THE ENGLISH IN THE AMERICAS
Several factors encouraged English entrepreneurs and settlers to come to America. After 1550 there was huge population growth in England, with high inflation and a decline in wages for many workers. The number of landless laborers increased dramatically; thousands entered London and other English cities. Many observers noted that England appeared to be dangerously overcrowded, and leaders became increasingly convinced that settlement in America could help relieve the population problem.
Many English people became increasingly attracted to the possibility of resettlement in the Americas.
In addition, many English Puritans were increasingly disenchanted with the Church of England, feeling that the church was too close to Catholicism. Puritans, who followed the Protestant teaching of John Calvin, had some measure of religious freedom under Elizabeth I. After her death in 1603, the position of Puritans in England became more difficult, with some Puritan clergymen removed from their pulpits. Thus, by the 1630s many Puritans felt that by moving to the Americas they would be able to practice their religion without interference from either English civil or religious authorities. Another religious group opposed to the Church of England was the Separatists. After several of its leading spokespersons were arrested, this group fled to Holland; from here a percentage of Separatists decided to go to the Americas.
Settlement in Jamestown
The first permanent English settlement in America was the Jamestown colony, founded in 1607 by Captain John Smith, King James I had granted the London Company a charter permitting them to establish this colony. The swampy site of the Jamestown colony encouraged disease; in addition, several years of poor harvests created severe food shortages. In addition, early conflict with the Powhattan Confederacy of Native Americans placed additional strains on the colony.
Because of a severe shortage of food, John Smith created a trade alliance with the Powhattans; the corn received from the Native Americans kept the colony alive. Pocahontas, the daughter of the Powhattan chief married one of the more influential men in the Jamestown colony, John Rolfe. This marriage helped to temporarily prevent further conflict with Native Americans. Rolfe’s main contribution, however, was to begin the cultivation of tobacco in Jamestown. Rolfe’s system of cultivation ensured that tobacco would become the main cash crop of Virginia; the demand for tobacco in England helped to ensure the economic success of the colony.
Large numbers of workers were needed in Virginia to harvest the tobacco crop. To meet this demand, indentured servants began to arrive in Virginia; many of these men were unemployed, ex-criminals, or both. As an additional measure to meet the demand for labor the first African slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619, the same year that the first white women arrived there. It should be noted that the Virginia colony created the I louse of Burgesses in 1619; this was the first representative government in any British colony.
Settlement in Massachusetts
Colonization in New England was different. Where economic gain was the major motivation for settlement in Virginia, many religious dissenters settled in New England, thus making religious zeal a primary factor in the colonization of that region.
A group of Separatists received a charter to settle southeast of the Hudson River. The purpose of this journey was to spread the '‘gospell”; these men saw their journey as a “pilgrimage,” and thus became known as Pilgrims. This group, led by William Bradford, encountered a storm as they neared America and landed on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. Before landing they produced the Mayflower Compact (1620), a document that promised that their settlement would have a government answerable to the will of the governed. As in the case of Plymouth, the first year of settlement proved to be very difficult, and the settlers were forced to rely on help from the Native Americans. However, after the first year the Pilgrims had some amount of economic success; many of the diseases that ravaged the Virginia colony were absent in colder New England. By 1691 this group joined with the other major settlement in the region, the Massachusetts Ray colony.
The Massachusetts Bay colony was established in 1629 by the Puritans. This colony was established as a location of earth where the will of God could be truly manifested; the colony was established as a commonwealth and was based on the Calvinist view of man’s relation to God. By 1640 nearly 25,000 English people had migrated to Massachusetts Bay. Nearly half of these were fleeing bad economic times in England; the remainder were Puritans, who used the Bible as their religious and their legal guide.
In 1629 John Winthrop was elected governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, a position he held for 20 years. Winthrop envisioned the colony as a “city upon a hill,” away from the corrupting influences of England. Here, he felt, residents could freely live according to the precepts of God. Church, community, and political participation were all emphasized.
Massachusetts Bay did not have the devastating first several years experienced by other colonies. The colony came to be governed by a “General Court,” which was an assembly elected by Puritan males in good standing. Thus, in both Virginia and in Massachusetts representative government (albeit in a limited form) were established. Additional towns were chartered in the years following the initial arrival of the Puritans near Boston.
It should be noted that there were profound differences between the Virginia and Massachusetts Bay colonies. The slave labor of Virginia never existed in Massachusetts; while many families settled in Massachusetts, Virginia was mostly settled by single men. In Massachusetts religion and political participation went hand in hand, while in Virginia land ownership was a necessity for political participation.
Effects of Religious Dissent; Development in Massachusetts Ray was steady, but leaders continued to emphasize that the main purpose of the colony was to be a place where God would be served. Religious dissent was simply not tolerated, obviously alienating some within the colony. As a result, four new colonies were created. Roger Williams believed that the Puritans in Massachusetts were still too close to the ways of the Church of England, and he preached on the necessity of the total separation of church and state (this was obviously not practiced in Massachusetts Bay).
Williams was finally asked to leave Massachusetts, and he settled in Providence, Rhode Island. Thomas Hooker was another dissenter who was hounded out of the colony; he ended up settling near Hartford, Connecticut. Anne Hutchinson claimed to have received special revelations from God; as a result, she was invited to leave and founded Portsmouth near Narragansett Bay. Finally, John Davenport and other Puritans founded a colony in New Haven. In 1662 Hooker’s colony combined with Davenport’s to create the colony of Connecticut.
Maryland and the Carolinas
By 1640 the English kings began to create proprietary colonies, which were given to a single individual or groups of individuals and not to a stock company. Maryland was settled in 1632 by George Calvert and was designed as a refuge for English Catholics. North Carolina was very similar to Virginia, while planters in South Carolina used slaves from almost the very beginning. Plantation owners found both Native Americans and indentured servants to be good workers; their search for large numbers of workers inevitably made them turn to slavery as a possible solution.
The importation of slaves will become crucial to the economics of several southern colonics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is estimated that over 20 million Africans were brought to the Americas before slavery was outlawed. By the late 1600s laws had been made in several southern colonies regulating the institution of slavery.