puritan was used by the group itself mainly in the 16th century, though it seems to have been used often and, in its earliest recorded instances, as a term of abuse. By the middle of the 17th century, the group had become so divided that "Puritan" was most often used by opponents and detractors of the group, rather than by the practitioners themselves. As Patrick Collinson has noted, well before the founding of the New England settlement, “Puritanism had no content beyond what was attributed to it by its opponents.” The practitioners knew themselves as members of particular churches or movements, and not by the simple term.

Puritans who felt that the Reformation of the Church of England had not gone far enough but who remained within the Church of England advocating further reforms are known as non-separating Puritans. (The Non-Separating Puritans differed among themselves about how much further reformation was necessary.) Those who felt that the Church of England was so corrupt that true Christians should separate from it altogether are known as separating Puritans or simply as Separatists. Especially after the Restoration (1660), non-separating Puritans were called Nonconformists (for their failure to conform to the Book of Common Prayer) while separating Puritans were called Dissenters.

The term "puritan" is not normally used to describe any religious group after the 17th century, although several groups might be called "puritan" because their origins lay in the Puritan movement. For example, in the late seventeenth century, those Dissenters who had separated from the Church of England organized themselves into separate denominations ( Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists), particularly after the Act of Toleration of 1689 made it legal to worship outside the Church of England. The non-separating Puritans who remained within the Church of England had by the early eighteenth century come to be known as the Low Church wing of the Church of England.

The term "puritan" might be used by analogy (usually unfavorably) to describe any group that shares a commitment to the Puritans' strong commitment to the purity of worship, of doctrine, or of personal or group morality.

History

Background, to 1559

The English Reformation, begun in the reign of Henry VIII of England, was initially influenced by a number of reforming movements on the continent: Erasmian, Lutheran, and Reformed, while the practice of the Church of England continued to display many similarities with Roman Catholicism. In the reign of Henry’s son, Edward VI of England, the English Reformation began to take on a more distinctly Calvinist tone. This was particularly the case because, shortly after Edward ascended the throne, the forces of the Schmalkaldic League were defeated at the Battle of Mühlberg by the forces of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, which led to a number of leading Reformed churchmen seeking refuge in England. The refugees included Peter Martyr Vermigli (who became Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University), Martin Bucer (who became Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University), and John a Lasco (who became head of the stranger churches).

All three of these men influenced England’s leading Protestant reformer, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, the primate of the Church of England. On the issue of the eucharist (probably the most contentious theological issue of the day), Cranmer came to adopt the Reformed, rather than the Lutheran position. (At his trial, Cranmer said that he was influenced in this regard by Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, who in turn said that he was most influenced that the Calvinists were correct through his study of Ratramnus.) Cranmer’s views are important because he wrote his opinion into the Book of Common Prayer, which he revised several times during Edward’s reign. The 1552 version, in particular, incorporated many of Martin Bucer’s suggestions, as did the 1552 Forty-Two Articles. Thus, by 1552, the Church of England had moved decisively towards the Reformed camp, although its worship still retained several elements which had been changed by the continental Reformed churches (including the keeping of Lent, allowing the baptism of infants by midwives, retaining the custom of the churching of women, requiring the clergy to wear vestments, and requiring kneeling at Communion).

Of all the debates about the extent of reforms in England, the one which would ultimately prove to have the longest staying power was the debate about whether the clergy should be required to wear vestments. In his 1550 Lenten sermons before the king, John Hooper called for the elimination of vestments. Later that year, Hooper was to be appointed Bishop of Gloucester, but refused on the grounds that he would be required to wear vestments. Called before the English privy council, a deal was worked out whereby Hooper could be excused from wearing vestments, provided he allowed the clergy under him to wear vestments if they saw fit. Cranmer ordered Nicholas Ridley to perform the consecration of Hooper as Bishop of Gloucester on the basis of the deal worked out in the Privy Council; Ridley, however, refused, on the grounds that such a consecration would violate the ordinal of the Book of Common Prayer, which, since it had been passed by the English Parliament and signed by the king, was the law of the land. This disagreement led to a subsequent October 1550 debate between Hooper and Ridley which formed the basis of the Vestments Controversy (also known as the "Vestiarian Controversy"). In December, Hooper was placed under house arrest for refusing to be consecrated as a bishop, which was a crime under the terms of the 1549 Act of Uniformity. In January 1551, Peter Martyr Vermigli visited Hooper to encourage him to wear vestments, and John Calvin wrote him a letter saying that, while he agreed with Hooper’s position on vestments, the issue was not a big enough deal to justify his refusing the bishopric.

As such, in February, Hooper ended his resistance, and he was subsequently consecrated as Bishop of Gloucester in March 1551.

Throughout the reign of Edward VI, the Church of England had been steadily moving toward the Reformed position. This was halted in 1553, when Edward died and his Catholic half-sister assumed the throne as Mary I of England. Mary determined to end the English Reformation and restore the Church of England to full communion with the Church of Rome, and therefore instituted a series of persecutions of Protestants known as the Marian Persecutions, which saw Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, John Hooper, and many other prominent English Protestants burned at the stake.

As a result of the persecution, roughly 800 English Protestants went into exile. Unwelcome in German Lutheran territories, they established English Protestant congregations in Emden, Wesel, Frankfurt, Strasbourg, Zurich, Basel, Geneva, and Aarau. Most of these churches continued to follow the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, but the Frankfurt congregation, under the leadership of John Knox, felt that the 1552 Book of Common Prayer was insufficiently reformed, and therefore worshiped according to a liturgy drawn up by Knox, known as the Book of Common Order. Under this liturgy, the clergy did not wear vestments, which led to a renewal of the Vestments Controversy between the Frankfurt congregation and the other English Marian exiles.

Reign of Elizabeth I, 1559-1603

The Elizabethan Religious Settlement, 1559

In 1559, Queen Mary died, and her half-sister, Elizabeth became Queen of England. Elizabeth had been raised as a Protestant in the household of Catherine Parr and upon her ascension to the throne, Elizabeth was determined to reverse Mary's policies and make England a Protestant nation. The first year of Elizabeth's reign was a difficult one: on the one hand, the Marian exiles on the continent returned to England, expecting to thoroughly reform the Church of England; on the other hand, a large proportion of the population and the political nation of England had supported Mary's Catholic policies. The result in 1559 was a compromise between the two positions, known as the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which attempted to make England Protestant without totally alienating the portion of the population that had supported Catholicism under Mary. While the Elizabethan Settlement proved acceptable to the vast majority of the English nation, there remained minorities at either extremes who were dissatisfied with the state of the Church of England - deeply committed Catholics complained that the Church of England had strayed too far from the Church of Rome, while deeply committed Protestants complained that the Church of England retained far too many remnants of Roman Catholicism and was therefore in need of "further reform". This cry for "further reform" in the 1560s was the basis of the Puritan Movement.

The Church of England under Elizabeth was broadly Reformed in nature: Elizabeth's first Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker had been the executor of Martin Bucer's will, and his replacement, Edmund Grindal had carried the coffin at Bucer's funeral. During the 1560s and 1570s, the works of John Calvin were the most widely disseminated publications in England, while the works of Theodore Beza also enjoyed immense popularity. As a result, the bishops who opposed Puritanism in the sixteenth and early-seventeenth century were themselves thoroughly Calvinist.

Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1559-1575

The Return of the Vestiarian Controversy, 1563-1569

At the first Convocation of the English Clergy of Elizabeth's reign, held in 1563, the Puritan faction of the Church of England set out its desires for further reforms: 1) a reduction in the number of saints' days; 2) the elimination of vestments; 3) the elimination of kneeling at communion; 4) the elimination of "emergency baptism" of sickly newborns; and 5) the elimination of organs from churches. The Puritan faction achieved none of its goals at the 1563 Convocation, though many Puritan clergymen introduced these reforms in their congregations on their own initiative in the following years. For example, at Cambridge, William Fulke convinced his students not to wear their surplices and to hiss at those students who wore their surplices.

In this situation, Archbishop Parker published a set of Advertisements, requiring uniformity in clerical dress. The Puritan faction objected loudly, and appealed to the continental reformers to support their cause. Unfortunately for the Puritans many of the continental reformers felt that the Puritans were just making trouble - for example, in a letter to Bishop Grindal, Heinrich Bullinger accused the Puritans of displaying "a contentious spirit under the name of conscience". Grindal proceeded to publish the letter without Bullinger's permission. Theodore Beza was more supportive of the Puritan position, though he did not intervene too loudly because he feared angering the queen and he wanted the queen to intervene in France on behalf of the Huguenots. In response to clergymen refusing to wear their vestments, 37 ministers were suspended. In response, in 1569, some ministers began holding their own services, the first example of Puritan separatism.

The Admonition to the Parliament (1572) and the Demand for Presbyterianism

Throughout the 1560s, England's return to Protestantism had remained tentative, and large numbers of the people remained committed to Catholicism and sought a return to Catholicism. Three events around 1570 led to a re-enforcement of Protestantism: (1) The Rising of the North, when the northern earls revolted, demanding a return to Catholicism; (2) Pope Pius V issued the bull Regnans in Excelsis, absolving Catholics of their duty of allegiance to Elizabeth; and (3) the Ridolfi plot sought to replace Elizabeth with the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. In response to this Catholic rebelliousness, the English government took several measures to shore up the Protestantism of the regime: (1) all clergymen were required to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles; (2) all laity were required to take communion according to the rite of the Book of Common Prayer in their home parish at least once a year; and (3) it became a treasonable offense to say that the queen was a heretic or a schismatic.

In this pro-Protestant, anti-Catholic environment, the Puritan faction sought to push further reforms on the Church of England. John Foxe and Thomas Norton presented a reform proposal initially drawn up under Edward VI to Parliament. Elizabeth quickly killed this proposal, however, insisting on adherence to the 1559 religious settlement. Meanwhile, at Cambridge, professor Thomas Cartwright, a long-time opponent of vestments, offered a series of lectures in 1570 on the Book of Acts in which he called for the abolition of episcopacy and the creation of a presbyterian system of church governance in England.

Puritans were further dismayed when they learned that the bishops had decided to merge the vestiarian controversy into the requirement that clergy subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles: at the time they swore their allegiance to the Thirty-Nine Articles, the bishops also required all clergymen to swear that the use of the Book of Common Prayer and the wearing of vestments are not contrary to Scripture. Many of the Puritan clergymen were incensed at this requirement. A bill authorizing the bishops to permit deviations from the Book of Common Prayer in cases where the Prayer Book required something contrary to a clergyman's conscience was presented and defeated at the next parliament.

Meanwhile, at Cambridge, Vice-Chancellor John Whitgift moved against Thomas Cartwright, depriving Cartwright of his professorship and his fellowship in 1571.

Under these circumstances, in 1572, two London clergymen - Thomas Wilcox and John Field - penned the first classic expression of Puritanism, their Admonition to the Parliament. According to the Admonition, the Puritans had long accepted the Book of Common Prayer, with all its deficiencies, because it promoted the peace and unity of the church.

However, now that the bishops were requiring them to subscribe to the Book of Common Prayer, the Puritans felt obliged to point out the popery and superstition contained in the Prayer Book. The Admonition went on to call for more thorough church reforms, modeled on the reforms made by the Huguenots or by the Church of Scotland under the leadership of John Knox. The Admonition ended by denouncing the bishops and calling for the replacement of episcopalianism with presbyterianism.

The Admonition to Parliament set off a major controversy in England. John Whitgift wrote an Answer denouncing the Admonition which in turn led to Thomas Cartwright's Replye to An Answere Made of M. Doctor Whitgift Agaynste the Admonition to the Parliament (1573), a second Puritan classic. Cartwright argued that a properly reformed church must contain the four orders of ministers identified by Calvin: teaching elders, ruling elders, deacons, and theological professors. Cartwright went on to denounce the subjection of any minister in the church to any other minister in the strongest possible terms. In a Second Replye, Cartwright was even more forceful, arguing that any preeminence accorded to any minister in the church violated divine law. Furthermore, he went on to assert that a presbyterian hierarchy of presbyteries and synods was required by divine law.

In 1574, an ally of Cartwright's, Walter Travers published a Full and Plaine Declaration of Ecclesiasticall Discipline, setting forth a scheme of reform in greater detail than Cartwright had.

The government moved against all three of these Puritan leaders: John Field and Thomas Wilcox were imprisoned for a year, while Thomas Cartwright fled to exile on the continent to avoid such a fate. In the end, however, the number of clergymen who refused to subscribe to the bishops' requirements proved to be too large, and a number of qualified subscriptions were allowed.

Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1575-1583

The reign of Edmund Grindal as Archbishop of Canterbury (1575-1583) was relatively tranquil compared to that of his predecessor, mainly because the movement had been so effectively stifled during Archbishop Parker's tenure.

The major issue during Grindal's archiepiscopate came in 1581, when Robert Browne and his congregation at Bury St Edmunds withdrew from communion in the Church of England, citing the Church of England's dumb (i.e. non-preaching) ministry, and the lack of proper church discipline. Browne and his followers, known as the Brownists, were forced into exile in the Low Countries. There, they were encouraged by Thomas Cartwright, who was now serving as minister to the Merchant Adventurers at Middelburg. However, Cartwright argued that while the Church of England might be flawed, the Brownists were incorrect in separating from it (i.e. he opposed separatism). Like the vast majority of Puritans, Cartwright advocated further reforms to the Church of England, while rejecting the separatism of the Brownists.

A second Puritan development under Grindal was the rise of the Puritan conventicle, modeled on the Zurich Prophezei (Puritans learned of the practice through the congregation of refugees from Zurich established in London), where ministers met weekly to discuss "profitable questions." These "profitable questions" included the correct use of the Sabbath, a sign of the growth of the characteristically English Sabbatarianism of the English Puritans. The queen objected to the growth of the conventicling movement and ordered Archbishop Grindal to suppress the movement. Archbishop Grindal refused, citing I Cor. 14. As a result of his disobedience, Grindal was disgraced and placed under virtual house arrest for the rest of his tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury. However, because of his actions, the conventicles resumed after a brief period of suspension.

John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1583-1604

As we saw above, John Whitgift had been a vocal opponent of Thomas Cartwright. He believed that the matter of church governance was adiaphora, a "matter indifferent", and that the church should accommodate its governance style to the style of government in the state in which the church was located. The Church of England was located in a monarchy, so the church should adopt an episcopal style of government.

Renewed calls for Presbyterianism

The years 1583-1585 saw the brief ascendancy in Scotland of James Stewart, who claimed the title of Earl of Arran. This period saw Scotland pass the Black Acts, which outlawed the Second Book of Discipline. As a response, many Scottish ministers, including Andrew Melville, sought refuge in England. These refugees participated in the English conventicles (as did John Field, now released from prison) and convinced many English Puritans that they should renew their fight to establish presbyterianism in England. As such, in the 1584 Parliament, Puritans introduced legislation to replace the Book of Common Prayer with the Genevan Book of Order and to introduce presbyterianism. This effort failed.

At this point, John Field, Walter Travers, and Thomas Cartwright were all free and back in England and determined to draft a new order for the Church of England. They drafted a Book of Discipline, which circulated in 1586, and which they hoped would be accepted by the 1586 Parliament. Again, the Puritan effort failed in Parliament.

Martin Marprelate, 1588-89, and response

In 1588-89, a series of virulently anti-episcopal tracts were published under the pseudonym of Martin Marprelate. These Marprelate tracts, published by Welsh publisher John Penry, denounced the bishops as agents of Antichrist, the strongest possible denunciation for Christians. The Marprelate tracts called the bishops "our vile servile dunghill ministers of damnation, that viperous generation, those scorpions."

Unforunately for the Puritans, the mid- to late-1580s saw a number of the defenders of the Puritans in the English government die: Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford in 1585; Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester in 1588; and Francis Walsingham in 1590. In these circumstances, Richard Bancroft (John Whitgift's chaplain) led a crackdown against the Puritans. Cartwright and eight other Puritan leaders were imprisoned for eighteen months, before facing trial in the Star Chamber. The conventicles were disbanded.

Some Puritans followed Robert Browne's lead and withdrew from the Church of England. A number of those separatists were arrested in the woods near Islington in 1593, and John Greenwood and Henry Barrowe were executed for advocating separatism. Followers of Greenwood and Barrowe fled to the Netherlands, and would form the basis of the Pilgrims, who would later found the Plymouth Colony.

1593 also saw the English parliament pass the Religion Act (35 Elizabeth c. 1) and the Popish Recusants Act (35 Elizabeth c. 2), which provided that those worshiping outside the Church of England had 3 months in which to either conform to the Church of England or else abjure the realm, forfeiting their lands and goods to the crown, with failure to abjure being a capital offense. Although these acts were directed against Roman Catholics who refused to conform to the Church of England, on their face they also applied to many of the Puritans. Although no Puritans were executed under these laws, they remained a constant threat and source of anxiety to the Puritans.

The Drive to Create a Preaching Ministry

One of the most important aspects of the Puritan movement was its insistence on having a preaching ministry throughout the country. At the time of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, less than 10% of the 40,000 English parish clergy was licensed to preach. (Since the time of the repression of the Lollards in the 14th century, it had been illegal for an ordained parish priest to preach to his congregation without first obtaining a license from his bishop.) Elizabeth herself had been no fan of preaching and preferred a church service focused on the Prayer Book liturgy. However, many of Elizabeth's bishops did support the development of a preaching ministry, and aided by wealthy laymen, were able to dramatically expand the number of qualified preachers in the country. For example, Sir Walter Mildmay founded Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1584 to promote the training of preaching ministers. Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex similarly founded Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1596. Emmanuel and Sidney Sussex became the homes of academic Puritanism.

Although the number of preachers increased dramatically over the course of Elizabeth's reign, there were still not enough preachers to go around. A layman who wanted to hear a sermon might have to travel to another parish in order to find one with a preaching minister. When he got there, he might find that the preaching minister had shortened the Prayer Book service to allow more time for preaching. And, as a trained minister, when he did pray, he was more likely to offer an extemporaneous prayer instead of simply reading the set prayer out of the Prayer Book. Thus we see two different styles developing in the Church of England: a traditional style, focused on the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer; and the Puritan style, focused on preaching, with less ceremony and shorter or extemporaneous prayers.

The rise of "experimental predestinarianism"

Following the suppression of Puritanism in the wake of the Marprelate Tracts, Puritans in England assumed a more low-key approach in the 1590s. Ministers who favoured further reforms increasingly turned their attention away from structural reforms to the Church of England, instead choosing to focus on individual, personal holiness. Theologians such as William Perkins of Cambridge continued to maintain the rigorously high standards of previous Puritans, but now focused their attention on improving individual, as opposed to collective, righteousness. A characteristic Puritan focus during this period was for more rigorous keeping of the Christian Sabbath. William Perkins is also credited with introducing Theodore Beza's version of double predestination to the English Puritans, a view which he popularized through the use of a chart he created known as "The Golden Chain".

In 1970, R. T. Kendall labeled the form of religion practiced by William Perkins and his followers as experimental predestinarianism, a position which Kendall contrasted with credal predestinarianism. Kendall identified credal predestinarians as anyone who accepts the Calvinist teaching on predestination. Experimental predestinarians, however, went beyond merely adhering to the doctrine of predestination, but in fact taught that it was possible for individuals to know experimentally that one is saved, a member of God's elect predestined for eternal life. (The credal predestinarians believed that only some group was destined for eternal life, but that it was impossible in this life to identify who is elect and who is reprobate.) Puritans who adopted Perkins' brand of experimental predestinarianism felt pressure, once they had undergone a religious process to attain knowledge of their election, to seek out like-minded individuals who had undergone similar religious experiences.

In time, some Puritan clergymen and laity, who increasingly referred to themselves as "the godly", began to view themselves as distinct from the regular members of the Church of England, who had not undergone an emotional conversion experience. At times, this tendency led for calls for "the godly" to separate themselves from the Church of England. While the majority of Puritans remained "non-separating Puritans", they nevertheless came to constitute a distinct social group within the Church of England by the turn of the seventeenth century. In the next reign, "the Puritan" as a type was common enough that playwright Ben Jonson could satirize Puritans in the form of the characters Tribulation and Ananais in The Alchemist (1610) and Zeal-of-the-land Busy in Bartholomew Fair (1614).

Reign of James I, 1603-1625

The Millenary Petition (1603) and the Hampton Court Conference (1604)

Elizabeth I died in March 1603, whereupon James VI of Scotland, who had been King of Scots since the abdication of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots in 1567 (when James was 1 year old), inherited the English throne. James had had little contact with his mother and was raised by guardians in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. John Knox had led the Scottish Reformation, beginning in 1560, and the Church of Scotland looked broadly like the type of church that the Puritans wanted in England. As such, the Puritans hoped that the further reforms which had been blocked under Elizabeth could now be carried out under the new king. They were somewhat worried because in his 1599 book Basilikon Doron, the king had had harsh words for Puritans. However, his criticisms seemed directed at the most extreme of the Puritans and it seemed likely that the king would agree to at least the more moderate Puritan reforms.

Thus, throughout 1603, Puritan ministers collected signatures for a petition, known as the Millenary Petition because it was signed by 1,000 Puritan ministers. The Petition was careful not to challenge the royal supremacy in the Church of England, and called for a number of moderate church reforms to remove ceremonies perceived as overly popish: 1) the use of the sign of the cross in baptism (which Puritans saw as superstitious); 2) the rite of confirmation (which Puritans criticized because it was not found in the Bible); 3) the performance of baptism by midwives (which Puritans argued was based on a superstitious belief that infants who died without being baptized could not go to heaven); 4) the exchanging of rings during the marriage ceremony (again seen as unscriptural and superstitious); 5) bowing at the Name of Jesus during worship (again seen as superstitious); 6) the requirement that clergy wear vestments (see above); and 7) the custom of clergy living in the church building. The Petition argued that a preaching minister should be appointed to every parish (instead of one who simply read the service from the Book of Common Prayer). In opposition to Archbishop Whitgift's policy that clergy must subscribe to the Book of Common Prayer and the use of vestments, the Petition argued that ministers should only be required to subscribe to the 39 Articles and the royal supremacy. Finally, the Petition called for the ending of episcopacy, and the setting up of a presbyterian system of church governance.

James I, who had studied theology, and who enjoyed debating theological points, agreed to hold a conference at Hampton Court Palace, where supporters and opponents of the Millenery Petition could debate the merits of reforms to the church. After being postponed due to an outbreak of the plague, the Hampton Court Conference was held in January 1604. The king chose four Puritans to represent the Puritan cause: John Rainolds (president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford), Laurence Chaderton (master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge), Thomas Sparks, and John Knewstubs. Archbishop Whitgift led a delegation of eight bishops (including Whitgift's protege, Richard Bancroft, Bishop of London), seven deans, and two other clergymen in opposition to the Puritans.

At the first meeting of the Hampton Court Conference, held January 14, James met only with Archbishop Whitgift's party. On the second day, January 16, he met with the Puritans - this day of the conference ended badly for the Puritans when John Rainolds mentioned the Puritan proposal for creating presbyteries in England. James had long regarded bishops (who were appointed by the monarch) as the main instrument of royal power in the church, and viewed the proposal to replace bishops with presbyteries as an attempt to diminish his power in the church. As such, James issued his famous maxim "No bishop, no king!" on this occasion, before ending the day's meeting early. On January 18, the king initially met with Whitgift's party and an assemblage of ecclesiastical lawyers, before calling in the Puritans to hear his verdict. James declared that the use of the Book of Common Prayer was to continue, and made no provisions for a preaching ministry. He did, however, approve a few changes in the Book of Common Prayer: 1) the mention of baptism by midwives was to be eliminated; 2) the term " absolution" (which Puritans associated with the Catholic sacrament of penance, which was rejected by Protestants) was replaced by the term "remission of sins"; 3) confirmation was renamed "laying on of hands" to dissociate it from its Catholic sacramental meaning; and 4) a few other minor changes. James also announced that he agreed to support the Puritan project for a new, authorized translation of the Bible, thus setting the stage for the production of the Authorized King James Version of the Bible, which would ultimately be published in 1611.

Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1604-1610

The Puritans were further disappointed when, following the death of John Whitgift, James selected Richard Bancroft as his replacement as Archbishop of Canterbury. Bancroft had argued against the Puritans at the Hampton Court Conference, and his selection signaled that James would not be willing to go ahead with any further reforms. Shortly after his selection, Bancroft presented a book of canons to the Convocation of the English Clergy - these canons received royal approval and as such became part of the Church of England's canon law. This outraged the Parliament of England, which in 1559 had passed the Act of Uniformity approving the Book of Common Prayer, and which claimed that Parliament, not Convocation, was the only body authorized to pass new canon law. The Puritans, who opposed Bancroft's book of canons, argued that the bishops were attempting to aggrandize themselves at the Parliament's expense. In the end, James acceded to Parliament's demand, and withdrew the book of canons. The 1604 parliament marks the first time that the Puritans had allied themselves with the cause of Parliament over against the cause of the bishops. Over the next several decades, this alliance would become one of the most pronounced features of English politics, and would form the basis of the divisions in the English Civil War in the 1640s.

The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot (a plot by Guy Fawkes to kill the king and parliament by bombing the State Opening of Parliament in order to restore Catholicism in England) led to a period of particularly virulent anti-Catholicism. Since the Puritans were the most passionately anti-Catholic group in England, they enjoyed some cachet in this period. Nevertheless, their reform proposals were always successfully blocked by Archbishop Bancroft.

George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1611-1633

Following Archbishop Bancroft's death in 1610, James chose George Abbot as his successor. James had been trying to bring the Church of England and the Church of Scotland closer together, in the hope that the two churches might eventually merge. James re-introduced bishops (abolished at the time of the Scottish Reformation) into the Church of Scotland, though with less power than bishops elsewhere, with the Scottish bishops serving essentially as the permanent chairman of their presbytery (so that the presbyterian structure of the church was essentially maintained). In 1608, Abbot had impressed James after he accompanied George Home, 1st Earl of Dunbar to Scotland as part of his efforts to unify the English and Scottish churches, and James had named Abbot Bishop of Lichfield in 1609. James intended Abbot's appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury to further his project of unifying the English and Scottish churches.

While every Archbishop of Canterbury since Matthew Parker had been a Calvinist, Abbot is generally regarded as "The Calvinist Archbishop" or even as "The Puritan Archbishop", and is the closest the Puritans ever got to seeing an Archbishop of Canterbury endorse their proposals. (The one issue on which Abbot was distinctly non-Puritan was the issue of episcopacy - Abbot was one the most vocal proponents of the doctrine of Apostolic Succession in the Church of England.)

The Book of Sports Controversy, 1617

As has been noted earlier, one of the characteristic features of the Puritan movement was an insistence on a strict keeping of the Christian Sabbath on Sundays. (Of all the Reformed movements on the continent, none ever came anywhere close to the Puritans' extreme Sabbatarianism.) The Puritans insisted that the Fourth Commandment (which Catholics and Lutherans regard as the Third Commandment) of the Ten Commandments required not only that no work be performed on Sundays, but also that the entire day should be dedicated to the worship of God.

It had long been a custom in England that Sunday mornings were dedicated to Christian worship, and were then followed by sports and games on Sunday afternoons. The Puritans loudly objected to the practice of Sunday sports, believing that playing games on the Sabbath constituted a violation of the Fourth Commandment.

In the early seventeenth century, Puritans came to dominate several localities and managed to succeed in banning Sunday sports. In 1617, in Lancashire, there was a particularly intense quarrel between the Puritans and the local gentry (many of whom were Catholic recusants) over the issue of Sunday sports. In response to the controversy raging in his diocese, Thomas Morton, Bishop of Chester, asked the king for a ruling on the propriety of Sunday sports.

In response to Bishop Morton's request, King James issued the Book of Sports, a declaration declaring that it was lawful to play some sports on Sundays, but not others. Criticizing the opinions of "puritans and precise people", the Book listed archery, dancing, " leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless recreation" as permissible sports for Sundays. It forbade bear-baiting, bull-baiting, "interludes" and bowling.

Needless to say, the Book of Sports was very controversial among the Puritans. The king commanded all Anglican ministers to read the Book of Sports to their congregations, but Archbishop Abbot, a supporter of Sabbatarianism, ordered his clergy not to read the Book of Sports.

The Five Articles of Perth, 1618

As part of his policy of moving the English and Scottish churches closer together, in 1618, King James proposed the Five Articles of Perth, which imposed English practices on the Scottish church. The Five Articles required 1) kneeling at Communion; 2) provisions allowing for private baptism; 3) provisions allowing reservation of the sacrament for the ill; 4) only a bishop was allowed to administer the rite of confirmation; and 5) the Church of Scotland, which had previously abolished all holy days, was obliged to accept some holy days.

The Five Articles of Perth were ultimately accepted by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, though a sizable minority of Scottish Presbyterians objected. The Articles of Perth were also distressing for English Puritans - the Puritans had hoped that the Church of England would be reformed to be brought in line with the practice of the Church of Scotland. Instead, the Articles of Perth appeared to English Puritans to be heading in the wrong direction, by forcing English errors on the Church of Scotland.

Controversy over the Spanish Match, 1623-1624

King James saw himself as the potential peacemaker of Europe, and his propaganda portrayed him as the modern Solomon. In addition to attempting to reconcile the Church of Scotland and the Church of England, James hoped that he would be able to reconcile Catholic and Protestant Europe. (This is part of the reason why he favoured the Church of England over the Church of Scotland while pursuing his reforms - he felt that the Church of England could provide a model middle ground, and that both Catholics and Protestants would be able to accept churches modeled after the Church of England. In this regard, he subscribed to the theory that the Church of England represented a via media, a middle way between Protestantism and Catholicism, a view first propounded by Richard Hooker in the reign of Elizabeth I.) As such, when his son Charles became old enough to marry, James mused about marrying Charles to a Catholic princess in order to further his reconciliation of Catholicism and Protestantism.

James' opinions about the possibility of a reconciliation of Catholicism and Protestantism were challenged by the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War in 1618, a war which would prove to be the biggest Protestant-Catholic war since the sixteenth century (which had seen the Schmalkaldic War, the French Wars of Religion, etc.) and which thus signaled the end of two decades of relative Catholic-Protestant peace. The outbreak of the Thirty Years' War was particularly tragic for James since it was caused by the actions of his son-in-law Frederick V, Elector Palatine, who was married to James' daughter Elizabeth.

With the outbreak of war against the Catholics, English Protestants - and especially the English Puritans - demanded that James intervene on behalf of his son-in-law. James initially refused, but after Fredrick was ousted as King of Bohemia by Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor in 1620, the clamor for English intervention grew so loud that James was forced to call a parliament to raise funds to support an expedition on behalf of Frederick (the first parliament James had called since the 1614 Addled Parliament). Unfortunately for James, Parliament, ably led by Edward Coke, refused to grant adequate funds for this expedition unless the king agreed that his son would marry a Protestant. James responded that Parliament had no business interfering in matters of royal prerogative. Parliament responded by passing a protest, asserting its ancient rights. At the urging of his favourite, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and of the Spanish ambassador Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, conde de Gondomar, James tore this protest out of the record book and dissolved Parliament.

Buckingham had gained considerable influence, not only over James, but also over Prince Charles. In 1623, he convinced the 23-year-old Prince Charles that England should ally with Spain and that Prince Charles should marry a Spanish princess. The two thus sailed for Spain so that Charles could court Maria Anna of Spain, daughter of Philip III of Spain. This proposed marriage is known to history as the Spanish Match. The Spanish Match was wildly unpopular among English Protestants, and allowed the Puritans a great deal of credibility. Puritans argued that the Spanish Match was part of a plot to restore England to Catholicism, a position that was deeply unpopular in England. As such, when James called another parliament in 1623, the anti-Catholic outpouring was so virulent that it was obvious the parliament would agree to none of the king's requests. Meanwhile, in Spain, the Spanish insisted that they would only agree to the Spanish Match if Charles agreed to convert to Catholicism and agree to spend a year receiving Catholic instruction in Spain. Under the circumstances, Charles ultimately declined the Spanish Match in 1624. His return to England was greeted with widespread celebrations and treated as a national holiday, celebrating the fact that the Spanish Match had not occurred.

In response to his rebuff by Spain, Charles came to favour alliance with France and war with Spain. At the Puritan-dominated 1624 parliament, the parliament impeached Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex, the minister most associated with advocacy in favour of the Spanish Match. The parliament agreed to fund a war with Spain in principle, though they did not actually allocate funding for the war.

The rise of the Arminian party and the New Gagg controversy (1624)

As noted earlier, King James had been a doctrinal Calvinist all his life. Therefore, when the Quinquarticular Controversy broke out in the Dutch Republic in the years following the death of theologian Jacobus Arminius in 1609, James naturally supported the Calvinist Gomarists against the Arminian Remonstrants. James handpicked the British delegates to the 1618 Synod of Dort (whose five canons form the basis of the Five Points of Calvinism) and concurred in the outcome of the Synod.

However, as James was increasingly faced with Puritan opposition (over the Book of Sports, the Five Articles of Perth, the Spanish Match, etc.), he grew disillusioned with the Puritans, and began to seek out Church of England clergymen who would be more supportive of his ecumenical ecclesiastical plans.

Since the reign of Elizabeth, England had contained a number of theologians who opposed the extreme predestinarian views in the high Calvinism propounded by Theodore Beza and accepted by the Puritans. For example, Peter Baro, the Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge had opposed Archbishop Whitgift's attempts to impose the Calvinistic Lambeth Articles on the Church of England in 1595. Several of Baro's disciples at Cambridge - notably Lancelot Andrewes, John Overall, and Samuel Harsnett - had repeated Baro's criticisms of predestination in terms roughly equivalent to those propounded by Arminius. As such, when James was looking for anti-Puritan allies, he found this party willing, and, although few members of this party actually accepted the Arminian position tout court, they were quickly labeled "the Arminian party" by the Puritans.

This came to a head in 1624, when a hitherto obscure Cambridge scholar, Richard Montagu, obtained royal permission to publish A New Gagg for an Old Goose. The book was framed as a rebuttal of a Catholic critique of the Church of England. In response, Montagu argued that the Calvinist positions objected to were held only by a small, Puritan minority in the Church of England, and that the vast majority of clergy in the Church of England rejected high Calvinism. A New Gagg was incredibly important in the history of the Puritans in that it marked the first time the Puritans had ever been associated with a doctrinal position (as opposed to a question of proper practice). For example, George Carleton, Bishop of Chichester, who had been an English delegate at the Synod of Dort, was shocked to find his doctrinal position being equated with Puritanism.

Reign of Charles I, 1625-1649

Laudianism adopted as government policy

Prince Charles became King of England upon the death of his father in 1625. Charles was deeply distrustful of the Puritans (who had led a sustained opposition to his father's ecclesiastical policies), seeing them as rebellious (Charles, like his father,believed in the Divine Right of Kings). During the latter years of his reign, James, rebuffed by Parliament, had increasingly come to rely on clergymen of the "Arminian party" as political advisors and administrators. Charles accelerated this tendency. Charles had no particular interest in theological questions such as the doctrine of predestination, but he preferred the "Arminians'" emphasis on order, decorum, uniformity, and spectacle in Christian worship. He also appreciated their political point of view. In their preaching, the Arminians / Laudians endorsed the Divine Right of Kings. They argued that the king was appointed by God and was therefore responsible only to God for his actions. They argued that Parliament had a duty to pass the taxes which the king wanted because of their religious obligation to be obedient subjects of the king: this opinion flattered the king, and infuriated parliamentarians. The Laudians cast doubt on the political loyalties of the Puritans: had not Calvinists always proven themselves to be disloyal subjects? The Laudians pointed to the Scottish Reformation, which had been accomplished through open rebellion against Mary, Queen of Scots, and to the French Monarchomachs who openly defended tyrannicide. They argued that the Puritans were secretly opposed to royal power and would rebel at the first opportunity.

Besides the Duke of Buckingham, Charles' closest political advisor was William Laud, the Bishop of St David's, whom Charles translated to the more prestigious (and higher-paid) position of Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1626. Under Laud's influence, Charles shifted the royal ecclesiastical policy markedly. Whereas James had supported the Canons of the Synod of Dort, Charles forbade preaching on the subject of predestination altogether. Richard Montagu was made Bishop of Chichester in 1628. Whereas James had been lenient towards Puritan clergy who omitted parts of the Book of Common Prayer, Charles urged the bishops to strictly enforce compliance with the Prayer Book, and to suspend ministers who refused to comply.

The central ideal of Laudianism (the common name for the ecclesiastical policies pursued by Charles and Laud) was the "beauty of holiness" (a reference to Psalm 29:2). This emphasized a love of ceremony and harmonious liturgy. Many of the churches in England had fallen into disrepair in the wake of the English Reformation, especially in Puritan areas, since Puritans believed it was superstitious to attempt to beautify church buildings. Laudianism, however, called for making churches beautiful. Churches were ordered to make repairs and to enforce greater respect for the church building. A policy particularly odious to the Puritans was the installation of altar rails in churches, which Puritans associated with the Catholic position on transubstantiation (the idea that Christ becomes physically present in the consecrated host): in Catholic practice, altar rails served to physically demarcate the space where Christ became incarnate in the host and only priests, acolytes, and altar boys were allowed inside the altar rail. Since the Puritans rejected the idea of transubstantiation, and professed the priesthood of all believers, they objected to creating a physical space in the church where only priests could go. Further, they argued that the practice of receiving communion while kneeling at the rail too much resembled Catholic Eucharistic adoration, which they felt was a form of idolatry (since it involved offering the honour due to God to a piece of bread). The Laudians insisted on enforcing kneeling at communion and receiving at the rail, though they denied that this involved accepting the Catholic position on these points.

Puritans also objected to the Laudian insistence on calling members of the clergy " priests". In their minds, the word "priest" meant "someone who offers a sacrifice", and was therefore highly related in their minds to the Roman Catholic teaching that during the celebration of the Eucharist, a priest offers Christ (in the form of the communion wafer following transubstantiation) as a sacrifice. After the Reformation, the term " minister" (meaning "one who serves") was generally adopted by Protestants to describe their clergy. When the Laudians insisted on being called "priests", the Puritans were therefore highly critical, and therefore argued in favour of using the word "minister", or else simply transliterating the Koine Greek word presbyter used in the New Testament without translating it at all.

The Puritans were also dismayed when the Laudians insisted on the importance of keeping Lent, a practice which had been enforced by the government during Catholic times (it was, for example, a crime to eat meat during Lent), but which had fallen into disfavor in England after the Reformation. Although the Laudians did not advocate legislation to enforce Lent, they themselves engaged in fasting during Lent and encouraged others to do likewise. Many Puritans therefore argued that the Laudians were thereby re-introducing a superstition Catholic practice into the Church of England. Rather than observing seasonal fasts, Puritans favored fast days specifically called by the church of the government in response to the problems of the day, rather than fast days dictated by the ecclesiastical calendar.

Conflict between Charles I and the Puritans, 1625-1629

The controversy over Richard Montagu's New Gagg was still on parliamentarians' minds when Parliament met in May 1625. Furthermore, shortly before the opening of the parliament, Charles was married by proxy to Henrietta Maria of France, the Catholic daughter of Henry IV of France (thus cementing an alliance with France in preparation for war against Spain). As such, at this parliament, Puritan MPs openly worried that Charles was preparing to restrict the recusancy laws (which Charles was, in fact, planning on doing, having agreed to do so in the secret marriage treaty he negotiated with Louis XIII of France).

Puritan MP John Pym launched an attack on Richard Montagu in the House of Commons. As a response, Montagu wrote a pamphlet entitled Appello Caesarem (Latin "I Appeal to Caesar") (a reference to Acts 25:10-12), in which he appealed to Charles to protect him against the Puritans. Charles responded by making Montagu a royal chaplain, signaling that he was willing to defend Montagu against Puritan opposition.

In this atmosphere, Puritan suspicions that Charles was secretly planning to restore Roman Catholicism in England mounted. As such, the Parliament, heavily influenced by its Puritan members, was reluctant to grant Charles revenue, since they feared that any revenue granted might be used to support an army that would re-impose Catholicism on England. For example, since 1414, every English monarch had been authorized by their first Parliament to collect the customs duties of Tonnage and Poundage for the duration of their reign; the 1625 Parliament, however, voted to allow Charles to collect Tonnage and Poundage for only one year. Furthermore, when Charles wanted to intervene in the Thirty Years' War by declaring war on Spain, Parliament granted him only £140,000, a totally insufficient sum to pursue the war.

The war with Spain went ahead (partially funded by tonnage and poundage collected by Charles even after he was no longer authorized to do so). Buckingham was put in charge of the war effort, and failed miserably. As such, in 1628, Parliament called for Buckingham's replacement, but Charles stuck by Buckingham. Parliament went on to pass the Petition of Right, a declaration of Parliament's rights. Charles accepted the Petition, though this did not lead to a change in his behaviour.

In August 1628, Buckingham was assassinated by a disillusioned soldier, John Felton. The nation responded with spontaneous celebration, which angered Charles.

When Parliament resumed sitting in January 1629, Charles was met with outrage over the case of John Rolle, an MP who had been prosecuted for failing to pay Tonnage and Poundage even though Charles had agreed to "no taxation without representation" (to use a slogan from a later era) in the Petition of Right. John Finch, the Speaker of the House of Commons, was famously held down in the Speaker's Chair in order to allow the House to pass a resolution condemning the king.

Charles was so outraged by Parliament's opposition to his policies that he determined to rule without ever calling a parliament again, thus initiating the period known as his Personal Rule (1629-1640), which his enemies termed the Eleven Years' Tyranny. This period also saw the ascendancy of Laudianism in England (see previous section), which led Puritan critics to term this period the Caroline Captivity of the Church (a reference to the so-called Babylonian Captivity of the Church, which was itself a reference to the Babylonian Captivity).

The Great Migration and the foundation of Puritan New England, 1630-1642

The events of 1629 convinced many Puritans that King Charles was an ardent foe of further church reforms who would enforce Laudianism on the Church of England throughout his reign. Since King Charles was only 29 years old in 1629, they were thus faced with the prospect of countless decades without reforms and with their proposals being suppressed. Given this situation, some Puritans began considering founding their own colony where they could worship in a fully-reformed church, far from the prying eyes of King Charles and the bishops.

The Pilgrims (1620)

One group of Puritans had already settled in New England: the Pilgrims.

The Pilgrims were Separatists who held views similar to those proclaimed by Robert Browne, John Greenwood, and Henry Barrowe. The Pilgrims emerged in Elizabethan England at roughly the same time as the Brownists.

The Pilgrims trace their lineage to Richard Clyfton, minister of Babworth, Nottinghamshire. Beginning in the 1580s, Clyfton advocated separation from the Church of England. Clyfton's movement attracted William Brewster, the postmaster of Scrooby. Tobias Matthew, the Bishop of Durham, who had been part of Archbishop Whitgift's delegation at the Hampton Court Conference, was selected by James to become Archbishop of York in 1606. He led an anti-Separatist crackdown and Clyfton was removed from his ministry. In response, Brewster offered to organize a dissenting congregation in the manor house in which he lived in Scrooby. Clyfton served as the congregation's pastor, John Robinson as its teacher, and William Brewster as its chief elder. This congregation was subject to ecclesiastical investigation, and its members faced social hostility from conforming church members, but was not actively persecuted. Nevertheless, disliking the social hostility, and fearing future persecution, the group decided to leave England.

150 members of the congregation made it to Amsterdam, where they met up with a group of Separatist exiles led by John Smyth, which had joined the congregation of English exiles led by Francis Johnson. After a year at Amsterdam, tensions between Smyth and Johnson grew so high, that the Pilgrims decided to move to Leiden. While there, many worked at Leiden University or in the textile, printing and brewing trades. John Robinson participated in the Calvinist-Arminian Controversy while at Leiden University, arguing on behalf of the Gomarists.

By 1617, many members of the congregation had grown disillusioned with Leiden and wanted to move somewhere where they could retain their English identity, while also worshipping God in the way they believed was required. As such, the congregation voted to leave Leiden and to found a colony. The group ultimately decided to move to New England. In 1620, after receiving a patent from the London Company, the Pilgrims left for New England onboard the Mayflower, landing at Plymouth Rock. The colony founded by the Pilgrims was called Plymouth Colony.

John Winthrop and the foundation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630

The early seventeenth century saw the foundation of many joint stock companies, which were commercial ventures designed to profit from trade or the foundation of colonial settlements. The most famous of the joint stock companies was the Honourable East India Company, chartered in 1600. In 1606, King James had issued a royal charter to two companies referred to collectively as the Virginia Company: the London Company (which successfully established the Colony of Virginia in 1608) and the Plymouth Company (which was unsuccessful at establishing settlements, which explains why they were eager to grant a patent to the Pilgrims in 1620).

Two of the Pilgrim settlers in Plymouth Colony - Robert Cushman and Edward Winslow - believed that Cape Ann would be a profitable location for a settlement. They therefore organized a company which they named the Dorchester Company and in 1622 sailed to England seeking a patent from the London Company giving them permission to settle there. They were successful and were granted the Sheffield Patent (named after Edmond, Lord Sheffield, the member of the Plymouth Company who granted the patent). On the basis of this patent, Roger Conant led a group of fishermen to found Salem in 1626, being replaced as governor by John Endecott in 1627.

During their time in England, Cushman and Winslow had convinced many Puritan members of the landed gentry to invest in the Dorchester Company. In 1627, the Dorchester Company went bankrupt, but was succeeded by the New England Company (the membership of the Dorchester and New England Companies overlapped). The New England Company sought clearer title to the New England land of the proposed settlement than provided by the Sheffield Patent and in March 1629 succeeded in obtaining from King Charles a royal charter changing the name of the company to the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England and granting them the land to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It is unclear why Charles agreed to this, but it would appear that he did not realize that the group was dominated by Puritans and believed that it was a purely commercial company.

As the Puritans' relationship with the new king soured, Puritan John Winthrop, a lawyer who had practiced in the Court of Wards, began to explore the idea of creating a Puritan colony in New England. After all, the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony had proven that such a colony was viable. Instead of living in England under the rule of a king hostile to their interests, the Puritans could establish a colony in New England far from the king's interference. Throughout 1628 and 1629, Puritans in Winthrop's social circle discussed the possibility of moving to New England. It was noted that the royal charter establishing the Massachusetts Bay Company had not specified where the company's annual meeting should be held; this raised the possibility that the governor of the company could move to the new colony and serve as governor of the colony, while the general court of the company could be transformed into the colony's legislative assembly. John Winthrop participated in these discussions and in March 1629, signed the Cambridge Agreement, by which the non-emigrating shareholders of the company agreed to turn over control of the company to the emigrating shareholders. As Winthrop was the wealthiest of the emigrating shareholders, the company decided to make him governor, and entrusted him with the company charter.

Winthrop sailed for New England in 1630 along with 700 colonists on board eleven ships known collectively as the Winthrop Fleet. Winthrop himself sailed on board the Arbella. During the crossing, he preached a sermon entitled "A Model of Christian Charity", in which he called on his fellow settlers to make their new colony a City upon a Hill (a reference to Matthew 5:14-16), meaning that they would be a model to all the nations of Europe as to what a properly reformed Christian commonwealth should look like. (This was particularly poignant in 1630, since the Thirty Years' War was going bad for the Protestants and Catholicism was being restored in lands previously reformed - e.g. by the 1629 Edict of Restitution.)

The Great Migration

Most of the Puritans who emigrated settled in the New England area. However, the Great Migration of Puritans was relatively short-lived and not as large as is often believed. It began in earnest in 1629 with the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and ended in 1642 with the start of the English Civil War when King Charles I effectively shut off emigration to the colonies, and when Puritans felt less menaced by Royalist decree. From 1629 through 1643 approximately 21,000 Puritans emigrated to New England. This is actually far less than the number of British subjects who emigrated to Ireland, Canada, and the Caribbean during this time.

The Great Migration of Puritans to New England was primarily an exodus of families. Between 1630 and 1640 over 13,000 men, women, and children sailed to Massachusetts. The religious and political factors behind the Great Migration influenced the demographics of the emigrants. Rather than groups of young men seeking economic success (as predominated Virginia colonies), Puritan ships were laden with “ordinary” people, old and young, families as well as individuals. Just a quarter of the emigrants were in their twenties when they boarded ship in the 1630s, making young adults not predominant in New England settlements. The New World Puritan population can be seen as more of a cross section in age of English population than those of other colonies. This meant that the Massachusetts Bay Colony retained a relatively “normal” population composition. In contrast to the Chesapeake colony in Virginia – where the ratio of colonist men to women was 4:1 in early decades and at least 2:1 in later decades and where considerable intermarriage with native women took place – nearly half of the Puritan immigrants to the New World were women, and there was little intermarriage with natives. The majority of families who traveled to Massachusetts Bay were families in progress, with parents who were not yet through with their reproductive years and whose continued fertility would make New England’s population growth possible. The women who emigrated were critical agents in the success of the establishment and maintenance of the Puritan colonies in North America. Success in the early colonial economy depended largely on labor, which was conducted by members of Puritan families. It was through this labor that Puritans endeavored to create their “city on a hill”, a productive, morally exemplary colony far from the corruption of the Church of England.

New England theological controversies, 1632-1642

As noted earlier, the vast majority of Puritans who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony were non-separating Puritans. This meant that, while they deeply abhorred many of the practices of the Church of England, they refused to separate from the Church of England because they placed an extremely high value on the doctrine of the unity of the Church. They denounced the Separating Puritans as schismatics. Thus, although the Puritans in Massachusetts erected their church along Presbyterian-Congregational lines, they technically remained in full communion with the Church of England. This position led to two major theological controversies with Separating Puritans in the course of the 1630s: the Roger Williams controversy, and the Anne Hutchinson controversy.

The Roger Williams Controversy

Roger Williams, a Separating Puritan minister, arrived in Boston in 1631. He was almost immediately invited to become the pastor of the local congregation. Williams refused the invitation on the grounds that the congregation had not separated from the Church of England. He then attempted to become pastor of the church at Salem, but was blocked by Boston political leaders, who objected to his separatism. He thus spent two years with his fellow Separatists in the Plymouth Colony, but ultimately came into conflict with them and returned to Salem. There, he became pastor in May 1635, against the objection of the Boston authorities. Williams set forth a manifesto in which he declared that 1) the Church of England was apostate and fellowship with it was a grievous sin; 2) the Massachusetts Colony's charter falsely said that King Charles was a Christian; 3) that the colony should not be allowed to impose oaths on its citizens because that was forbidden by Matthew 5:33-37

Williams' actions so outraged the Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony that they expelled him from the colony. In 1636, the exiled Williams founded the city of Providence, Rhode Island. Williams was one of the first Puritans to advocate separation of church and state and Rhode Island was one of the first places in the Christian world to recognize freedom of religion.

The Anne Hutchinson Controversy

Anne Hutchinson and her family moved from Boston, Lincolnshire to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634, following their Puritan minister John Cotton. Cotton began pastoring a congregation in Boston, Massachusetts, and Hutchinson joined his congregation. Following the Puritan practice of conventicling, Hutchinson set up a conventicle in her home. At the conventicle, a group would meet during the week to discuss John Cotton's sermon from the previous Sunday. Hutchinson proved to be extremely charismatic at propounding on Cotton's ideas during these conventicles, and eventually the size of her conventicle swelled to 80 people and had to be moved from her home to the church building.

Cotton had long denounced Arminianism in his sermons. Hutchinson took up the anti-Arminian cause in strong language, propounding an extreme form of double predestination (a view popularized among English Puritans by William Perkins), which held that God chose those who would go to heaven (the elect) and those who would go to hell (the reprobate), and that His decision inevitably and infallibly came to pass. Applying this framework to the Arminian controversy, Hutchinson argued that people were either under a covenant of works (they were relying on good works for their salvation, and therefore were really damned) or else a covenant of grace (in which case they were dependent only on God's grace, and were therefore really saved).

By 1637, Hutchinson's teachings had grown controversial within the colony for a number of reasons. First, some Puritans objected to a woman occupying such a prominent role as a teacher in the church. Second, Hutchinson began denouncing various Puritan ministers in the colony as really preaching a "covenant of works" and sometimes spoke as if John Cotton were the only minister in the entire colony who was preaching a "covenant of grace" correctly. Thirdly, some of Hutchinson's views on the "covenant of grace" seemed indistinguishable from the heresy of antinomianism, the view that the elect did not have to follow the laws of God or morality.

Hutchinson was called before the Massachusetts General Court to explain herself. She sparred verbally with the magistrates successfully on a number of issues, but was ultimately undone when she said that she had determined that she would be persecuted when she came to New England. When the magistrates asked her how she had determined this, she responded "by an immediate revelation" i.e. God had spoken to her and told her so. The Puritans generally followed the principle of sola scriptura and believed that God communicated with individuals only through the medium of scripture. As such, for the magistrates of the General Court, who were already suspicious of Hutchinson's orthodoxy, the claim that God was speaking directly to her was the final straw. They therefore voted to banish her from the colony. As a result, in 1638, Hutchinson and several of her followers left the Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded the town of Pocasset, which today is Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

Life in the New World

New England society rested on the rock of the Puritan family, economically and religiously. Women were thus entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that children grew into virtuous Puritan adults. This new moral and religious significance given to everyday life, marriage, and family brought women’s activities into the spotlight. Although the patriarch directed work and devotion within the family, the proof of success in the New World was in a harmonious marriage and godly children- both of which fell under the jurisdiction of the Puritan woman. The success of The Great Migration and establishment of successful Puritan colonies in the New World thus depended heavily on the role of women within the settlement. (For more on the religious roles of women in Puritan colonies see "Beliefs" section below.)

The struggle between the assertive Church of England and various Presbyterian and Puritan groups extended throughout the English realm in the 17th Century, prompting not only the re-emigration of British Protestants from Ireland to North America (the so-called Scotch-Irish), but prompting emigration from Bermuda, England's second-oldest overseas territory. Roughly 10,000 Bermudians emigrated before US Independence. Most of these went to the American colonies, founding, or contributing to settlements throughout the South, especially. Many had also gone to the Bahamas, where a number of Bermudian Independent Puritan families, under the leadership of William Sayle, had established the colony of Eleuthera in 1648.

In the 1660s the Puritan settlements in the New World were confronted with the challenge posed by an aging first generation. Those who created the colonies were the most fervent in their religious beliefs, and as their numbers began to decline, so did the membership of churches. The demographics of the churches changed because fewer men were joining. The resulting decrease in male religious participation was a problem for the established church (that is, the colony’s official church for which people were taxed and which they were expected to attend), since men were the ones with secular power. If the men who wielded secular power in the colony were absent from the church, its legitimacy would be undermined. As early as 1660, women constituted the great majority of church members. However, since Anne Hutchinson’s banishment, they were not allowed to talk in church (for more information, see below under "Beliefs"). Puritan ministers, concerned for the continued existence and power of their churches in the colonies, pushed for a solution to declining church membership. This effort led to the creation of the Halfway Covenant, in order to boost participation in the Puritan church.

Emigration resumed under the rule of Cromwell, but not in large numbers as there was no longer any need to "escape persecution" in England. In fact, many Puritans returned to England during the war. "In 1641, when the English Civil War began, some immigrants returned to fight on the Puritan side, and when the Puritans won, many resumed English life under Oliver Cromwell's more congenial Puritan sway."

Some Puritans also migrated to colonies in Central America and the Caribbean, see Providence Island Company, Mosquito Coast and Providencia Island.

William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1633-1643: The "Caroline Captivity of the Church"

Meanwhile, back in England...

As noted above, Charles I favored a formal style of worship known as Laudianism (often, though not necessarily, associated with theological Arminianism). Although the ascendancy of this position within the Church of England dates from the beginning of Charles' reign, it became particularly marked after 1629, as we move into the period of Charles' Personal Rule (the Puritans' "Caroline Captivity of the Church"). The triumph of Laudianism is best symbolized by the fact that in 1633, George Abbot, the so-called "Puritan Archbishop" died, and Charles chose William Laud as his successor as Archbishop of Canterbury. George Abbot had been basically suspended from his functions in 1617 after he refused to order his clergy to read the Book of Sports. As a sign of the loyalty of the new archbishop, Charles now re-issued the Book of Sports in October 1633. Unlike Abbot, Laud ordered his clergy to read the Book of Sports to their congregations and suspended any Puritan minister who refused to read the Book to their congregation.

The 1630s in general saw a renewed concern by the bishops of the Church of England to enforce uniformity in the church by ensuring strict compliance with the style of worship set out in the Book of Common Prayer. The Court of High Commission, initially set up to enforce uniformity in the Church of England by routing out Catholic recusants in the Church, came to be the primary means for disciplining Puritan clergy who refused to conform to the Book of Common Prayer. The Court of High Commission was particularly useful in this regards because, unlike regular courts, in the Court of High Commission, there was no right against self-incrimination, meaning that the Court could compel testimony from Puritan clergymen accused of violating the Book of Common Prayer.

Much to the chagrin of the Puritans, some bishops went even further than the Book of Common Prayer, and required their clergy to conform to a level of ceremonialism beyond that required by the Prayer Book. As noted above, the introduction of altar rails to churches was the most controversial such requirement. Puritans were also dismayed by the