The Puritans

Puritans were English Protestants who wished to reform and purify the Church of England of what they considered to be unacceptable remains of Roman Catholicism. In the 1620s leaders of the English state and church grew being heartless to Puritan demands. They insisted that the Puritans conform to religious practices that they hated, removing their ministers from office and threatening them with” extirpation from the earth" if they did not follow their rules. Passionate Puritan laymen received savage punishments. For example, in 1630 a man was sentenced to life imprisonment, his property was confiscated, his nose slit, his ear was cut off, and his forehead branded with “S.S.” (Sower of Sedition).

Beginning in 1630 as many as 20,000 Puritans immigrated to America from England to gain the liberty to worship God as they chose. Most settled in New England, but some went as far as the West Indies. The Puritans were “non-separating Congregationalists.” Unlike the Pilgrims,...