Why where the puritans and the people from Jamestown presucuted and came to America and why where the reasoning
Executive summary
The Puritans who settled New England and the English settlers who founded Jamestown left for North America for different chief reasons: Puritans fled religious persecution and sought to build communities governed by their faith, while Jamestown colonists largely pursued commercial profit and imperial objectives tied to the Virginia Company [1] [2] [3]. Both movements were shaped by a mix of religion, economics, and English politics of the early 1600s rather than a single motive [1] [4].
1. Why the Puritans left England: religious conviction under pressure
Seventeenth‑century Puritans sought to “purify” the Church of England of what they saw as remaining Catholic elements and faced increasing hostility from royal and episcopal authorities, especially under King Charles I’s high Anglican policies and the dissolution of Parliament that curtailed Puritan influence, prompting a migration often called the Great Puritan Migration (1629–1640) [1] [5] [4]. Some Puritans were Separatists who had already fled to Leiden and later voyaged on the Mayflower to found Plymouth as a covenant community committed to self‑governance and strict religious discipline, while others were non‑separating Puritans who aimed to reform the church from within but still emigrated when reform became impossible [6] [2] [7].
2. Religious freedom was central, but not the only motive for Puritan migration
Primary sources and modern summaries agree religious persecution was the dominant impetus, yet economic and social factors also mattered: many migrants were middle‑class families seeking stability, land, and a communally ordered society that matched their moral vision, so “religious freedom” operated alongside pragmatic aims like landholding and community security [1] [7] [8]. Historians note the Puritan project mixed piety and social engineering—founding “plantations of religion” where civic and ecclesiastical life were intertwined—so migration served both conscience and community building [9] [7].
3. Jamestown’s primary drive: profit, imperial strategy, and survival
Jamestown was organized by the Virginia Company of London as a commercial venture to enrich investors and expand English power; settlers were recruited for economic reasons, including hopes for gold, trade, and later tobacco cultivation, rather than primarily for religious refuge [2] [3]. The settlement’s composition—single men, “gentlemen,” and laborers—reflected a profit‑seeking venture and produced different social dynamics and conflicts with Indigenous peoples than New England’s family‑centered Puritan towns [2] [3] [10].
4. Overlap and exceptions: religion in Virginia and internal diversity
Religion was not absent at Jamestown: some ministers and settlers held Puritan sympathies and caused “dissension,” and during mid‑century political shifts Puritans in Virginia briefly gained influence as imperial politics changed, showing the colonies were not monolithic and religious motives could surface even in commercial colonies [11]. Conversely, not all New England settlers were doctrinaire Puritans—Plymouth included “Strangers” and other non‑separatists—and the Puritan movement itself ranged from moderate reformers to militant separatists, a diversity often flattened in popular memory [2] [12].
5. Political context, hidden agendas, and how narratives are shaped
English political turmoil—Charles I’s policies, the dissolution of Parliament, and later civil war—heightened both persecution fears and opportunities for emigration, so migration narratives carry implicit political agendas: Puritan accounts emphasize conscience and covenant, while company charters stress investment and empire, and later historical retellings have sometimes conflated or sanitized these motives for national myths [4] [3] [9]. Reporting and popular narratives that treat “the colonists” as a single group obscure the competing economic, religious, and imperial interests that actually drove different settlements [10] [3].