A New Sion? Reform, Rebellion, and Colonization c. 1625–1640

Abstract

This chapter studies how, in the aftermath of his failure to subdue the Scottish insurgency by military means, Charles I authorized the election of two new parliaments. Its policies were so at odds with Charles I's understanding of monarchy and the true church that the outcome was civil war in England between supporters of the king and supporters of Parliament. Explaining this sequence of events tests every historian of 1630s and 1640s Britain. The puzzles are many. In the context of this book, the most significant of these is the relationship between civil politics and the politics of religion. Intertwined throughout the history of the English and Scottish reformations, their relationship tightened in the practice and rhetoric of Charles I and the party he favored, here known as the Laudians. Like his immediate predecessors, the young king took for granted that opposition to his version of true religion was equivalent to challenging his authority as king. At once, the religious and the political become inseparable. Before 1640, the political and the religious in Scotland had also become intertwined, but in a quite different manner. There, it was being argued that a monarch's policies were corrupting a perfect church. And there a unique event in British history unfolded.

The New England Puritans: History, Social Order, and Gender

“…Charles I continually revealed his preference for the Catholic-oriented worship and episcopacy, with once-banned practices in Elizabethan times reemerging in worship (baptismal fonts, chalices, clerical vestments, etc.) (Hall, 2019). Puritans became increasingly antagonistic in light of the more Catholic sympathetic and persecutive regime of Charles I under the counsel of William Laud.…”

“…Furthermore, Charles I had disbanded Parliament in 1629, furthering Puritan concerns that their theological grievances would never be addressed (Bremer, 1995). Once colonists had settled in Massachusetts Bay they complained of being "unable to find God's presence in ordinances, being full of mixtures" in England and acknowledged the "purity" in New England compared to the "superstitions" that "clouded God in ordinances" of their homeland (Hall, 2019).…”

“…The first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, summarized the necessity to leave England to secure a land from which the church would be "better preserved from the Common corruptions of this evil world" (Hall, 2019). An anxiety over England's ordained future had seriously manifested in the Puritans leaving for the New World, who also looked to several economic depressions and evidence of God's increasing wrath for England.…”

“…(Bremer, 1995). Eventually, governance in the new colony was reformed in a reinterpretation of "freemen" from, originally, those stockholders in the charter company to, after, defining the "freeman" by church membership so that the colony would rule as Israel ruled Israel in an assurance of Godly governance (Hall, 2019). The freeman, however, were limited in their power and only allowed to select the assistants who would then select the governor (Bremer, 1995, p. 59).…”