The early seventeenth century was a time period defined by discovery, expansion, and the ensuing new societies in land previously thought to be non-existent by Europeans.

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        The early seventeenth century was a time period defined by discovery, expansion, and the ensuing new societies in land previously thought to be non-existent by Europeans. While the Spanish and French settled in different corners of the New World, the English established their colonies relatively close to each other – in what is now known as Massachusetts and New England, while another group settled a few hundred miles southward, in the Chesapeake Bay area. However, a century and a half later, these two English societies were different in many ways: economically, politically, socially, and religiously, it is hard to imagine that the people within these colonies had indeed originated from the same place. These divergences between the New Englanders and the Virginians sprouted from the difference in their original reasons to leave England. The settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were a group of people dissatisfied with the religious conditions in their homeland, while the English who settled in the Chesapeake did so to advance their economic reputation.

        From the very beginning, the two groups of English settlers had different reasons for embarking on their emigration from England. Those who settled in New England were called Puritans, for they had left their homeland to “purify” their religion. John Winthrop, author of “A Model of Christian Charity” and an original settler of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, says to the people that were settling there, “…We must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill.” This phrase, adapted from the Bible, summarizes the reasoning behind the Puritan’s choice to leave and settle in New England: they thought that they were responsible for not only purifying the Protestant religion, but for creating a religious Utopia that the world can look to as a model of what a truly devoted society should look like. Winthrop says, “The eyes of all people are upon us…we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.” The Puritans placed an enormous burden upon themselves, as a group who must embody a Heavenly ideal; therefore, it was toward the achievement of this ideal that they devoted the entirety of their American lives.

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        The Puritans, therefore, developed a society that was based tremendously on conformity to a very specific method of devotion to God. One aspect of the Puritan religion was the interpretation of the Scripture to commend the creation of two different classes, or ranks. Those of the higher rank, the “Princes or Nobles of Elders,” (John Cotton, an original Puritan minister, 1636) will be allowed, “Heredity dignity or honours…also that the first rank…should have power, for them and their heirs, to come to parliaments and public assemblies…” Cotton rationalizes against the system of democracy by asking of the reader, or perhaps ...

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