CHAPTER 2 Beginnings of English America, 1607–1660
This chapter concentrates on the early history of the Chesapeake and New England colonies between 1607 and 1660. The chapter begins
by exploring the motives behind English colonization of the New World, then considers who was emigrating to North America and for
what reasons. Contact with the Indians and the subsequent transformation of Indian life are examined. The settlement in the Chesapeake
region, where tobacco emerged as the economic engine and most early colonists cultivated that crop as indentured servants, is compared
with the more family- and spiritually oriented and more economically diverse New England settlements. There is irony in the story of
New England’s economic development: although Puritanism’s religion–based work ethic partially encouraged the region’s economic
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Jamestown
II. England and the New World
A. Unifying the English Nation
B. England and Ireland
C. England and North America
1. The English crown issued charters for individuals such as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh to colonize
America at their own expense, but both failed.
D. Spreading Protestantism
1. Anti-Catholicism had become deeply ingrained in English popular culture.
3. National glory, profit, and a missionary zeal motivated the English crown to settle America with the goal of rivaling Spain
and France.
E. The Social Crisis
F. Masterless Men
1. Thomas Moore’s Utopia (1516) describes a place where settlers could go to escape the economic inequalities of Europe—
a place such as many could imagine America to be.
III. The Coming of the English
A. English Emigrants
2. Between 1607 and 1700, a little over half a million people left England.
B. Indentured Servants
C. Land and Liberty
1. Land was the basis of liberty, including voting rights in most colonies.
3. Land was also a source of wealth and power for colonial officials.
D. Englishmen and Indians
2. The English did emphasize converting Indians like the Spanish and French did.
4. The seventeenth century was marked by recurrent warfare between colonists and Indians.
E. Transformation of Indian Life
1. English goods were eagerly integrated into Indian life.
2. Over time, those European goods changed Indian farming, hunting, and cooking practices.
F. Changes in the Land
2. Settlers fenced in more land and introduced more crops and livestock, transforming the natural environment.
IV. Settling the Chesapeake
A. The Jamestown Colony
1. Settlement and survival were questionable in the colony’s early history because of high death rates, frequent changes in
leadership, inadequate supplies from England, and placing gold before farming.
3. John Smith’s tough leadership held the early colony together.
B. From Company to Society
1. New policies were adopted in 1618 so that the colony could survive.
2. The first blacks arrived in 1619, the first hint of slavery in the colony.
C. Powhatan and Pocahontas
1. Powhatan, the leader of thirty tribes near Jamestown, eagerly traded with the English.
2. English-Indian relations were mostly peaceful early on.
D. The Uprising of 1622
1. Once the English decided on a permanent colony instead of merely a trading post, conflict was inevitable.
2. The English forced the Indians to recognize their subordination to the government at Jamestown and moved them onto
reservations.
E. A Tobacco Colony
1. Tobacco was Virginia’s “gold,” and its production reached 30 million pounds by the 1680s.
F. Women and the Family
1. Virginia society lacked a stable family life.
G. The Maryland Experiment
1. As in Virginia, tobacco came to dominate the economy, and tobacco planters the society.
3. Calvert imagined Maryland as a feudal domain.
H. Religion in Maryland
2. Most appointed officials were initially Catholic, but Protestants always outnumbered Catholics in the colony.
3. Although it had a high death rate, Maryland offered servants greater opportunity for land ownership than Virginia.
V. The New England Way
A. The Rise of Puritanism
2. Puritans considered religious belief a complex and demanding matter, urging believers to seek the truth by reading the
Bible and listening to sermons.
B. Moral Liberty
1. Many Puritans immigrated to the New World in hopes of establishing a Bible Commonwealth that would eventually
influence England.
3. Puritans were governed by a “moral liberty,” “a liberty to that only which is good,” which was compatible with severe
restraints on speech, religion, and personal behavior.
C. The Pilgrims at Plymouth
1. Pilgrims sailed in 1620 to Cape Cod aboard the Mayflower.
a. Before going ashore, the adult men signed the Mayflower Compact, the first written frame of government in what is
2. Squanto provided much valuable help to the Pilgrims, and the first Thanksgiving in America was celebrated in 1621.
D. The Great Migration
2. New England settlement was very different from settlement in the Chesapeake colonies.
a. New England had a more equal balance of men and women.
E. The Puritan Family
1. Puritans reproduced the family structure of England with men as the head of the household.
3. Puritans believed that a woman achieved genuine freedom by fulfilling her prescribed social role and embracing
subjection to her husband’s authority.
F. Government and Society in Massachusetts
1. Massachusetts was organized into self-governing towns.
2. The freemen of Massachusetts elected their governor.
3. Church government was decentralized.
G. Church and State in Puritan Massachusetts
2. The Body of Liberties affirmed the rights of free speech and assembly and equal protection for all.
4. Puritans, like other faiths, believed that religious uniformity was essential to social order.
5. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature)
a. John Winthrop, “Speech to the Massachusetts General Court” (1645)
VI. New Englanders Divided
A. Roger Williams
1. A young minister, Williams preached that any citizen ought to be free to practice whatever form of religion he chose.
2. Williams believed that it was essential to separate church and state.
B. Rhode Island and Connecticut
1. Banished from Massachusetts in 1636, Williams established Rhode Island.
3. Other spin-offs from Massachusetts included New Haven and Hartford, which joined to become the colony of
Connecticut in 1662.
C. The Trial of Anne Hutchinson
1. Hutchinson was a well-educated, articulate woman who charged that nearly all the ministers in Massachusetts were guilty of
faulty preaching.
2. Puritans in Massachusetts found the idea of religious pluralism troubling, and Hutchinson was placed on trial in 1637 for
sedition.
3. As seen with Williams and Hutchinson, Puritan New England was a place of religious intolerance.
4. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature)
D. Puritans and Indians
1. Colonial leaders had differing opinions about the English right to claim Indian land.
2. To New England’s leaders, the Indians represented both savagery and temptation.
E. The Pequot War
2. Colonists warred against the Pequots in 1637, massacring 500 at the Indian village of Mystic and exterminating the tribe
or selling it into slavery.
3. Removal of the Pequot opened the Connecticut River Valley to rapid white settlement.
F. The New England Economy
1. Most migrants were textile craftsmen and farmers.
G. The Merchant Elite
1. Per capita wealth was more equally distributed in New England than in the Chesapeake.
H. The Half-Way Covenant
2. The question arose: Could the children of this second generation be baptized?
3. In 1662, the Half-Way Covenant answered with a compromise that allowed the grandchildren of the Great Migration
generation to be baptized and to be granted a kind of halfway membership in the church.
4. As church membership stagnated, ministers castigated the people for various sins.
VII. Religion, Politics, and Freedom
A. The Rights of Englishmen
2. This tradition rested on the Magna Carta, which was signed by King John in 1215.
a. It identified a series of liberties that barons found to be the most beneficial.
3. The Magna Carta over time came to embody the idea of English freedom.
5. Who Is an American? (primary source document feature)
B. The English Civil War
1. Unrest existed between Parliament and the Stuart monarchy, leading to the beheading of Charles I.
3. The English Civil War of the 1640s illuminated debates about liberty and what it meant to be a freeborn Englishman.
C. England’s Debate over Freedom
2. The Levellers called for an even greater expansion of liberty, moving away from a definition based on social class.
D. The Civil War and English America
2. Ironically, Puritan leaders were uncomfortable with the religious toleration for Protestants gaining favor in England, as it
was Parliament that granted Williams his charter for Rhode Island.
E. The Crisis in Maryland
1. Virginia sided with Charles I, but in Maryland, crisis erupted into civil war.
F. Cromwell and the Empire
2. The next century was a time of crisis and consolidation.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• What motivated England to colonize the New World? How similar to or different from Spain’s motives, discussed in Chapter 1,
were England’s?
• Why was the Jamestown Colony unstable and its survival questionable? Who settled there? What were their goals? How did they
interact with the Indians?
• Explain the religious attitudes of settlers in Maryland. How did those compare to the religious attitudes in Massachusetts and in
Rhode Island? How was religious freedom defined in each of these colonies? How do these attitudes compare to American atti-
tudes today?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
American Beginnings
Chesapeake Colonies
Jamestown
The site has the latest information on archaeological digs and the recent scientific proof (“Jane’s Story”) of cannibalism.
This site showcases the Secrets of the Dead documentary episode, “Jamestown’s Dark Winter” (54 min., 2015).
Pocahontas
This Web page is part of the Historic Jamestowne website.
Mayflower History
Plymouth Colony
Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts offers living history, online activities, and useful tours. This is a Smithsonian Institution Affiliations program.
1629 Charter of Massachusetts Bay
The Yale School of Law Avalon Project has many historic legal documents, including the charter of Massachusetts Bay.
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Bragdon, Kathleen J. The Columbia Guide to the American Indians of the Northeast. Columbia Guides to American Indian History and Culture
Series. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Gaskill, Malcolm. Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans. New York: Basic Books, 2014.
Horn, James. A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. New York: Basic Books, 2010.
Irwin, Raymond. “Cast Out from the ‘City upon a Hill’: Antinomianism Exiles in Rhode Island, 1638–1650.” Rhode Island History 52, no. 1 (1994):
2–19.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. The Jamestown Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
227–58.
Russell, Conrad. The Causes of the English Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Saxton, Martha. “Bearing the Burden? Puritan Wives.” History Today (1994): 28–33.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Popular Culture and Jamestown
Have students read the Jamestown section of Chapter 2. Present lecture material on the founding of Jamestown and the ensuing struggle of the colony.
Discussion Activities:
1. How do Smith and Pocahontas meet and interact in each film? Discuss their relationship.
3. How does each film portray the Powhatans’ relationship with nature?
4. Compare the culture of the Indians and English in both films. Who is surviving “better”?
Virtual Jamestown
http://www.virtualjamestown.org/
2. The Trial of Anne Hutchinson
Have students conduct a mock trial of Anne Hutchinson. Ask them to prepare questions for Hutchinson ahead of time from the selection provided by