![]() Who were the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony? They were two groups of English religious dissenters, influenced by the Reformation, in particular Calvinism, who turned away not only from the Catholic but also from the Anglican Church and sought to establish a new ‘Holy Commonwealth’ in North America. And while the narrative of origins told about Virginia cast Pocahontas, a Native woman, in the title role, “the Massachusetts myth centered on a patriarchal hierarchy, even though women composed a relatively large percentage of the Plymouth population” (Uhry Abrams, Pilgrims xv). While they claimed for themselves the right to dissent from the orthodoxies of the Church of England, they in turn, it is argued, denied those who did not conform to their own doctrines the same right of religious freedom. Often, they have been unfavorably and stereotypically represented as overtly pious, stoic, narrow-minded, intolerant, and even fanatic. The moral righteousness of the Pilgrims and Puritans, however, is a matter of contention. ![]() These religious dissenters from England thus were often cast as morally superior to the men of the Virginia Company in early Americanist scholarship, and the ‘cradle of American civilization’ has often been located in their early New England settlements. Breen, Puritans), whereas the Pilgrims and Puritans, it was claimed, came for spiritual reasons and considered themselves religious refugees (cf. often, they have been contrasted favorably to the settlers in Virginia, who were seen as “adventurers” supposedly interested in material gain only (cf. Many scholars have considered the New England Pilgrims and Puritans as the ‘first Americans’ in the spirit of what would later develop into the full-fledged notion of American exceptionalism. The Pilgrims and Puritans who settled in New England in the first half of the 17 th century, arriving only a little later in America than the settlers of Jamestown, Virginia, are the protagonists of a foundational myth which has survived across the centuries as a story of American beginnings characterized by religiosity, idealism, sacrifice, and a utopian vision based on theology. We’re riding out tonight to case the Promised Land. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the exodus is one of America’s central themes.Ĭlimb in back, heaven’s waiting down on the tracks Sacvan Bercovitch, The Puritan Origins of the American Self In 1691 Plymouth was incorporated into the Massachusetts Bay Colony.Conceived of the American paradise as the fulfilment of scripture prophecy. The practical considerations of colonization and the vast expanse of ocean between England and America eventually modified the differences between Pilgrims and Puritans in the New World. Puritan non-separatists, while equally fervent in their religious convictions, were committed to reformation of the Church of England and restoration of early Christian society. Pilgrim separatists rejected the Church of England and the remnants of Catholicism that the Church of England represented. Within 10 years Puritans settled most of Massachusetts, Connecticut and areas of Long Island. Puritans were non-separatists who, in 1630, joined the migration to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Pilgrims were separatists who first settled in Plymouth, Mass., in 1620 and later set up trading posts on the Kennebec River in Maine, on Cape Cod and near Windsor, Conn. While Pilgrims have sometimes been described as extreme Puritans, their history in America indicates substantial differences between the two. Southampton, like Southold, East Hampton, Oyster Bay and Huntington, was established as an outpost of the New Haven Colony, which was founded by the Puritans John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton in 1638. Critics of the seal of the Town of Southampton have overlooked another significant discrepancy in the image of the Pilgrim: The English who claimed Southampton were Puritans rather than Pilgrims.
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