The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop

A colony is an overseas territory controlled by another country. European monarchs claimed the right to award land in the Americas to European settlers, usually without regard to Indigenous American claims. In England, the monarch awarded charters assigning territory to companies. Winthrop’s colony in Massachusetts was one such colonial enterprise.

The freemen of Massachusetts demanded that the General Court include two representatives from each town in addition to the assistants (who represented the colony as a whole). These local representatives were called deputies.

Originally, a freeman was a shareholder in the Massachusetts Bay Company and so entitled to participate in the General Court and elect officers. Winthrop and others decided to extend the freeman status to male church members across the colony. They initially limited the right of these new freemen to electing officers, but later the freemen won the right to vote in an annual session of the General Court.

Magistrates was the term used most often for the officials in early modern England and New England. They could be executive, judicial, or legislative positions, or a mix of them.

Parliament is the representative portion of the government of England (similar to Congress in the United States). In the 1600s, only wealthy landowners and the nobility selected its members and it had limited authority under the king, although the king could not impose taxes without Parliament’s consent. Parliament and King Charles I fought against each other in the English Civil War over their respective powers and religious differences, but Winthrop tried to safeguard the colony’s independence instead of taking sides in the conflict.

Puritanism was a Calvinist movement within the Church of England that emphasized human depravity (i.e., people cannot do good without grace or save themselves) and God’s unfettered predestination of the elect and the damned. They sought more vigorous public enforcement of morals and the removal of bishops, rituals, and other aspects of Anglicanism that they believed remained too close to Catholic tradition. Winthrop and his colonists were Puritans.