This led to the later label of Puritanism a label which is often misinterpreted as to represent the “moral virtue” of its participants. John CalvinĪmongst those returning, were Protestant clergy, whose next task was to purify the Anglican Church once more from its Catholic constraints. It was for their own good, you understand – she was doing the nation a favour after all, bringing them back to the true faith, as was her duty. Those who had fled under Mary’s rule, were finally able to return from their exile because let’s face it, whilst remaining a staunch Catholic, Mary was still very much her father’s daughter, and wasn’t averse to lighting a few fires under prominent Protestants. Provided the followers of other faiths went about it quietly, and didn’t use it as a reason to try and dislodge her from her long-awaited place on the throne of England, she was happy to turn a blind eye. Then she passed Acts of Tolerance, allowing the peaceful worship of other faiths without (much) prejudice. Particularly following the upheaval of the Church by her father, and the following embellishments under their brother’s rule, led by reformers within his close circle.įirstly, Elizabeth reintroduced Protestantism, the Anglican Church, back into the lead role, having been brought up as such herself. Her rule of five years wasn’t long, but it was enough to create a fair amount of chaos as far as the Church was concerned. In late 16th Century England, Queen Elizabeth, keen to foster a model of religious harmony, had made a few tweaks to the religious mess she had been handed when big sister Mary passed away. And they weren’t Puritans in the truest sense of the word either, for the most part. The Pilgrims were in fact for the large part religious dissenters or separatists, to the recently established Church of England. OK a few of them might have been, but not as popular legend would have you believe, in the same way that Jews for example were persecuted. Who coined the term some years later to describe as Pilgrims, those Separatists returning to England from Leiden, as the first stage of their subsequent journey to New England, but the term wasn’t actually commonly used in association with the Mayflower voyage until two centuries later.įinally, lets annihilate the idea that they were victims of religious persecution. It was one of the leaders of the Dutch-settled contingency in Bit naughty methinks, seeing as they weren’t technically going on a “Pilgrimage”, more than they were moving home. It is only in recent years that a second definition has appeared in dictionaries, that of the Pilgrim to denote one of the “Pilgrim Fathers”. In the contemporary context, the word “Pilgrim” denoted somebody who undertook a journey to a sacred place of religious spiritualism or faith, such as those who went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, or journeyed to a specific shrine or Church – the Shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury was a popular choice in earlier times as an example. The initial Mayflower plan had been an extension of that colony to the North of Jamestown, however through fair means or foul, they landed much further north in the area of Cape Cod, in what is now Provincetown Harbour. Some conveniently overlook that America had already been successfully colonised in and around Virginia for a good fifteen years before they arrived. OK, lets unpick this bit of history and see what happens.įirstly, we have to remember that the Pilgrim Fathers weren’t the first settlers in the new found lands of America. So we all know the story… bunch of Puritans, bit of religious persecution and New England was born. Gallery of famous 17th-century Puritan theologians: Thomas Gouge, William Bridge, Thomas Manton, John Flavel, Richard Sibbes, Stephen Charnock, William Bates, John Owen, John Howe and Richard Baxter
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