During the 17th century, religious Puritans seeking to purify the Protestant faith established colonies in New England to escape social pressures and high land costs in England. Known as Puritans, they aimed to reform the Church of England if possible or establish a new church in New England if necessary. As labor was plentiful but land was scarce in England, the Puritans sought more affordable land across the Atlantic.

2.  During the seventeenth
century, the social and
economic pressures within
England that generated the
Chesapeake colonies also
spawned the colonization of
a region to the north named
New England.
 Known as Puritans, they
meant to purify the
protestant faith, in England if
possible, in a New England if
necessary.
 In crowded England, labor
was plentiful and cheap, but
land was scarce and
expensive.

3.  During the 1530s, Queen
Elizabeth’s father, King Henry VIII,
had rejected the Catholic pope
to become the head of an
independent Church of England.
 Begun as an epithet, “Puritan”
persists in scholarship to name
the broad movement of diverse
people who shared a conviction
that the Protestant Reformation
remained incomplete in
England.
 Puritan magistrates strictly
enforced the long-neglected
laws against gambling,
blasphemy, adultery, public
drunkenness, and Sabbath-
breaking.