" The Puritans found meaning in affliction, and they did not yet know why God was showing them disfavor through smallpox.

The Puritans ( whose phantasticall zeale I mislike ) though they differ in Ceremonies and accidentes, yet they agree with us in substance of religion, and I thinke all or the moste parte of them love his Majestie, and the presente state, and I hope will yield to conformitie.

The latter poem was unpublished, yet provides a lengthy commentary on the fears of Puritans that they would be stricken by God for their sin, and persecuted by House of Stuart.

Although this kind of wholesale objection came at first from some men who were not technically Puritans, still, once the Puritans gained power, they climaxed the affair by passing the infamous ordinance of 1642 which decreed that all `` public stage-plays shall cease and be forborne ''.

The King believed that Puritans ( or Dissenters ) encouraged by five vociferous members of the House of Commons, John Pym, John Hampden, Denzil Holles, Sir Arthur Haselrig and William Strode along with Viscount Mandeville ( the future Earl of Manchester ) who sat in the House of Lords, had encouraged the Scots to invade England in the recent Bishops ' Wars and that they were intent on turning the London mob against him.

In alliance with the growing commercial world, the parliamentary opposition to the royal prerogative, and in the late 1630s with the Scottish Presbyterians with whom they had much in common, the Puritans became a major political force in England and came to power as a result of the First English Civil War ( 1642 – 46 ).

Puritans by definition felt that the English Reformation had not gone deep enough, and that the Church of England was tolerant of practices which they associated with the Catholic Church.

Peter Gay writes of the Puritans ' standard reputation for " dour prudery " as a " misreading that went unquestioned in the nineteenth century ", commenting how unpuritanical they were in favour of married sexuality, and in opposition to the Catholic view of virginity, citing Edward Taylor and John Cotton.

Puritans did not celebrate traditional holidays e. g. Christmas which they believed to be in violation of the regulative principles.

Waves of repression led to the migration of about 20, 000 Puritans to New England between 1629 and 1642, where they founded multiple colonies.

Finally, the Puritans were devoted to what they regarded as building Christ ’ s Church in a strange and dangerous wilderness, and had little interest in chronicling the history and ways of peoples they regarded as heathen savages.

5: 14 ; Titus 2: 11 ; 1 John 2: 2 ) mean what they say, while Puritans such as John Owen and other Calvinists have understood that the " all " means only all of those previously elected to be saved.

Eventually the parliamentarians won the Civil War and established the Commonwealth of England, in which alehouses were shut on Sundays and theatres and race meetings abandoned: the Puritans visited the then Church of England houses of worship and destroyed anything they thought to be idolatrous.

There were a number of vocal Puritans in the House of Commons ( although the extent to which they influenced the Commons is disputed, Sir John Neale identified a unified bloc of 43 MPs, whereas revisionists have suggested that this is an exaggeration ) who they began asking for more rights for the Puritans, but Elizabeth I was strong enough not to ignore their demands.

When the Puritans banned Christmas celebrations in the 17th century, they also passed specific legislation to outlaw such pies, calling them " Idolaterie in crust ".

When assurance of election was rigorously pressed as an experience to be sought, especially by the Puritans, this led to a legalism as rigid as the one Protestantism sought to reject, as men were eager to demonstrate that they were among the chosen by the conspicuous works-righteousness of their lives.

To allow Puritans freedom of worship, they repealed the Elizabethan requirement of compulsory attendance at an Anglican Church.

It is not that he was a theoretical Presbyterian, but the bishops had been in his days so fully engaged in the imposition of ceremonies regarded by the Puritans as verging on Papacy that it was difficult, if not impossible, to dissociate them from the cause in which they were embarked.

The life of the Ferrar household was much criticised by Puritans, and they were denounced as Arminians, and their life attacked as a ' Protestant Nunnery '.

Protestant reformers such as the Puritans saw wreaths and the holidays they were associated with, such as May Day, as being pagan corrupting influences that destroyed healthy Christian morality.

Records show that, over time, Sowheag was forced to sell off most of the Mattabesett property to the local colonists ; by 1676 the Puritans owned all but of the former Mattabesett territory.

He was unpopular with the Puritans and was forced to resign his university offices in 1552, but was reappointed by Queen Mary I and was Dean of Windsor from 1553 to 1556.

Tocqueville believed that the Puritans established the principle of sovereignty of the people in the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut.

It was common enough for Puritans and other dissenters to disrupt church services, to accuse political leaders of being the anti-Christ, and to move the people toward violent schism, riots, and peculiar behaviour including attempts to set up miniature theocracies.

Several of the original Thirteen Colonies were established by settlers who wished to practice their own religion within a community of like-minded people: the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established by English Puritans ( Congregationalists ), Pennsylvania by British Quakers, Maryland by English Catholics, and Virginia by English Anglicans.

The Puritans were said to have designed the green large enough to hold the number of people who they believed would be spared in the Second Coming of Christ: 144, 000.

The “ Quinnipiac Trail of Heartaches ” refers to the numerous relocations of the Quinnipiac people who became refugees as a result of the encroachment, religious conversion, and ethnic cleansing by the Puritans.

The veil can be a definite symbol of the ways and practices Puritans, as well as people today, use to mislead others of the sins they have committed while completely and truly facing themselves.

While Puritans expected mothers to care for their young children tenderly, a mother who doted could be accused of failing to keep God present.

Law, too, was often harsh among the Puritans ; offenses legally punishable by death in the Connecticut colonies included, " witchcraft, blasphemy, cursing or smiting of parents, and incorrigible stubbornness of children.

A follower of the Puritans from an early age, he emigrated to Plymouth Colony with his wife, children, and sister in July 1623 aboard the Anne.

Many of the Puritans ' names are qualities such as " Mercy ", " Thankful ", and " Grace ", because the parents wanted these character traits to influence their children.

Ben Franklin's mother, Abiah Folger, was born into a Puritan family among those that fled to Massachusetts to establish a purified Congregationalist Christianity in New England, when King Charles I of England began persecuting Puritans.

This was in effect a series of two conferences: ( i ) between James and the Bishops ; ( ii ) between James and the Puritans on the following day.

The business of making the changes was then entrusted to a small committee of bishops and the Privy Council and, apart from tidying up details, this committee introduced into Morning and Evening Prayer a prayer for the Royal Family ; added several thanksgivings to the Occasional Prayers at the end of the Litany ; altered the rubrics of Private Baptism limiting it to the minister of the parish, or some other lawful minister, but still allowing it in private houses ( the Puritans had wanted it only in the church ); and added to the Catechism the section on the sacraments.

The Parliamentary government had its way but it became clear that the division was not between Catholics and Protestants, but between Puritans and those who valued the Elizabethan settlement.

Many Puritans believed that creating a wound and inserting poison was doing violence and therefore was antithetical to the healing art.

In North America, the English Puritans who migrated from 1620 established colonies in New England whose governance was democratic and which contributed to the democratic development of the United States.

Much of Elizabeth's success was in balancing the interests of the Puritans and Catholics.

The Puritans of New England, for example, maintained strong opposition to the holiday and it was not until the mass Irish and Scottish immigration during the 19th century that the holiday was introduced to the continent in earnest.

Along with her work as a writer of prose fiction, Russ was also a playwright, essayist, and author of nonfiction works, generally literary criticism and feminist theory, including the essay collection Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts ; How to Suppress Women's Writing ; and the book-length study of modern feminism, What Are We Fighting For ?.

In January 1604, King James VI of Scotland and I of England convened the Hampton Court Conference where a new English version was conceived in response to the perceived problems of the earlier translations as detected by the Puritans, a faction within the Church of England.

While its content was orthodox, many Puritans would have rejected portions of it.

The Church of England of the Interregnum was run on presbyterian lines, but never became a national presbyterian church such as existed in Scotland, and England was not the theocratic state which leading Puritans had called for as " godly rule ".

With only minor changes, the Church of England was restored to its pre-Civil War constitution under the Act of Uniformity 1662, and the Puritans found themselves sidelined.

Puritans who felt that the Reformation of the Church of England was not to their satisfaction but who remained within the Church of England advocating further reforms are known as non-separating Puritans.

Those who felt that the Church of England was so corrupt that true Christians should separate from it altogether are known as separating Puritans or simply as Separatists.

The word " Puritan " is applied unevenly to a number of Protestant churches ( and religious groups within the Anglican Church ) from the later 16th century onwards, and Puritans did not originally use the term for themselves, considering that it was a term of abuse that first surfaced in the 1560s.

The national context ( England and Wales, plus the kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland ) frames the definition of Puritans, but was not a self-identification for those Protestants who saw the progress of the Thirty Years ' War from 1620 as directly bearing on their denomination, and as a continuation of the religious wars of the previous century, carried on by the English Civil Wars.

Puritans were politically important in England, but it is debated whether the movement was in any way a party with policies and leaders before the early 1640s ; and while Puritanism in New England was important culturally for a group of colonial pioneers in America, there have been many studies trying to pin down exactly what the identifiable cultural component was.