Heritage-Images/age fotostock

“I will make them conform or I will harry them out of the land.” This was the threat that King James I of England made to the Puritans when they asked him to “purify” the Church of England of certain ceremonies and usages derived from the Roman Catholic Church, which they disliked. These Puritans were not dangerous revolutionists but plain citizens of England—farmers, merchants, professional men, and scholars—especially from the University of Cambridge. They came to be regarded as gloomy fanatics, and it was humorously said that “they objected to bear baiting, not because of the pain to the bear, but because of the pleasure to the spectators.” The Puritans of the time of James I, however, were not afraid of innocent pleasure. Many of them were fond of music; the Puritan country gentlemen hunted; and the writings of one of the foremost Puritans, John Milton, have come down as a priceless literary heritage.

The Puritans were the advanced wing of the Protestants in England in the days of the Reformation. The division began among the religious exiles from England who sought refuge on the Continent during the Roman Catholic persecutions of Queen Mary I’s reign. It became acute at Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in the quarrels between the Knoxians and Coxians (followers of John Knox and Dr. Richard Cox) over the wearing of priestly vestments. In general the Puritans inclined to follow the lead of Knox, John Calvin, and the Swiss reformers, who would reject all usages of the Roman church for which positive warrant was not found in the Scriptures. They would thus reduce the worship in their churches to the bare simplicity of apostolic times. So arose their opposition to written prayers, religious images and pictures in churches, instrumental music at services, and the like.

Some of the Puritans, instead of wanting merely to purify the church services, wanted to change the whole government of it as well. The Presbyterians, for instance, wanted to do away with the government of bishops in the church but would retain a state church. Others, called Separatists, or Independents, wanted the church and state to be entirely separated and each congregation to manage its own affairs; these were later called Congregationalists. Still more radical reformers called Anabaptists thought baptism by immersion should be only for adults and held other unconventional views as to church and state.

It was a band of the Separatists who went first to Holland in 1608 and then to America in 1620, where they founded Plymouth Colony (see Mayflower; Plymouth.). James I and Charles I carried out the threat to harry the Puritans out of the land, and thousands of others went to America, especially during the Great Migration of 1630–40. When the English Civil War gave the Puritans control of the government, the emigration stopped for a time.

At the Restoration in 1660 the Puritans lost control of England, but the seeds of civil liberty and of a more serious outlook on life that they planted bore fruit in later years. Not only greater freedom in religion but also greater freedom in government are among the things that Americans inherited from these Puritans.

After 1689, when the Toleration Act was passed, the English dissenting bodies had legal status. Today there are virtually no religious restrictions on British subjects for employment or holding public office. The sovereign, however, must be Anglican.