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NOTE 17. The Religious Factor

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Volume 1, Part 3, The Founding of New England

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Volume 1, Chapter 17, The Religious Factor

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Religion was one of the principal traits distinguishing the Northern from the Southern colonies.

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In the South, the state-established Church of England tended to be dominant,

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but the Northern colonies were largely settled by members of churches dissenting from the established Church.

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These dissenters came to America largely because they desired to create communities in which

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they could practice their beliefs undisturbed.

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The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century had taken two broadly different paths.

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In the rising absolute monarchies of Europe, the state gained control over the church within

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the nation, whether Protestant or Catholic, and found it more consonant with its own power

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In England, the Church, created as a State Church by the Crown, not only maintained the

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The Church contained episcopacy but was far closer than the Lutherans to Roman Catholic doctrine and practice.

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Protestantizing reforms were soon introduced into the Church, but the Catholic Church during the reign of Queen Mary

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drove the more radical of the reformers to Holland and other continental centers of advanced Protestant theology and practice.

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When the Church of England was reestablished under Elizabeth in 1559, the returning reformers found the Anglican Church even less reformed than before they had gone into exile.

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They now concentrated on seeking a purification of religious ceremonies within the Anglican Church and were thus called Puritans.

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The Puritans came to hold important church and university positions and exercise a strong influence in the government and in parliament, but the government soon summarily removed them from their post.

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Persecution polarized the Puritans, who began to advocate the purification of the church organization, which had blocked the purification of rights, by eliminating the role of the bishops.

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Some of the reformers, the separatist or congregationalist, doubted the possibility of reforming the state church from within, and illegally withdrew from attendance at church to organize separate reformed churches, vesting autonomous control in each congregation.

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The bulk of the Puritans, however, were influenced by the Calvinist or Presbyterian form of church organization dominant in the Netherlands and parts of Switzerland, where their leaders had lived in exile.

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In the Presbyterian system, first established at Geneva, each church or congregation was, to be sure, ruled by elders, the preaching elder or minister and the ruling elder or leading layman.

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But to prevent diversity of doctrine, the congregation selected the minister and elder

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only with the advice and consent of a synod or consistory of the ministers and elders of

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the churches of the district.

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While the role of the leading layman in the church was high, state officials in Geneva

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were restricted to church members, and this limited the selection of magistrates to laymen

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who were under the influence of the ministers. Thus, in contrast to Anglicanism, control

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of the church was partially replaced by church control of the state. This Presbyterian method

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of church organization, negating the roles of king and bishops, tended to appeal to the

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ministers and to the local community, oligarchs, nobles, gentry, merchants, whose powers over

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In France, England, Scotland, and the Netherlands, a large portion of local political leaders became Calvinist and Presbyterian.

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Since the English government strongly punished suspected Calvinist, the Presbyterian organization was not directly introduced into England,

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and the Puritans, aided by their intellectual center in the United Kingdom,

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The Presbyterian Organization was not directly introduced into England, and the Puritans,

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aided by their intellectual center at Cambridge University, spread their beliefs from within

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the Anglican Church, by which they influenced the important groups and industrial populations

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of London, East Anglia and the West Country.

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When James I succeeded Elizabeth in 1603, one of his earliest problems was to face Puritan

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and Demands for Reform of the Anglican Church.

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The millinery petition, signed by about a thousand Puritan ministers of the Church of

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England, or about one-tenth of all the clergymen of that church, requested modifications in

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church ceremonies and protection from governmental persecution.

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Because of its Presbyterian overtones, the petition was rejected, and some three hundred

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of the Puritan clergymen were removed from their positions in the Church of England.

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The majority of the Puritan clergy, however, continued to conform outwardly to Anglican

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church ceremonies in order to continue their reform movement undisturbed. In contrast,

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some of the separatist or congregationalist who had already left the Church of England

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decided they could no longer bear the persecution and fled England. As pilgrims, they went to

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the Netherlands in 1608.

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Let us now return to colonization in the early 17th century. We remember that the earliest

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English settlement in America was founded by the London or South Virginia Company in

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1606. The North Virginia or Plymouth Company had been granted the American territory from

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From the 41st to the 45th Parallel The Plymouth Company had landed an expedition

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in Maine in 1607, but it was forced to return home the following year, and then sunk into

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destitute. In 1620, Sir Ferdinando Gorgias, a favorite of King James, was anxious to secure

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a monopoly of the fisheries on the northern American coast. To this end, Gorgias secured

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from the King and New Charter. Replacing the Plymouth Company was the Council for New England,

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now completely separate from Virginia, and the territory actually granted to the company

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was greatly extended to include the land between the 40th and the 48th parallels. President

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of the Council was the Duke of Buckingham, an unpopular favorite of King James. And leading

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Fishing members were Sir Ferdinando Gorgias and the Earls of Pembroke, Lennox and South

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Hampton.

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The Council was granted powers of rule, the sub-granting of land in the territory and

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a monopoly of shipping on the New England coasts and therefore implicitly a monopoly

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The Theory of the Fishing Rights