Puritan Motivations for Emigration

“‘Necessitie may passe some; Noveltie draw on others; hopes of gaine in time to come may prevaile with a third sort; but that the most and most sincere and godly part have the advancement of the Gospel for their maine scope I am confident,’” said John White about the reasons that motivated the Puritans to migrate to New England. 1 Was White right? Was religion what moved English men and women to leave everything behind and travel some 3500 miles to the shore of a land little known and full of danger? The Puritan Migration or the Great Migration of 1630-42 was a movement of English settlers to New England. The records and documents that we have from the time are rare and even more so are accounts of personal motivations to make the trek. Some historians and 17th century contemporaries would tell you that the motivations for the migrants were focused on religion. Others would tell you that a depression in the textile industry and a famine devastated the populace of England and so pushed them to start a new life in the America’s. I believe that it was a migration motivated by middle class Puritans who sought freedom from the religious and political troubles of England.
The Great Migration lasted for 12 years. The end of the migration corresponds with the election of the Puritan Long Parliament.2 Over fifteen thousand people were involved.3 How could we find the individual motivations of all these different people. Too many things motivate human actions for us to ever be conclusive. But we can make general assumptions about collective motivations of the people who left England between 1630 and 1642. Specifically, what motivated the Puritans who made the journey to New England? Was it a purely religious reasons or could other secular factors be equally or substantially important in influencing their decision. After all, Puritans were just as complicated as any human throughout the course of history.4
The most popular explanation for the migration is that of Puritan motives. Arminianism, Laudianism, and Charles I’s interest in the conformity of the English church are popular culprits for driving the Puritans to Migrate. New England was seen by some historians and by 17th century contemporaries as a haven for religious protestors who would set an example to the entire world. But social and economic stresses also harried those who might decide to move to the Americas, including a depressed cloth industry, crippling unemployment, agrarian agitation, plague and poor harvests. All have been cited as motivations on the secular side of the story. David Cressy in his book Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century points out that the reasons for the Great Migration can be seen as a response to the stresses of “English society that soon afterwards erupted in the civil war and revolution.”5 Despite the motivations of the many different Puritans it is sure that they believed that God was behind their actions.6
The migration is described as a Puritan Migration because so many of the Puritan faith moved. Samuel Eliot Morison believed that while economic factors were important, most settlers had Puritan beliefs. He noted that the migrants mostly came from Puritan dominated areas and also belonged to the middle-class which was “‘the backbone of the Puritan movement.’” He figured that if they called themselves Puritans, as well as their enemies, and friends, then they must have been Puritans.7 Cressy explains that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded as a “‘Puritan experiment,’” financed by “‘Puritan merchants,’” peopled through a “‘Puritan migration,’” or even a “‘Puritan hegira.’”8
In Carl Bridenbaugh’s study of the Puritan hegira he found that the colonists of New England in the 1630’s shared a spiritual ideal, a desire to follow the path of destiny, along with, “‘a firm conviction that God wanted them to depart from their corrupt homeland and settle in the New England Canaan.’” (Cressy, 803) But not all Migrants were Puritans. Anabaptists and Episcopalians were emigrating for freedom of conscience also.9 there is no evidence of Puritans being attracted to any of the other British Colonies. New England would be an “asylum” where God’s and Man’s Laws could be one.10
The most problematic part of finding answers to this question is the nature of the information that is available. Cressy makes a good point that “elements that caused an action were different from those the actor would choose to explain it,” with. He explains that no one single factor can be used to calculate the motives of the emigrants who left England in the Great Migration.11 Lack of hard statistical data on the Great Migration moves historians to often look at the leaders of the Puritan movement to gather the motives of those who would build a city on the hill. The ordinary people of the day who made the journey are seldom mentioned and so only guesses can be made about their feelings. Letters home to England or the occasional list is the basis of our knowledge of everyday men and women.12
Nellis M. Crouse explains in his article Causes of the Great Migration 1630-1640, that Laudianism was a source of “serious antagonism,” between the Anglican Church and Puritans. William Laud was Archbishop of Canterbury and a close ally of Charles I. But Puritans had sought to abandon the Church’s convoluted ceremony long before Laud took charge of the church. They had been writing their own rules and getting away with it. With independence of clerical controls and unofficial lecturers, there opened up an opportunity to promote Nonconformity. Puritans also neglected the churches in their communities. They had fallen into disrepair and church possessions had come up missing. It was so bad that ale houses had been set up inside the yards of some churches. Sectary churches were increasing and unorthodox clergymen were ordained more often throughout the Kingdom.13
The leaders of the Puritan movement were clergy of the Church of England but the most influential element of the movement was not the leadership but the lecturers over which the bishops had no control. These of course were the people who took the brunt of the criticism from Archbishop Laud. Many lecturers escaped England for the New World bringing their congregations with them.14 Crouse explains that “private gentlemen,” maintained lecturers in Suffolk County, but leaves us with out any more information on whom or what influenced these gentlemen. These lecturers were said to be, “without so much as the knowledge of the ordinary, and without any due observation to the canons, or the disciplines of the Church.”15 Could it have been that these privately sponsored sermoners were encouraging Puritans to move for reasons other then Puritan piety? Aside from inspiring their churches to move lecturers were promoting congregationalism.
Sub-dean of Westminster Abby, Peter Heylin wrote that great trading towns near the sea were “discharged from the bond of ceremonies,” and had been organized into congregations. He then comments that this allowed suspended ministers and lecturers to convince their followers to emigrate.16 While there was a growing number of Puritan clergy others ventured to bring order to the bedlam of church affairs, but were met with serious opposition from nonconformists. Yet these righteous church leaders displayed an “inexhaustible patience,” with disobedient church members. But something more had to be done to preserve the Anglican Church.17
William Laud was selected as Bishop of London in 1628. Laud was determined to restore the church to its original liturgical form and to cast away the heretical and material abuses. He was regarded as a persecutor by those whom he opposed, though it must be said that he cannot truly fit into that category of men. Laud’s duty and desire were the same. Crouse believed that even then as Bishop of London, Laud had a “desire, nay his duty, to restore uniformity.” His mission was to resurrect respect for Holy buildings and liberate the churches from heretical influences. King Charles, who was suspected of being a Catholic at heart, supported Laud’s action giving credence to suspicions about his religious preferences.
Charles made Laud Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. By that time the King had already started to reform the church. He had outlawed the use of the church as a meeting place for business transactions and other non-religious idleness.18 Charles also gave arrest authority to Justices of the Peace for any nonconformists who met in private conventicles otherwise known as secret religious meetings.19Laud is believed to be an Arminian. Arminian’s believed in a soul’s free will and that it might influence God’s judgment, a concept that was opposed by Puritan notions of predestination. What may have proved more threatening to Puritans though was the Arminian’s positive regard for religious rituals, and the sanctity of clergy.20
Charles had promoted Laud and his Arminian associates to lead the Church of England. These church men used their authority coupled with the diocesan courts and Court of High Commission to restore alters, encouraged kneeling, ended sermons, allowed priestly vestments, besmirched the Sabbath, and required uniformity from both ministers and laity. The church leadership encouraged a liturgy that called to mind Catholicism. Arminianism, which many of the new Bishops advocated, belittled predestination and other important tenants of Puritan theology. Along with support of free will, and the Anglican churches discipline, Puritans had little love for the Church of England.21 The Anglicans were reversing all of the small victories that the Puritan movement had made towards congregationalism and Covenant Theology.
Congregationalism was dangerous to the Kingdom. Laud believed that the existence of independent ecclesiastic entities would weaken the Anglican Church and lead to as Crouse put it, “a state inside a state.” Laud found that some parts of England were not only growing in support of Puritanism but were also becoming indifferent and even openly hostile to the Church of England.22 There was then a growing group of nonconformists, belonging to the upper stratum, who wanted to seek out freedom overseas especially in New England.23 The need to spread conformity was becoming more important.
One of Laud's first efforts to spread conformity was to demand that foreigners who held Protestant beliefs be pressed to conform to the Church of England’s policy. English-born natives were to go to parish churches, but those who were not English born could choose their own discipline. The process went so far as to translate English Liturgy into the languages of the foreigners. Lauds policies may have actually motivated a French Congregation that was found in New England.24 But it is unclear if this congregstion was pushed away by conformity or had migrated from France.25
What is known is that some of those disaffected by the Arminian call for conformity were in fact the clergy themselves. John Davenport, who later became leader of New Haven, resigned his position as Vicar of St. Stephen’s because of objections to conformity. Cotton Mather spoke on the matter saying, “‘at length conformity to ceremonies humanely invented and imposed in the worship of God, was urged in the Church of England with so much rigour, that Mr. Davenport was thereby driven to seek a refuge from the storm in the cold and rude corners of America.’”26 Religious motives were most clear among Puritan clergy who had lost their privilege of preaching. Inhibited at home with a prospect of religious freedom in New England was a sound reason for leaving.27 Why not leave to New England when one had a place to preach.28
Arminian church officials were also causing a stir for those in East Anglia and Kent. The Diocese of Norwich which comprised both Suffolk and Norfolk from 1635-8 was controlled by Bishop Matthew Wren. Puritan Laity were unhappy with the Bishop’s administration. Civic discord increased in both Yarmouth and Norwich. Riots even occurred in Ipswich in 1637 when the Bishop’s officers came to town.29 Bishop Wren was later impeached during the Long Parliament because he was an enemy of nonconformity and imposed ceremonialism.30 Wren, was charged by his opponents with coercing three thousand of his diocese’s laity overseas with his, ironhanded enforcement. But many of these textile workers went to Holland not America, possibly leaving as much for higher wages as for religious freedom.31 Wren shot back that the East Anglian’s who had left his diocese had gone before he came to power and the others who departed were from outside his jurisdiction.32
Despite Wren’s claims of innocence the pressures of Laudian conformity must have spurned many Puritans to move to New England. Cotton Mather once wrote,
It was now also time, when some hundreds of those good people which had the nick-name of Puritans put upon them, transported themselves, with their whole families and interests into the desarts of America, that they might here peaceably erect Congregational Churches.
Despite claims of unbearable pressure to conform, Wren’s case may have had some merit also.33
While many migrants may have felt vulnerable and incensed by Laudianism and Nonconformism, few had actually been persecuted by Charles I or the Church. Yet more then half of the ordained ministers (47 of the 76) who traveled to New England had been in trouble with their religious leaders. Laymen, too left after many incidents with Church authorities.34 Some laymen had been harassed, or had been called before ecclesiastical courts. Seventeenth Century contemporaries believed that the conformity that was being enforced by Arch Bishop Laud was horrendous and that the Church’s grip on ecclesiastical practices would only get tighter. But the Laudian Church was not as effective as critics described it and most Puritans withstood the drive for uniformity.35
While church leaders and lecturers may have had bouts with the Anglican Church the majority of migrants “had virtually no direct experience of fierce Episcopal discipline.”36 Despite the tight controls led by the Laudian Church, Puritanism still flourished. While rebels like Thomas Hooker, Thomas Sheppard and Thomas Weld had been muted and exiled to the America’s, others stayed and continued to work for change.
Still other Puritans thought emigration was a mistake, and that the church must be reformed instead of abandoned.37 Despite this Whole towns were depopulated, and the few parishioners who had remained in the nearly abandoned churches were forced to move on to new congregations.38 Crouse also mentions that Winthrop knew of private letters affirming many in England were fearful due to the exodus of so many Christians and ministers.39
It was Charles I who originally came up with the idea of convincing the growing population of English in Holland to instead colonize New England.40 Before too long this idea seemed to blow up in the Kings face. A strong Puritan Colony overseas whose inhabitants held hostilities towards the church and frosty feelings for the English Government was becoming a concern to civil authorities who felt that a military conflict might ensue.41
Archbishop Laud feared that the settlers were constructing a distant American colony of nonconformists. If able to garner any success, the example that New England may inspire those who were unsatisfied at home to migrate for freedom. Most likely in response he formalized a commission to regulate the colonies and control the voyages to and from the Americas. This commission went into action in April, 1634 and was headed by Laud himself. By December of the same year the Privy Council would limit emigration further. It was required that those who were interested in migrating to prove their conformity to the church. The middle and upper-class held licenses while the poorer classes obtain certificates from local clergy that would prove their allegiance.42
Men wishing to migrate had to take an oath of allegiance to the king and the Anglican Church. Then they were forced to prove it to a royal customs officer who would in turn record their information on a list that would allow them to travel to the new world.43 The Royal Customs Officer’s recorded the applicants, “age, profession, place of origin, and probable destination.” Most of the surviving lists were gathered and printed by John Camden Hotten in 1874.44
T.H. Breen and Stephen Foster in their Article Moving to the New World: The Character of Early Massachusetts Immigration reported their finding from two lists of those who had taken oaths. The year 1637 proved to be the year with the best records for Breen and Foster. From Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, 193 emigrants left, another 80 from Sandwich in Kent had filed thorough records and were granted the freedom to travel.45 Although we have great records for these 273 this is just a small percentage of the total number of people who made the trip. We cannot use the information on these lists definitively but we can accept that this could have been a general or ordinary group of migrants although no proof exists to the validity of their commonness.
Most of the people on the lists from 1637 were grouped into families. They were not the stereotypical young, single, males, who had little to attach them in the home country. These two-parent families had a few kids and occasionally a servant or two. Very few grandparents or other in-laws were on the lists. The lists were almost equally distributed between men and women also. The Sandwich list included 12 male heads-of-households and their spouses, 31 children, and 21 servants. There were just three men traveling without families.
The Yarmouth List included 29 heads-of-households, with their wives, 86 kids, and 34 servants. Five single men voyaged from Yarmouth in this excursion as well as 8 single women or as Breen and Foster explain, “female heads of families,” who may have had children and or servants.46 Breen and Foster argue that the absence of large numbers of single men contributed to the stability of Massachusetts, unlike the colonists in Virginia, among which women “were scarcer then corn or liquor,” the New England Colonies were populated with families with daughters.47
In Migrants and Motives: Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630-1640 Virginia Dejohn Anderson explored seven passenger lists with nearly seven hundred names. These lists also included male occupation, residence, age, and evidence of family structure. This is little information to understand the migrant’s motives but it is enough to find more detailed genealogies and local histories. Using that information 578 of the 693 emigrants job history has been reconstructed. Like the two ships studied by Breen and Stephens the migrants were mostly families. 597 of the 680 emigrants traveled with family. Three quarters of those families were nuclear family units. The average number of children was 3.08. While the average age of emigrant husbands in Andersons lists was 37.4, wives 33.8. More then half of the emigrating families brought servants and 80 of 114 servants were male.48 Despite all of this statistical information it can do little to help us understand why these families moved.
“‘Land, social mobility, economic independence, earnings and a thirst for novelty, as well as religion,’” were all listed in Good News from New-England as reasons for people to emigrate.49 John White said in his book The Planters Plea, “‘As it were absurd to conceive they have all one motive, so were it more ridiculous to imagine they have all one scope.’” White goes on to admit that it may have been, “‘private interests,’” or family reasons that convinced Englishmen to migrate. “‘Necessity may press some, novelty draw on others, hopes of gain in time to come may prevail with a third sort; but that the most and most sincere and godly part have the advancement of the Gospel for their main scope I am confident.’” Some migrants dithered over the decision to migrate while others left on a whim.50 Other incredible things were occurring in England just prior to the vast numbers of travelers made their exodus. These nonreligious events, a depression and a famine may have been just as important to some as freedom of conscious.
The Southeastern part of England including the counties of Suffolk, Norfolk, and Bedford were the parts of England where Puritan influence was centered. Unfortunately this was also the region that was hit hardest by the economic upsets that were primarily experienced in the textile industry. England’s major commerce was cloth making in the 1500s, and it experienced a decline during the reign of James I. While it might prove impossible to link the collapse of the industry back to one factor, one important cause was the Wiltshire merchant adventurers who complained that they could not sell their imported gold and silver thread and glass goods to the Middle East because of pirates. Another probable reason is the end of exportations of cloth to Spanish ports in 1622, as well as the Thirty Years War. Last but not least was the shortage of “ready coin.”51
The English government hurriedly attempted to remedy the spiraling trade. The Privy Council sent a letter to the justices of ten counties in early 1622. The letters advocated that the justices call the clothiers to recommence with the employment of their workers. Merchants were then prompted to buy more cloth. Then an attempt was made to bring the price of raw wool down, but the arrangement was not good for producers. Plans were also suggested that would set up public stocks that could employ those without work. The Government went as far as to put forward the idea of a law prohibiting the firing of workers without government permission. Nothing seemed to help though, and conditions would become so terrible in 1629 that a panic ensued.
The apparent alarm is believed to have been caused by the cloth dealer’s failing to sell their product abroad. The future of the industry was at stake, and the inability to export coupled with a subsequent grain famine created a serious catastrophe. The problems were so threatening that the poorest English were on the verge of starving to death. Considered by the English as attempting to monopolize the cloth industry, Dutch merchants dared not help the situation by unloading their goods in England. The Dutch feared that it would lead to violence from an English mob.52
Aside from no assistance from foreign powers, local workers were oppressed by crooked bosses. Unable to organize, the spinners were victims of corruption. The government once again stepped in, acting on behalf of a petition sent by a deprived women who explained that the spinners of her hometown were selling their, “beds and tools,” to buy food. A committee was appointed by the Privy Council to explore the conditions in East Anglia. The Commission had the power to restore wages to their previous amount and to punish those merchants who refused to obey this order. The Commission declared that the decline in wages was not just regional but threatened the entire kingdom. In April 1629 two hundred Englishmen from Essex brought a petition to the Privy Council in which they complained of the short supply of labor that was disturbing 30,000 subjects. Riots then broke out. All other attempts to remedy the problem were met with more failure.53
Along with the troubles of the textile depression, a shortage of grain occurred. The chronic crop failures continued from 1630 through 1634. But the hurt was felt as early as 1629, when the price of grain went up and petitions were made to prevent its export. Eventually the price of corn exceeded a rate that was protected by law. In Rutland there was so little corn that it was scarcely sufficient to feed the people, let alone seed the fields. Other counties like York had stored away corn for the poor and so had a surplus. With a lack of income because of the textile depression and the famine, the numbers of poor increased. This growing number of needy persuaded the rich to double and triple the usual relief donations.54 But this was still not enough.
The Government helped as much as it could by managing the price of grain, by controlling its export, and by promoting charities. Town stocks were established to employ the jobless, paying them essentials such as food and clothing rather then cash.55 Beer exporting was banned to reduce the use of corn. The export of corn too was prohibited as was shipping it from place to place inside England.56 By 1634, the grain famine had ended.57 These conditions created by the famine and the textile depression must have been favorable to emigration; especially for cloth workers and textile employees. But no evidence is available to prove that these people migrated because of these problems.58
Besides the economic and agricultural disasters, Breen and Foster point out that causes other then economic and religious ones are hard to access since so much of the information on neighborhood squabbles, family quarrels, and a migrants sense of adventure or similar personality traits are hard to find in sources of the day.59 If a migrant family had money problems or someone lost their job or if a family members death allowed them the freedom to move it is unclear from the records.60
Historians have assumed that content people did not choose to emigrate, so they have focused their research on what terrible things were affecting the people of Kent and East Anglia. The economy of these regions had been hit hard by the slump in demand for cloth. As mentioned before the cloth trade was the prominent industry of the two regions in which the migrants of Breen and Fosters list came from. Commerce had been suspended for months due to heavy competition from the continental cloth trade, governmental mishaps, and a serious outbreak of the plague in London and Norwich. So why would well-entrenched artisans who were semi-prominent members of the community move away from the home that they had always known to become farmers in an unsettled wild land?61 In fact those migrants represented on the lists were most likely members of the middle-class.
The regions in which both of the previously mentioned listed groups migrated from were places with a high percentage of industrial workers and town dwellers. The industries of the region were mainly cloth work. These were primarily “worsteds and ‘new draperies’”62 While the Cloth trade was very important in Kent, Norfolk, and High Suffolk, all of these areas remained manly agricultural. The main agricultural products were grain and dairy.63
However the majority of Kentish and East Anglian men emigrated on Breen and Foster’s lists were urban artisans. Thirty-one of the forty-two men who gave their occupations on the lists were artisans. There were carpenters, coopers, cordwainers, joiners, mariners, tailors, weavers, as well as a brewer, a butcher, a calendar, a grocer, a locksmith, a minister, a shoemaker. Only eleven of the emigrants were farmers.64 Colonists on the list came from the most Protestant yet least hurt areas of the cloth working areas.65 Breen and Foster believe that while the majority of colonists not mentioned in the lists were not craftsmen they were probably artisans who came from urban areas.66 These were indeed middle-class workers moving to New England with their families.
One example of a middle-class migrant was John Bent. Mr. Bent was one of Weyhill’s wealthiest inhabitants. So why would he trade his economically secure life in England for a predictably insecure life for him and his family in the New World.67 More is known about John Bent then most migrants because of the survival of more of his records. These records of Bent’s life leave no evidence of economic motivation for uprooting from his life long home.68 What does this evidence say about the economic motivations?
Not only did people like John Bent and other Englanders decided to emigrate they specifically decided on New England of all of the English Colonies. This was “an underdeveloped agricultural colony,” and the majority of the male emigrants who were artisans would never practice their crafts again. These families could have moved to the Netherlands which was at the time the most economically advanced part of Europe, where many crafts were in demand especially worsted weaving.69 In fact, just as those 193 migrants who left Yarmouth for New England there were another 414 who sailed towards Holland.70 These men were also not failing in their careers and hoping to become farmers in the New World.
These workers were not new workers but in fact had been experienced before they left for New England. Most of the male heads of household who left were at least five or more years past the age of apprenticeship and were most likely well established in their own career. Breen and Foster point out that they were too young “to have been driven [in] desperation by the incapacities of age or misfortune.”71
Evidence from the lists clearly shows that these migrants were members of a class that was not farmers. After all moving is expensive and to move to a new continent must have had a tremendous cost. Samuel Eliot Morison believed that the migrants mostly came from Puritan dominated areas and also belonged to the middle-class which was “‘the backbone of the Puritan movement.’”72 Charles Edward Banks argued that settlers were encouraged to migrate for landlord-less lands, “fleeing the ‘social slavery and degradation of the land system at home.’” Banks emphasized Englishmen’s frustration with the manorial system, and the arbitrary government of King Charles I. Anyway you look at it these were not migrants from the bottom of the Great Chain of being.73
Some settlers from Suffolk had influential connections. Clergy members were all educated. Crouse also points out that allot of migrants were sufficiently well off enough to bring their servants.74 “‘Some of the ministers and many of the gentlemen, that came over with the ministers, were persons of considerable estates: who therewith charitably brought over many poor families of godly people,’” explained Cotton Mather.75 Others claim that among the first to take interest in the colonies were those of substantial people. Lord Saye and Sele and Lord Brooke as well as other Puritan Noblemen at one time thought to bless Massachusetts with their presence but they requested, “peerage and a hereditary legislative body,” which was warmly declined.76
As we know the Noblemen never got their wish but had they New England would have turned out to be a quite different place. What it did turn out to be was a safe haven not just for Puritans but for the middle-class who represented the progressive views of Puritanism. This middle-class who would spawn the people who would make our nation great sought a place to start over with their families. New England would become a place with out the political stresses of England, a back to earth experience with farming and freedom of consciousness as the prizes for hard work. While the evidence for a purely Puritan motivation is hard to find, and sketchy data cannot prove economic reasons were the main reason for migration we can see that these people were family oriented, religiously inspired, and leaving an unsure political future. What they found in New England was rough but promising because of their hard work and the belief that God was on their side.

End Notes
1Proceedings, LXII, Massachusetts historical Society, 411, as quoted in Nellis M. Crouse, “Causes of the great Migration 1630-1640,” The New England Quarterly no. 1 vol. 5 (Jan. 1932): 26.
2Crouse, 35-6.
3T.H. Breen and Stephen Foster, “Moving to the New World: The Character of Early Massachusetts Immigration,” The William and Mary Quarterly no. 2 vol. 30 (April 1973): 222.
4David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century, (New York: Cambridge University press, 1987), 80.
5Ibid., 74.
6William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation 1620-1647 vol. 1, (Boston, 1912), 52; as quoted in Ibid., 83.
7Samuel Eliot Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony, rev. ed. (Boston, 1964), 380-6; as quoted in Ibid., 78-9.
8Francis J. Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards (New York, 1976), 33-40; as quoted in Ibid., 79.
9 Edward Ellis, The Puritan Age, (Boston, 1888), 205-10; as quoted in Crouse, 32.
10Crouse, 35-6.
11Cressy, 74.
12For a detailed account of Great Migration historiography, see John T. Horton, “Two Bishops and the Holy Brood: A Fresh Look at a Familiar Fact,” New England Quarterly XL (1967), 339-46; Carl Bridenbaugh, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 1590-1642 (New York, 1968); Norman C. P. Tyack, “Migration from East Anglia to New England before 1660” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1951); as quoted by Breen and Foster, 189.
13Crouse, 15.
14Victoria History of Essex, II, 51-3; as quoted in Crouse, 16.
15William Laud, Works, III, 421, et seq., and V, pt. 2 323-70; as quoted in Crouse, 20.
16John Browne, History of Congregationalism, and Memorials of the Churches in Norfolk and Suffolk (London, 1877), 89; and Sir Cristopher Wren, Parentalia or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens…(London, 1750), 101-2; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 205.
17Victoria History of Norfolk, II, 277; as quoted in Crouse, 16.
18S.R. Gardiner, Charles I, II, 11; as quoted in Crouse, 16-7.
19 Cotton Mather, Magnolia (London, 1702), 80; as quoted in Crouse, 17.
20Robert Bucholz and Newton Key, Early Modern England 1485-1714, (Malden Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 225.
21Bodeleian Library, Tanner 68, 314; as quoted in Cressy, 89.
22William Laud, Works, III, 421, et seq., and V, pt. 2 323-70; as quoted in Crouse, 19.
23Calendar of State papers, Domestic, 1631-3, 255; as quoted in Crouse, 20.
24Cotton Mather, Magnolia, (London, 1702), 80; as quoted in Crouse, 18.
25Cotton Mather, Magnolia, (London, 1702), 80; as quoted in Crouse, 19.
26Cotton Mather, Magnolia, (London, 1702), 138; as quoted in Crouse, 21.
27Chronicles, 439; as quoted in Cressy, 91.
28Alexander Young, Chronicles of Massachusetts, (Boston, 1846), 528-31; as quoted in Crouse, 22.
29Kenneth Wayne Shipps, “Lay Patronage of East Anglian Puritan Clerics in Pre-Revolutionary England,” (Ph.D diss., Yale University, 1971), 216-99;
W. E. Layton, “Ecclesiastical Disturbances in Ipswich During the Reign of Charles I,” East Anglian, N.S., II (1887-8), 209, 257, 315, 3373,405; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 200.
30John Browne, History of Congregationalism, and Memorials of the Churches in Norfolk and Suffolk (London, 1877), 89; Sir Cristopher Wren, Parentalia or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens…(London, 1750), 101-2; Walter Rye, ed., The Norwich Rate Book from Easter1633 to Easter 1634 (London, 1903), 63,73,75; R.W. Ketton-Cremer, Norfolk in the Civil War: A Portrait of a Society in conflict (London, 1969), 76-9; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 199.
31Bodeleian Library, Tanner 68, 314; as quoted in Cressy, 89.
32Bodeleian Library, Tanner 314.; as quoted in Cressy, 89.
33Mather, 480; as quoted in Crouse, 23.
34Richard Waterhouse, “Reluctant emigrants: The English background of the first generation of the New England Puritan clergy,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, no. 44 (1975): 377, 473-88; as quoted in Cressy, 87.
35Bodeleian Library, Tanner 68, 314; as quoted in Cressy, 88.
36Stephan Foster, “English Puritanism and the progress of New England institutions, 1630-1660,” in David D. Hall, John M. Murrin and Thad W. Tate(eds.), Saints and Revolutionaries: Essays on Early American History (New York, 1984), 3-37; and
N. C. P. Tyack, “The humbler Puritans of East Anglia and the New England movement: evidence from the court records of the 1630’s,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 138 (1984), 91,103; Horton, “Two bishops and the Holy Brood,” 339-46; B. W. Quintrell, “Lancashire ills, the king’s will and the troubling of Bishop Bridgeman,” Transactions of Historic Societry of Lancashire and Cheshire, 132 (1983), 69-70; R.C. Richarson, “Puritanism and the ecclesiastical authorities: the case of the diocese of Chester,” in Brian Manning ed. Politics, Religion and the English Civil War (London, 1973), 3-33; as quoted in Cressy, 90.
37Chronicles, 439, as quoted in Cressy, 91.
38Crouse, 21.
39Winthrop’s Journal Hosmer, Ed. (New York, 1908), 127; as quoted in Crouse, 23.
40Charles Wilson, “Cloth Production and International competition in the Seventeenth Century,” in his Economic History and the Historian (London, 1969), 94-113;
And Wilson, “Taxation and the Decline of Empires, an Unfashionable Theme,” ibid., 116-9; Wren, Parentalia, 101-2; Sir John Coke to William Boswell, Feb. 15, 1632/3 S.P. 84/146/66v-67r; Bridenbaugh, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 466-7; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 206.
41Mather, Magnolia, 218, 327-8; as quoted in Crouse, 25.
42Hazard, Historical Collections, I, 347; as quoted in Crouse, 29.
43Charles Boardman Jewson ed. Transcripts of three Registers of passengers from great Yarmouth to Holland and New England 1637-39; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 190.
44John Camden Hotten, ed. The Original Lists of Persons of Quality and Others Who Went from Great Britain to the American Plantations , 1600-1700 (London, 1874);
Charles Edward Banks, The Planters of the Commonwealth: A Study of the Emigrants and emigration in Colonial Times…1620-40 (Boston, 1930). Banks made some shrewd guesses; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 191.
45Jewson ed., Transcripts of Passengers to New England , 20-23, 29-30,
And “Two early passenger lists 1635-7,” New England Historical and Geneological Register, LXXV (1921), 221-6; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 192.
46Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England, rev. ed. (New York, 1966), 145; Tyack, “Migration from East Anglia,” 50; Jewson, ed., Transcripts of Passengers to New England, 29; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 193-4.
47Edmund S. Morgan, “The First American Boom: Virginia 1618 to 1630,” William and Mary quarterly 3rd. Ser., XXVIII (1971), 179-80; T.H. Breen and Stephan foster, “The Puritans greatest Achievment: A study of social cohesion in seventeenth-century Massachusetts,” Journal of American History not yet published at time of article; Herbert Moller, “Sex Composition and Collateral Culture Patturns of Colonial America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., II (1945), 115-8; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 194.
48Virginia Dejohn Anderson, “Migrants and Motives: Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630-1640,” The New England Quarterly no. 3 vol. 58 (Sept. 1985): 345-55.
49Good News from New-England, in Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, ser. 4 vol. 1 (1852), 197; as quoted in Cressy, 86.
50John White, The Planters Plea, (London, 1630), in Massachusetts Historical Society; The founding of Massachusetts (Boston, 1930), 182-3, 187; as quoted in Cressy, 85.
51E.M. Leonard, Early History of English Poor Relief (Cambridge, publisher, 1900), 145, 147; see note 2 on page 145; Bulstrode Whitelock, Memorials of English Affairs (Oxford, 1853), I, 64; Victoria History of Norfolk (London, 1906), II, 505; Venetian State Papers, 1629-1632, 49, 421; as quoted in Crouse, 8-9.
52Leonard, English Poor Relief, 147-8, 153; Bland, Brown, and Tawney, Select Documents (London, 1914), 383; Victoria History of Norfolk (London, 1906), II, 505; Venetian State Papers,1629-32, 7-8; as quoted in Crouse, 9-10.
53Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1628-9, 450, 535; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1629-31, 414-5, 417, 419, 526; Venetian State Papers,1629-32, 202, 208; as quoted in Crouse, 10-11.
54Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1628-9, 450, 535; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1629-31, 414-5, 417, 419, 526; Venetian State Papers,1629-32, 202, 208; as quoted in Crouse, 12-3.
55Victoria History of Nottingham (London, 1910), II 290-291; as quoted in Crouse, 13.
56Leonard, English Poor Relief, 150; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1629-31, 281; as quoted in Crouse, 13.
57Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1633-4, 219; as quoted in Crouse, 14.
58Victoria History of Lincoln, II, 60-2; s quoted in Crouse, 14.
59Charles Wilson, “Cloth Production and International competition in the Seventeenth Century,” in his Economic History and the Historian (London, 1969), 94-113; And Wilson, “Taxation and the Decline of Empires, an Unfashionable Theme,” ibid., 116-9; Wren, Parentalia, 101-2; Sir John Coke to William Boswell, Feb. 15, 1632/3 S.P. 84/146/66v-67r; Bridenbaugh, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 466-7; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 205.
60Robert G. Pope, The Notebook of the Reverend John Fiske 1644-1675 (Salem, Mass., 1974), XXXVII; Cotton Mather, Magnolia, vol. 1, 431; Winthrop Papers, vol. 3, 394; as quoted in Cressy, 93.
61B.E. Supple, Commercial crisis Changes in England, 1600-1642: A Study of the instability of the Merchantile Economy (Cambridge, 1959), 102-12, 120-125; Tyack, “Migration from East Anglia,”220-30; On the plague see: ibid., 169-170; Sir Cristopher Wren, Parentalia or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens…(London, 1750), 101-2; Walter Rye, ed., State Papers Relating to Musters, Beacons, Ship Money…in Norfolk, from 1626 chiefly to the Beginning of the Civil War (Norwich, 1907), 216; Boys, History of Sandwich 707-8, 708n. Stephans, eventeenth century Exeter, 13-14; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 199.
62D.C. Coleman, “An innovation and its Diffusion: the ‘New Draperies,’” Economic Historical Review, 2nd Ser., XXII (1969), 426-9; Chalkin, Seventeenth Century Kent, 123-6, K.J. Allison, “The Norfolk Worsted Industry in the Sixteenth and seventeenth Centuries,” Yorkshire Bulletinof Economics and Social Research, XII (1961), 61-5;
William Page, ed., The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A history of Kent, III (London, 1932), 409; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 196.
63In addition to the sources above on Thirsk, Chalkin : Eric Kerridge , The Agricultural Revolution (London, 1967), 270-2, 295-6, Peter Clark and Paul Slack, eds., Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500-1700 (London, 1972), 6; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 196.
64J.M. Cowper, ed., The Roll of the Freemen of the City of Canterbury from A.D. 1392 to 1800 (Canterbury, 1903); Percy Millican, ed., The Registers of the Freemen of Norwich, 1548-1713 (Norwich, 1910); Cowper, ed., Canterbury Freemen, X,and Yarmouth Freemen, I.; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 197.
65E. Lipson, The History of the Woollen and Worsted Industries (London, 1921), Chaps. 1,2; Charles Wilson, “Cloth Production and International competition in the Seventeenth Century,” in his Economic History and the Historian (London, 1969), 94-113; D.C. Coleman, “An innovation and its Diffusion: the ‘New Draperies,’” Economic Historical Review, 2nd Ser., XXII (1969), 426-9; Chalkin, Seventeenth Century Kent, 123-6, K.J. Allison, “The Norfolk Worsted Industry in the Sixteenth and seventeenth Centuries,” Yorkshire Bulletinof Economics and Social Research, XII (1961), 61-5; William Page, ed., The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A history of Kent, III (London, 1932), 409; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 204.
66Breen and Foster, 221.
67Allen H. Bent, “The Bent Family,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 47 (1864) 288-96; E.C. Felton, “The English ancestors of John Bent, of Sudsbury,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 48 (1895): 66; Sumner Chilton Powel, Puritan Village: The Foundation of a New England Town (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1963), 8; The list of passengers aboard the Confidence are found in Henry Stevens, “Passengers for New England, 1638,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 2 (1848), 108-10; Corrections to the latter are found in H.G. Somerby, New England Historical and Genealogical Register (1851), 440; as quoted in Anderson, 339.
68Anderson, 339.
69Charles Wilson, “Cloth Production and International competition in the Seventeenth Century,” in his Economic History and the Historian (London, 1969), 94-113;
And Wilson, “Taxation and the Decline of Empires, an Unfashionable Theme,” ibid., 116-9; Wren, Parentalia, 101-2; Sir John Coke to William Boswell, Feb. 15, 1632/3 S.P. 84/146/66v-67r; Bridenbaugh, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 466-7; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 206.
70Jewson ed., Transcript of Passengers to New England, 5, 9-14; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 206.
71Walter Rye, ed., The Norwich Rate Book from Easter1633 to Easter 1634 (London, 1903), 3-4; as quoted in Breen and Foster, 198.
72Samuel Eliot Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony, rev. ed. (Boston, 1964), 380-6; as quoted in Cressy, 78-9.
73Charles Edward Banks, Planters of the Commonwealth, (1930; reprinted, Boston, 1975); p.20-2; Charles Edward Banks, The Winthrop fleetof 1630, (1930; reprinted, Baltimore, 1972); 13-4; as quoted in Cressy, 78.
74This is the opinion of Joseph Hunter, who draws his conclusions from a Manuscript (in the Harleian Department of the British Museum, No. 6071), called “An Heraldical Book showing the Descent and pedigree of the Kings of England, and of Several Families of the Nobility and Gentry.” See 3 Collections, Massachusetts Historical Society, X, 172; as quoted in Crouse, 28.
75Mather, Magnolia, 218; as quoted in Crouse, 28.
76Hazard, Historical Collections, I, 347; as quoted in Crouse, 28.

Biboliography
Primary Sources

Mather, Cotton, Magnolia. London: 1702.
Laud, William. Works, III.
Laud, William. Works, V.
Wren, Sir Cristopher. Parentalia or Memoirs of the Family of the Wren. London: 1750.
White, John. The Planters Plea. London: 1630.

Secondary Sources

Journal Articles
Crouse, Nellis M. Crouse. “Causes of the great Migration 1630-1640.” The New England Quarterly no. 1 vol. 5 (Jan. 1932): 3-36.
Breen, T.H. and Stephen Foster. “Moving to the New World: The Character of Early Massachusetts Immigration.” The William and Mary Quarterly no. 2 vol. 30 (April 1973): 189-222.
Anderson, Virginia Dejohn. “Migrants and Motives: Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630-1640.” The New England Quarterly no. 3 vol. 58 (Sept. 1985): 339-383.



Books
Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Cambridge University press, 1987.
Bucholz, Robert and Newton Key. Early Modern England 1485-1714. Malden Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.