new england colonies

• Religious Freedom


  Unlike the Jamestown settlers, the next wave of colonists would arrive in search of religious freedom
• England had been a Protestant country since 1534, when King Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic Church and formed the Anglican Church
• Not everyone in England was happy with the new church, however. Many people dissented—they disagreed with the beliefs or practices of the Anglicans
• English Catholics still considered the pope the head of the church, and they were often persecuted, or treated harshly, for that reason
• Protestants who wanted to change the Anglican Church


  • Puritans
  • Separatists
• The Separatists were persecuted in England, and some fled to the Netherlands
• Though they found religious freedom in the Netherlands, the Separatists had difficulty finding work and worried that their children were losing their religious values and their English way of life
• Some Separatists in the Netherlands made an arrangement with the Virginia Company to settle in Virginia and practice their religion freely, in return for a share of any profits they made
• Pilgrims


  The Separatists considered themselves Pilgrims because their journey had a religious purpose
• Only 35 of the 102 passengers who boarded the Mayflower in September 1620 were Pilgrims. The others were called "strangers"
• The Mayflower's passengers planned to settle in the Virginia colony, but the first land they sighted was Cape Cod, well north of their target
• Because it was November and winter was fast approaching, the colonists decided to drop anchor in Cape Cod Bay
• Plymouth was outside the territory of the Virginia Company and its laws, so the Pilgrims drew up a formal document called the Mayflower Compact before going ashore
• Mayflower Compact


  It pledged their loyalty to England and declared their intention of forming "a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation"
• The Mayflower Compact was a necessary step in the development of representative government in America
• Almost half the Pilgrims died of malnutrition, disease, and cold during their first winter in America
• Squanto and Samoset, two Native Americans, befriended the colonists and showed them how to grow corn, beans, and pumpkins and where to hunt and fish
• Massasoit, a Wampanoag leader, signed a treaty with the Pilgrims in March 1621, and the two groups lived in harmony
• In 1629 a group of Puritans formed the Massachusetts Bay Company and received a royal charter to establish a colony north of Plymouth
• John Winthrop led about 900 men, women, and children to Massachusetts Bay in 1630, and most of them settled in a place they called Boston
• During the 1630s, more than 15,000 Puritans journeyed to Massachusetts to escape religious persecution and economic hard times in England
• At first, John Winthrop and his assistants made the colony's laws, but in 1634, settlers demanded a larger role in the government
• The Puritans had little toleration—they criticized or persecuted people who held other religious views
• Thomas Hooker, a minister, led his congregation through the wilderness to Connecticut in 1636, where he founded the town of Hartford
• The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, adopted in 1639, was the first written constitution in America and described the organization of representative government in detail
• Roger Williams, a minister, was banished from Massachusetts in 1635 for his ideas about religious freedom and the rights of Native Americans
• Williams founded the town of Providence and received a charter in 1644 for a colony called Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which became a safe place for dissenters
• Native Americans helped the settlers adapt to the land and traded with them, but conflicts arose as settlers moved onto Native American lands without permission or payment
• In 1636 war broke out between the settlers and the Pequot people, and in 1637 troops from Connecticut attacked the main Pequot fort, killing hundreds
• In 1675, New England went to war against the Wampanoag people and their allies, led by Metacomet (known as King Philip)
• King Philip's War ended in defeat for the Wampanoag and their allies, destroying the power of the Native Americans in New England and leaving the colonists free to expand their settlements