Alan Taylor draws a connection between the Puritan’s zeal for religion and the Puritan’s adept ability to produce labor and maintain a stable economic colony, in which the poorest of colonist had a “house and land of his own” (172). Taylor notes that the Puritan colonies had neither the extremely poor nor the […]

Everyone knows the Puritans established colonies in North America to escape from religious persecution. Not wanting to conform to the Church of England, and being followers of a more Calvinistic approach to religion, the Puritans fled to the new world. But once they arrived and became established, how did they treat differing opinions on religion? […]

The Puritan way of life was threatened by expansion in that the local community became weaker and weaker as people moved further from the epicenter of the settlement. People gained access to new plots of land and took their families with them and started to grow away from the original place the Puritans. As people […]

In Bradford’s narrative account on the Puritans and their settlement of New England, selflessness is prevalent throughout the beginning, however, crumbles towards the end. They journeyed across dangerous water to a relatively unknown land in order to worship God in a way they thought was more holy and less sinful then the people of England. […]

New England, and its collective colonies, was very different from its counterparts in Virginia and the West Indies.  From what I can gather from Taylor’s chapter about New England, these differences can be traced back to its founders’ and residents’ original motivations for immigrating.  Virginia and the West Indies were generally split up into tracts […]

The puritans believed that the human spirit expressed and acted as God’s will. Because humans have lost the ability to directly communicate with God, according to the Puritans, the human soul is the way in which this communication could be found. Specifically, the puritans believed that communication with God was achieved through the reading of […]

The jeremiad style sermon of the late 17th century is the typical fire-and-brimstone style sermon we associate with the Puritans. Its claims of societies failure to live up to God’s (incredibly high) standards are supported by evidence of all the misfortunes that might befall a community (flood, famine, fire, etc.). This style, named after the […]

Puritan Difficulties in England Life in England was a struggle for Puritans, as the English openly preferred Anglicanism and the “traditional culture characterized by church ales, Sunday diversions, ceremonial services, inclusive churches, and deference to the monarch” (Taylor 162).  Disputes primarily arose from the latter, as kings desired a “united and quiet realm of unquestioning loyalty,” […]

 Thomas Weld makes frequent religious references throughout his piece. In “To His Former Parishioners at Terling, he spends a large amount of time making religious references. Much of his account is attributed to scripture as indicated by bracketed references; on top of that, however, Weld makes flat out comparisons between Biblical occurrences and his current […]

Thomas Weld first became a minister in the Church of England in 1618, but was forced to leave in 1632 for attempting to practice religious reforms against the church. Nevertheless, Weld found a comfortable position for himself in Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he was quickly announced a member to the office of pastor. For Thomas Weld, […]