In 1630, John Winthrop sailed to Massachusetts with a vision: a Puritan commonwealth that would be a moral example to the world. This episode covers the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the dissenters who were banished (Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson), and the darker chapters of Puritan rule. Students will see how Puritan ideas about government, education, and conscience left a lasting mark on American identity.

Key Takeaways

• About 700 colonists arrived with John Winthrop in 1630, seven times the number who had landed at Plymouth a decade earlier, making Massachusetts Bay a much larger enterprise from the start.

• Roger Williams was banished from Boston for arguing that the Puritans had no right to take land from native people and that non-believers shouldn't be forced to attend church. He founded Providence, which became Rhode Island, the first American colony to guarantee complete religious freedom.

• Anne Hutchinson held religious meetings in her Boston home that challenged Puritan clerical authority, and she was tried and banished for it.

• Harvard College and a tradition of universal education were among the most enduring Puritan legacies.

• The Salem witch trials of 1692, in which 19 people were hanged, were a product of the same Puritan culture, demonstrating how moral certainty can turn destructive.

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FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: What did John Winthrop mean by 'a city upon a hill'?

Winthrop borrowed the phrase from the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament. He meant that the Puritan colony would be a visible example of a godly society, observed and judged by the rest of the world. The phrase carried both inspiration and warning: if the colonists failed to live up to their ideals, they would bring shame not just on themselves but on the project of Puritan reform.

Q2: Why was Roger Williams banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony?

Williams argued that the Puritan colonists had no legal or moral right to take land from native peoples without purchasing or negotiating for it. He also believed that civil authorities had no business compelling people to attend church or observe religious practices. These positions challenged the foundations of Puritan governance, and the colonial leadership banished him in 1636. He went on to found Providence, which became the colony of Rhode Island.

Q3: What was Anne Hutchinson's main disagreement with Puritan leaders?

Hutchinson held that a person could receive divine grace directly, through personal faith, without the mediation of ordained ministers. She gathered followers in her home for religious discussions, which the Puritan leadership saw as a threat to clerical authority and church order. After a trial before the General Court of Massachusetts, she was banished. She eventually settled near what is now New York City, where she was killed during a conflict with native tribes in 1643.

Q4: What caused the Salem witch trials of 1692?

The trials began with accusations made by a group of young women in Salem Village who claimed they were being afflicted by witchcraft. The crisis grew quickly, fueled by community fear, social tensions, and a legal process that allowed spectral evidence (claims about what accusers saw in dreams or visions). By the time the trials ended, 19 people had been hanged and one pressed to death. Scholars attribute the outbreak to a combination of religious anxiety, local conflicts, and the breakdown of normal legal standards.

Q5: How did the Puritans influence American education?

The Puritans believed literacy was essential so that every person could read the Bible. This conviction led to early laws requiring towns to establish schools. Harvard College was founded in 1636, just six years after the arrival of the first large Puritan wave, primarily to train ministers. This emphasis on education left a durable legacy in New England and eventually shaped the broader American commitment to public schooling.

A City Upon a Hill

On the 8th of April 1630, the flagship Arbella set sail from England with 10 other ships destined for Massachusetts. On board was John Winthrop. In 1629, he had been elected governor of the colonists of Massachusetts Bay. As the Arbella journeyed to the new world, Winthrop wrote and delivered a sermon to his fellow Puritan travelers. 

He envisioned their new home in biblical terms, a promised land, and the inhabitants a chosen people. "We shall be as a city upon a hill," he proclaimed. "The eyes of all people are upon us." If true to God, he declared, even 10 of the settlers could defeat 10,000 of their enemies. If they failed to be true, however, he warned that prayers would turn to curses, the city would be lost, and their story a passing byword. 

In June of 1630, the Arbella landed in the new world. The Puritans' arrival was the dawn of a great experiment in social order. Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French observer of American society, wrote that the Puritans' devotion to God's laws brought them to liberty. They were, in other words, early Christian practitioners of American democracy. The Puritans were not the first English settlers in New England, as we cover in our episode on the Pilgrims and Plymouth.

Five Colonies Take Shape

About 700 colonists arrived in Massachusetts, seven times the number of Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth a decade earlier. Four more colonies soon developed, all dominated by Puritans. First, Massachusetts, which absorbed the original colony at Plymouth, developed around Massachusetts Bay. In 1636, Thomas Hooker founded Connecticut along the Connecticut River. Two years later came New Haven. 

The Reverend John Davenport and Governor Theophilus Eaton situated the colony along New Haven Harbor on the north end of Long Island Sound. That same year, 1638, Roger Williams was banished from Boston for his zealous positions. Among the most controversial: he insisted that the Puritans had no right to take land from the natives, nor ought non-believers in the colony be forced to attend church. Following his expulsion, Williams traveled north, sought a deed for a settlement from the Narragansett people, and called the settlement Providence. In 1643, Williams obtained a patent from England for a new colony. 

The colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations thus became the fifth Puritan colony in America. Anne Hutchinson, who preached from meetings held in her Boston home, was also banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She was openly critical of Puritan pastors and claimed she was under no obligation to follow their authority. In 1638, Hutchinson moved to Providence, then later settled in the Dutch colony of New Netherland. By then a widow, she and all but one of her children were killed in a Siwanoy tribal massacre near Split Rock in what we know today as the Bronx. Her daughter was taken captive. Other English colonies would soon take very different approaches to religious liberty, as we trace in our episode on Catholics and the Maryland colony.

Self-Government, Education, and Puritan Law

Religious experience was the center of Puritan social order. To be a member of a congregation, one had to not only confess belief but also profess a personal experience of God's divine grace. On the basis of faith and experience, each Puritan made a covenant to abide by the authority of the church and to serve society according to the laws of God. Puritan public law followed Puritan religious conviction. 

Law could be constraining, as with one prohibiting the celebration of Christmas. Even so, Puritan social order was at times remarkably democratic. Covenanted men elected the colonial governors and members of the legislative assembly. The Puritans' New England Primer was highly successful in fostering literacy among school children, boys and girls alike. If parents could not homeschool their own children, there were Dame schools, small private schools run by women from their homes. Founded in 1635, the Boston Latin School, largely the brainchild of Puritan pastor John Cotton, was the first public school established in America. 

Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, five were pupils at the Boston Latin School, including John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin. In 1636, the Massachusetts legislature voted to found Harvard, America's first college. Eight of the declaration signers graduated from Harvard, among them cousins John and Samuel Adams. In 1647, the Puritans in the Massachusetts colony passed a law mandating the establishment of schoolmasters and grammar schools. The law was called the Old Deluder Satan Act. Bible literacy, they believed, would arm young people against the devil's schemes. It was the first major step toward universal compulsory education in America.

Salem, King Philip's War, and a Lasting Legacy

In 1686, concerned by their independence from the crown, James II placed the Puritan colonies under an administrative union called the Dominion of New England, along with New York and New Jersey. As a result, the English monarch, not the Puritan voters, assumed control over appointing the governor of each colony. 

Property ownership, not covenantal relations in the church, became the new criterion for who had the right to vote. Leaders of the Puritan congregations grew alarmed by the unraveling of their social order. Nowhere was this more evident than in Salem. After idolatry, witchcraft was the second sin made illegal in the Massachusetts colonial code. Nineteen Puritans were tried, convicted, and hanged for witchcraft. For his refusal to be tried, Giles Corey was pressed with stones until he died. He was 81 years old. 

One of the judges in the trials, Samuel Sewall, would publicly repent of his role. In 1700, he published The Selling of Joseph, the first anti-slavery text in America. The most enduring legacies of the Puritans, however, are their contributions to American self-government, universal education, religious freedom, and the pioneering spirit required of a new life in a new world. That vision echoed forward. As John F. Kennedy began his presidency, he invoked the image of a city upon a hill. Years later, in his farewell address, Ronald Reagan invoked it again: "I've spoken of the Shining City all my political life... a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds, living in harmony and peace." For another distinctive colonial experiment, see our episode on William Penn's Holy Experiment in Pennsylvania.