Chapter 2: Beginnings of English America, 1607–1660

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Imagine England in the early 1600s.

It's maybe not the picture you have in your head, not this global empire.

It's actually a nation kind of wrestling with itself.

Right.

Lots of internal strife, religious conflict, economic problems, poverty.

I mean, it is a nation really on edge.

And then across the Atlantic, this huge experiment starts.

New societies being built.

But wow, talk about struggle and paradox, too.

Absolutely.

A very messy beginning.

Welcome to the deep dive.

Today, we're getting into the beginnings of English America, focusing on that period between, say, 1607 and 1660.

We're using Eric Foner's Give Me Liberty as our roadmap here.

Exploring those foundational years, we'll look at how different the Chesapeake colonies were from New England.

And this really core issue, how the idea of freedom was already being shaped and frankly denied right from the start.

It's a crucial point.

So our goal today is to give you a clear picture of these decades.

We'll talk about why England even wanted colonies, what life was like for settlers and Native Americans, the challenges, the conflicts.

And how events back in England, like the Civil War, played out over here.

It's all connected.

Definitely a story where, you know, freedom for some meant unfreedom for others.

Okay, let's dive in.

First thing to really get is that England wasn't this unified powerhouse when it started looking west.

The 1500s.

Decades of religious turmoil.

Henry VIII breaking with Rome.

Oh, that kicked it all off, didn't it?

It really did.

And his successors, they swung back and forth.

Edward VI, then Marietta.

She brought back Catholicism, persecuted Protestants pretty harshly.

You can kind of see the determination in portraits of her.

Then Elizabeth the Sorceress restored the Anglican Church.

All this internal fighting.

It made early empire building really difficult.

So the chaos at home actually shaped why they eventually looked to America.

In large part, yes.

It wasn't just about land.

It was maybe about building societies that fit a certain religious ideal or escaping the economic mess.

And they'd already practiced some pretty brutal tactics closer to home, right?

Wow.

In Ireland.

Oh, absolutely.

England's conquest of Catholic Ireland was long violent.

We're talking military conquest, killing civilians, seizing land, settling Protestants, pushing the native Irish out.

It's well, it's a disturbing foreshadowing of what happened in America.

Well, Finer points out some English writers even compared the wild Irish to American Indians.

That's chilling.

It's like a blueprint.

It really was.

And these experiences definitely shaped how England approached expansion.

You know, those early attempts in North America, Sir Walter Raleigh at Roanoke Island.

The lost colony.

Right.

Everyone just vanished.

Exactly.

It showed that these ventures needed massive resources, way more than just one person could fund.

Colonization was risky, expensive.

They learned that the hard way.

But the ambition was still there.

I'm thinking of that painting, the Armada Portrait of Queen Elizabeth the First from 1588.

Oh, yeah, that's a powerful image.

Her hands on a globe right over North America.

The English Navy's in the background.

They just defeated the Spanish Armada.

It screams national glory, ambition, eyes on the new world.

It's a real statement.

And this vision gets spelled out right by Richard Hacklitt.

Yes, Hacklitt in 1584, his discourse concerning Western planting.

It's basically the mission statement.

He gives what?

Twenty three reasons for colonization.

Three.

Yeah.

And it's this mix of national pride, profit and crucially religion hit Spain, rescue the new world from Catholicism, which they saw as tyranny, and make England which through trade, not just hunting for gold like the Spanish.

But for the average person, was it really about Queen and country and fighting Spain or something more basic?

For most people, probably not.

It was much more about escape.

England had a serious social crisis.

The population boomed, but opportunities didn't keep up.

The enclosure movement.

Right.

Landlords fencing off common lands, kicking small farmers out.

Suddenly you have thousands of landless people, masterless men, as one Puritan leader called them, drifting into cities, wandering the roads.

England was, quote, weary of her inhabitants.

So America becomes the safety valve, the land of opportunity.

That's exactly how it was sold.

A way out of poverty, a chance to break free from rigid hierarchies.

You know, John Smith, the Jamestown guy, he put it bluntly.

In America,

every man may be the master and owner of his own labor and land.

That's a powerful promise.

Economic independence, owning land.

That's the dream.

That was the main lore.

Absolutely a second chance, even for criminals sometimes.

You see it in the promotional images too, like those engravings by Theodore de Bry showing colonists hunting, fishing.

It emphasizes abundance, a fresh start.

Okay.

So who actually went?

Who took this leap?

Huge numbers.

Between 1607 and 1700, maybe half a million English people left home, more than from any other European country at the time.

Half a million.

Where did they mostly go?

Well, a lot went to Ireland, actually, and the West Indies became a huge destination.

But for North America, the Chesapeake, Virginia, and Maryland drew about 120 ,000.

Mostly young, single men.

In New England.

Different picture there.

About 21 ,000 mainly families, especially before 1640.

And yeah, many of these people, Chesapeake or New England, were from the lower end of English society.

And a lot of them didn't even pay their own way, right?

Indentured servitude.

Exactly.

Almost two thirds of English settlers came as indentured servants.

They basically traded voluntarily several years of their freedom, maybe five to seven years for the cost of the voyage.

So like slaves, they could be bought and sold.

Punished.

Yes.

In those ways, their status wasn't that different during their term.

Their labor was property, but crucially, they expected to be free eventually.

And they were supposed to get freedom dues, maybe tools, clothing, sometimes even land.

But did many actually make it to freedom?

That's the tragic part.

Death rates, especially in the Chesapeake, were incredibly high.

Many didn't survive their terms.

And, you know, people wanted freedom.

Runaways were a big problem.

As one observer put it, they had a fondness for freedom.

It's striking how this system, trading freedom for a chance, kind of normalized buying and selling people's labor.

It really did.

It created this mindset where human labor was a commodity,

and that unfortunately paved the way for accepting chattel slavery later on.

A terrible consequence.

And this idea of land.

It was everything to English settlers, wasn't it?

Land meant liberty.

Absolutely.

Owning land meant you controlled your own labor, you were economically independent, and usually it meant you could vote.

So this abundance of land in America, seemingly free land.

Seemingly.

Right.

Seemingly free.

It was a massive draw.

But that same abundance created a huge problem.

Not enough workers.

A chronic labor shortage.

Which, down the road, pushed them towards importing enslaved Africans.

And what did this mean for the people already living on that land?

The Native Americans?

Profound disruption.

Unlike, say, the Spanish who sometimes intermarried or incorporated Native labor, the English mostly aimed to displace Native Americans, to take their land and settle it themselves.

Did they just take it?

Or did they buy it?

They often claimed Indians didn't have a real claim to the land because they didn't fence it and farm it like Europeans.

But in practice, most land was acquired through purchase, though often these were treaties forced on tribes after military defeats or under duress.

So contact wasn't just about land conflict.

How else did things change for Indian societies?

Dramatically.

European goods, metal tools, guns were adopted quickly, they changed daily life, hunting, warfare.

But this also pulled Native Americans into the wider Atlantic economy.

Men spent more time hunting furs, which led to more conflict between tribes over territory.

And the environmental impact.

Significant forests were cut down for timber.

Livestock introduced by the English trampled Native crops.

And then the biggest catastrophe.

Disease.

Smallpox.

Measles.

Epidemics.

Wiped out huge percentages of the Native American population, sometimes before settlers even arrived in large numbers.

It just devastated their communities and their ability to resist.

Let's zoom in on the Chesapeake.

Jamestown, 1607, rough start.

Unbelievably rough.

Sponsored by the Virginia Company, a business venture, remember not the crown directly.

The first group, all men, hoping to find gold, not planning to farm, disease, starvation.

The starving time winter of 1609, 1610 was horrific.

Only about 65 survived out of hundreds.

So how did they even survive?

Strong leadership initially.

John Smith imposed almost military discipline.

His role was harsh.

He that will not work, shall not eat.

Basically work or starve.

It was brutal, but probably necessary right then.

But the company had to change strategy.

No gold, people dying.

Right.

Gold was a pipe dream.

By 1618, they needed settlers.

So the head right system,

50 acres if you paid your own way or paid for someone else.

Big incentive.

And introduced some form of self -government too.

Yes.

The House of Burgesses in 1619, the first elected assembly in colonial America, a major step.

And that same year, 1619, a Dutch ship arrived with about 20 Africans, a really ominous turning point.

And what about the local Powhatan Confederacy?

There were thousands of Native Americans there.

Around 15 ,000 to 25 ,000, led by the paramount chief, Juan Sonococ, who the English called Parhatan.

Early on, there was trade, that famous story of Pocahontas saving John Smith.

Foner suggests it was likely an elaborate ceremony by Powhatan to show his power, maybe adopt Smith into his realm.

Pocahontas later married an Englishman, John Rolfe, became a symbol.

Yeah.

A symbol of Anglo -Indian harmony promoted by the Virginia Company.

She went to England, was presented at court, but sadly died there in 1617.

The engravings we have, Powhatan and Pocahontas, give us these sort of stylized glimpses of them.

But the harmony didn't last as the English expanded.

Conflict was inevitable.

In 1622, Powhatan's successor, Opecankano, led a surprise attack, killed about a quarter of Virginia settlers in a single day.

Devastating.

How did the colonists respond?

With overwhelming force, massacres, destruction of villages.

They basically declared that the Indians, through this uprising, had forfeited any claim to the land.

It was a brutal shift.

A final rebellion in 1644 led to Opecankano's capture and murder, and the surviving Indians were forced onto reservations.

And this turmoil led to the Crown taking over.

Yes.

The Virginia Company basically went bankrupt.

Its charter was revoked in 1624.

Virginia became the first royal colony directly under the King's control.

Though, in practice, the local planter elite held most of the power.

And that elite got rich how?

What finally worked?

Tobacco.

John Rolfe Pocahontas's husband introduced a West Indian strain that grew well in Virginia.

King James actually wrote a pamphlet denouncing smoking as unhealthy.

He was ahead of his time there.

He really was.

But it didn't matter.

Europeans loved it.

Demand just exploded.

Tobacco became Virginia's gold.

It shaped everything.

Settlement patterns, society, the relentless need for land and labor.

You even see early ads showing barrels of tobacco, sometimes hinting at the slave labor to come.

Who was doing the work initially?

Overwhelmingly indentured servants.

For most of the 1600s, they made up about three quarters of the immigrants to the Chesapeake.

So Virginia society develops this hierarchy.

Definitely.

You had the wealthy gentry, the big planters at the top, then smaller farmers, many of whom started as servants and worked their way up to owning some land.

And then at the bottom, landless laborers and servants.

What about women?

You said mostly men came over.

Huge imbalance.

Men outnumbered women, maybe four or five to one.

Most women arrived as indentured servants, so they couldn't marry until their term was up.

Plus, the high death rate meant families were unstable.

Lots of single men, widows, orphans.

Did women have any rights, property rights?

English common law limited married women's rights significantly.

The husband controlled the family property, but widows were entitled to dower rights, usually a portion of the husband's property for life.

And the unique conditions, the high mortality, sometimes allowed single women or widows, theme soul, to manage estates.

Margaret Brent in Maryland is a famous example.

She ran plantations, acted as a lawyer.

Pretty remarkable for the time.

Speaking of Maryland, the second Chesapeake colony founded 1632, different motivations there.

A bit different, yes.

It was a proprietary colony granted to Sicilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore.

He envisioned it as a refuge for English Catholics who faced persecution back home.

Did that work out, Catholics and Protestants living together?

Well, Calvert appointed Catholics to key positions, but Protestants were always the majority of settlers.

And yes, there was conflict.

Like Virginia, tobacco was king, death rates were high, opportunity for landless men probably diminished over time, though initially Maryland's freedom dues often included 50 acres, which was better than Virginia.

So religious tension led to problems.

Big time.

Maryland had its own civil war in the 1640s, the plundering time, fueled by religious and political divisions mirroring the English civil war.

How did they deal with that?

To try and restore order, Maryland adopted the Act Concerning Religion in 1649, often called the Maryland Toleration Act.

Toleration in the 1600s.

A qualified toleration, yes.

It guaranteed free exercise of religion for all Christians, a huge step for its time, even if it didn't include non -Christians.

It was a pragmatic move to stabilize the colony.

If you look at a map of Chesapeake Settlement around 1650, you see how spread out everyone was along the rivers driven by tobacco, a very different pattern from what we'll see in New England.

Okay, let's shift north then.

New England, a completely different vibe, right?

The New England way,

driven by religion.

Absolutely.

At its heart was Puritanism.

These were English Protestants who felt the Anglican Church, the Church of England, hadn't gone far enough in purging Catholic elements, the ceremonies, the priests, vestments, the bishops.

They wanted a purer church.

Exactly.

Many were Congregationalists, meaning they believed each local church congregation should be independent, choosing its own minister.

What were their core beliefs?

Deep emphasis on the Bible.

Sermons were central arrests.

Foner notes, the average Puritan might hear 7 ,000 sermons in their lifetimes.

7 ,000.

Incredible focus.

They followed John Calvin's ideas predestination, the world divided into the elect, saved, and the damned,

living a good moral life, working hard, achieving economic success.

These could be seen as signs, not guarantees, but signs of being among the elect.

And they saw England as corrupt,

beyond saving.

Many did, especially under King Charles I.

They felt England was going backwards, becoming too Catholic, too hierarchical.

So they thought liberty, but their definition of liberty was specific.

The freedom to worship and govern themselves, according to their of the Bible, in a truly Christian way.

The city upon a hill idea.

Precisely.

Build a Bible commonwealth in New England that would be a model for the world, and maybe even inspire reform back in England.

John Winthrop, the first governor in Massachusetts Bay, had this specific idea about liberty, right?

Moral liberty.

Yes.

He made a key distinction.

Natural liberty, doing whatever you want.

He saw that as dangerous, leading to evil, and he associated it with Native Americans, even the Irish.

What they aimed for was moral liberty.

The freedom to do only what is good, just, and honest.

And that, crucially, meant accepting authority, both religious and governmental.

Liberty wasn't the freedom to challenge the truth, it was the liberty to live according to it.

You see that seriousness in his portraits.

So who were the first Puritans to actually make the move?

The Pilgrims.

Right.

The Pilgrims first.

They were separatists.

They thought the Church of England was so corrupt, they had to completely break away.

They'd gone to the Netherlands first, but worried their children were losing their English identity.

So they sailed on the Mayflower in 1620, aiming for Virginia.

Yeah, but they got blown off course, ended up way north at Cape Cod.

Before they landed, the men signed the Mayflower Compact.

It's famous as the first written framework for government in the U .S.

Basically, they agreed to obey just and equal laws enacted by representatives they chose themselves.

And they survived that first winter.

Barely.

Barely.

Yeah.

Half died.

But local Native Americans, already weakened by diseases caught from earlier European contact, helped them out.

Squanto famously acted as an interpreter.

This led to that first Thanksgiving feast in 1621 with the Wampanoag.

But the Pilgrims were just a small group.

Then came the main wave.

Yes.

The Great Migration, starting around 1629, lasting until about 1642.

This was much larger.

About 21 ,000 Puritans came to Massachusetts Bay.

They were different from the Chesapeake settlers.

Very different.

They came mostly in families, not single men.

They were older, generally more prosperous.

The sex ratio was much more balanced.

And critically, New England's climate was healthier than the Chesapeake's.

So population grew rapidly, doubling roughly every 27 years, mostly through natural increase.

There's that seal of the Massachusetts Bay colony.

Yeah.

An Indian saying, come over and help us, tells you a lot about how they saw themselves.

It really does.

This idea that they were coming to save or liberate the Native people, not exploit them.

A very different self -perception than in Virginia.

So what did Puritan society look like on the ground?

Family life?

Very family -centered, but strictly patriarchal.

Male authority in the household was absolute.

Women were seen as spiritual equals, could be full church members, but subordinate in marriage.

Women typically married younger than in England, maybe around 22, had lots of kids, average seven, and more of them survived infancy thanks to the healthier environment.

You see these large families depicted in later paintings, like the Savage family portrait.

And how was the colony organized?

Towns?

Yes.

Settlement was based around towns.

The colonial government would grant land to a group, who then laid out the townhouse lots in the center, fields surrounding it, common lands for grazing.

Each town had to have a congregational church.

And a 1647 law required towns to establish schools, mainly so kids could learn to read the Bible.

Education was key for them.

Harvard College.

Founded incredibly early, 1636, mostly to train ministers.

And the first printing press in English America set up in Cambridge in 1638.

Again, all about spreading the word, literacy, faith.

What about government?

Self -governing?

To an extent, the Massachusetts Bay Company was unique.

The shareholders actually brought the company charter with them to America.

This charter became the basis of government.

Free men, initially the shareholders, later defined as adult landowning, male church members elected the governor and deputies to the general court, their legislature.

So you had to be a church member to vote in colony elections.

Yes.

A full member.

One of the visible saints who had convincingly testified to their conversion experience.

Churches themselves were formed by voluntary agreement among members.

But political participation at the colony level was restricted.

It wasn't a democracy in our sense.

It was hierarchical?

Not everyone was equal?

Definitely not.

Prominent families got the best land, the best seats in church.

The body of liberties from 1641 spelled out rights, but they often varied based on your social standing.

And it explicitly allowed for slavery.

Religious uniformity was non -negotiable.

Ministers couldn't hold political office, but they were supported by taxes and the government enforced religious rules.

Blasphemy, even witchcraft, could carry the death penalty.

They absolutely did not believe in religious toleration.

That kind of strictness seems bound to create dissenters.

And it did almost immediately.

Roger Williams is the prime example.

A young minister arrived in 1631, brilliant, but challenging.

What did he challenge?

Pretty much everything.

He argued for complete separation of church and state government shouldn't interfere with religion at all.

He said they should withdraw completely from the Church of England.

And he advocated for religious liberty for everyone as long as they obeyed civil laws.

He even denied that the Puritans were God's specially chosen elect group.

Wow.

That wouldn't have gone over well.

Not at all.

He was banished in 1636.

He went south and founded Rhode Island.

And Rhode Island was different.

Completely different.

It became this beacon of religious freedom, no established church, no religious test for voting, at least not until later in the 18th century.

It became a haven for Baptists, Quakers, Jews, anyone unwelcome in Massachusetts.

Williams himself is often portrayed as this champion of tolerance.

Were there other offshoots from Massachusetts?

Yes.

Thomas Hooker led a group west in 1636, founded Hartford, which became the nucleus of Connecticut.

Significantly, in Connecticut, you didn't have to be a church member to vote and call in the elections, just a free man.

New Haven was founded in 1638 by Puritans, who actually wanted an even tighter connection between church and state than Massachusetts.

Eventually, Connecticut and New Haven merged.

You can see on maps from around 1640 how these settlements were spreading out from the initial Boston core.

And then there was Anne Hutchinson,

another major challenge.

Huge challenge.

She was a midwife, very intelligent, held religious meetings in her home in Boston, attracted a big following, including prominent men.

What was her argument?

She basically accused Boston's of faulty preaching.

She stressed God's grace, that salvation came purely through inner faith, and argued the ministers were putting too much emphasis on good works, almost like Catholics.

This was seen as antinomianism, putting your personal judgment or revelation above the authority of the church and the law.

How did the authorities react?

They saw her as a massive threat to their authority and social order.

She was put on trial for sedition in 1637.

She defended herself brilliantly, but then she claimed God spoke to her directly through immediate revelations.

That was the breaking point.

That sealed her fate.

For Puritans, God spoke through the Bible, not direct revelations anymore, claiming that was heresy.

She was banished, went to Rhode Island, then New York, where she and most of her family were later killed in an Indian war.

Her trial really highlights the tension between individual conscience, which Puritanism encouraged through Bible reading,

and the need for conformity and authority.

These internal religious fights were intense.

What about relations with the Indians in New England?

Were they as conflict -ridden as in Virginia?

They became so, yes.

There were different views among the English.

Roger Williams, again, was an exception.

He insisted they had to buy land fairly from the Indians, that the king had no right to grant land already occupied.

But Winthrop disagreed.

Winthrop and others believed uncultivated land could be taken.

But they also saw the practical benefit of purchasing it, as it implied Indian consent and submission to English authority.

Generally, Puritans saw Indians as representing that natural liberty.

They distrusted undisciplined, lacking proper religion.

They worried colonists might be tempted by that freer lifestyle.

Connecticut even passed a law in 1642 imposing harsh penalties for colonists who went to live with Indians.

Captivity narratives played a role here, too.

Yes, stories like Mary Rawlinson's The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, written after her capture during a later war, became very popular.

They reinforced the boundary between the godly Christian society and the savage wilderness, painting Indians in a very negative light.

Was there one conflict that really marked a turning point?

The Pequot War in 1637.

It was brutal.

It started after a fur trader was killed, blamed on the Pequots, a powerful tribe in southern New England.

Connecticut and Massachusetts soldiers, helped by Narragansett Indian allies who were rivals of the Pequots, attacked the Maine Pequot fortified village at Mystic.

They set it on fire and killed anyone trying to escape.

Over 500 people, men, women, children, were massacred in just a couple of hours.

A horrific slaughter.

Most remaining Pequots were hunted down, killed, or sold into slavery in the Caribbean.

The tribe was essentially wiped out.

There are contemporary engravings, like one by John Underhill, showing the attack.

It's graphic.

The sheer ferocity shocked even the English allies, but the Puritans saw it as God's judgment, proof the Pequots were unworthy and had to be removed.

Let's shift slightly to the New England economy.

If not tobacco, what drove it?

Well, remember, many Puritans were middle class.

They weren't just seeking religious freedom.

They wanted economic security, what they called competency, enough to be independent.

Religion and profit could jump together, as they said.

With no big cash crop.

No staple crop like tobacco or sugar.

The land and climate weren't suited for it.

So they turned to other things.

Fishing, especially cod, became huge.

Exporting timber from the forests.

Shipbuilding.

Trade within the colonies and with the West Indies.

Most farms relied on family labor.

There were relatively few indentured servants compared to the Chesapeake, and even fewer enslaved people in this early period.

Did this lead to a different kind of elite?

Not planters, but merchants.

Especially in port towns like Boston, a powerful merchant class emerged.

And this created some tension.

Early Puritan leaders tried to regulate economic activity for the common good things like wage and price controls.

But the merchants pushed back.

Yes.

Over time, merchants gained more influence in the government.

Massachusetts gradually repealed those economic controls.

You start seeing the wealth of this merchant class in portraits from later 1600s, like the one of Mrs.

Elizabeth Frick and her baby Mary.

Very expensive clothes, jewelry.

Did this growing wealth, this commercial spirit, worry some Puritans?

Did it conflict with the original religious mission?

It absolutely did.

By the 1660s, leaders were worried.

Church membership was declining among the generation born in New England.

They hadn't experienced the persecution in England that drove their parents.

The halfway covenant.

Was that a response?

Yes.

1662.

It was a compromise.

It allowed the grandchildren of the great migration generation to be baptized and become halfway church members, even if they couldn't demonstrate a personal conversion experience.

They couldn't take communion or vote in church affairs, but it was an attempt to keep families connected to the church.

Still,

membership stagnated.

And this anxiety led to?

Jeremiah's.

These were long sermons lamenting the spiritual decline of the colony, warning of God's disapproval because people were supposedly becoming too worldly, too focused on money.

It's ironic because this commercial success was, in a way, the result of the Puritan values of hard work and thrift.

Well, all this is happening in America.

The struggles in Jamestown, the Puritan experiment, the conflicts, what's going on back in England, things were far from stable there.

Extremely unstable.

We need to talk about the English Civil War.

But first, this idea of the rights of Englishmen.

It was developing.

Based on Magna Carta from 1215.

Yeah, Magna Carta was the foundation.

Originally, it was an agreement between King John and his barons, listing specific liberties for them.

But over centuries, it came to symbolize something bigger.

The idea that the king himself was subject to the law, not above it.

And that all freeborn Englishmen had certain fundamental rights, security of person and property, trial by jury, habeas corpus.

So English freedom was a big deal.

A very big deal.

And it became central to the conflict between Parliament and the Stuart Kings, James the Cerst, and especially Charles the Cerst in the first half of the 17th century.

What were they fighting about?

Power, mostly.

Taxes could the king impose them without Parliament's consent.

Religion Charles the First seemed too sympathetic to Catholicism from many Protestants.

Arbitrary imprisonment, it all boiled over into civil war in 1642.

And this wasn't just a small skirmish.

Not at all.

It was a massive conflict that tore England apart.

Parliament eventually won, led by Oliver Cromwell.

And then came something truly radical.

They put King Charles the Thirst on trial for treason and executed him in 1649.

Executed the king.

Unthinkable beforehand.

They abolished the monarchy and declared England a commonwealth, later a protectorate under Cromwell.

This whole period, 1640s and 50s, unleashed an incredible outpouring of debate about liberty, freedom, government.

What did it mean to be free?

Who should have power?

What kind of ideas came out of this?

Really revolutionary ones.

John Milton argued passionately for freedom of speech in the press.

You had groups like the Levellers, maybe the first real democratic political movement in history.

They wrote the Agreement of the People, proposing a written constitution, expanding the right to vote significantly.

They argued freedom was a birthright, not just for the privileged.

And you went even more radical.

Oh yeah, the Diggers.

They argued true freedom required economic equality, advocating for common ownership of land.

These ideas were circulating, being debated fiercely, like at the Putney Debates in 1647, where army members debated the Leveller Proposals.

Some of these radical ideas definitely influenced thinking in America, too.

How did the colonies react to the Civil War back home?

Did they take sides?

Mostly yes.

New England generally sided strongly with Parliament, being Puritans themselves.

Some even went back to fight.

Virginia, with its planter elite and royal governor, tended to lean towards the King initially.

Maryland had its own internal conflict, reflecting the English divisions.

Did the rise of Parliament in Cromwell change things for the colonies?

It did.

Puritan leaders in New England were initially pleased, but they got nervous when Parliament started talking more about religious toleration back in England.

That threatened their whole model of enforced uniformity.

And new religious groups emerged from the turmoil in England, like the Quakers.

Exactly.

The Quakers, or the Society of Friends, emerged during this period.

They believed God spoke directly to individuals through an inner light, challenging the need for ministers or scripture as the sole authority.

Very radical.

How were they received in Puritan Massachusetts?

Terribly.

Their beliefs were seen as heresy, a direct threat.

When Quakers started arriving in Massachusetts in the 1650s, they were brutally persecuted, whipped, fined, banished.

Several were even hanged on Boston Common.

Hanged.

For their beliefs.

Yes.

It was extreme even for the time.

Eventually, after the monarchy was restored in 1660 with Charles II, the new King ordered Massachusetts to stop executing Quakers and allow some measure of liberty of conscience for Protestants.

It was a sign that England's views on toleration were shifting, partly due to the chaos of the Civil War.

And Maryland's Toleration Act came out of its Civil War too.

Right.

The plundering time forced them to find a way to coexist, leading to that 1649 act guaranteeing freedom for all Christians.

It was a response to instability.

Cromwell himself, how did he view the colonies?

He was very focused on expanding England's power overseas.

Aggressive colonial expansion, promoting Protestantism, building commercial strength.

He took control of Ireland, much more forcefully, seized Jamaica from Spain.

He saw the colonies as part of England's growing imperial strength.

So looking back at this whole period, 1607 to around 1660, what's the big picture?

You have established English colonies, but they developed in vastly different ways.

The Chesapeake, driven by tobacco, moving towards large plantations, reliant on unfree labor, first indentured servants, increasingly enslaved Africans.

New England founded on religious ideals characterized by small towns, family farms, and a strict social order, but also facing internal dissent.

And the common thread.

Well, the pursuit of freedom, definitely.

English settlers sought various kinds of freedom, economic, religious, political, but, and this is the crucial paradox Foner emphasizes, the expansion of freedom for settlers went hand in hand with the expansion of unfreedom for others.

Native Americans were displaced and decimated.

Africans were brought in chains.

That contradiction is baked into the very beginnings of English America.

Okay.

So we've covered a lot.

We started with England's own turmoil, pushing people out, the brutal lessons from Ireland.

We saw Jamestown's near failure,

then its survival based on tobacco and indentured servitude, shaping the Chesapeake.

Right.

And then the very different story in New England, the Puritan city upon a hill, the focus on family, towns, religion, but also the fierce intolerance that led to dissenters like Roger Williams founding Rhode Island and the tragedy of Ann Hutchinson.

We saw the conflicts with Native Americans culminating in the devastating Pequot war.

And finally, how the English Civil War back home shook everything up, sparking radical ideas about liberty, but also leading to more imperial control.

And that central theme running through it all, freedom and unfreedom developing together.

Liberty for some settlers was built on the denial of liberty for Native Americans and Africans.

It leaves you thinking, doesn't it?

How do these very different starting points, the profit driven slavery bound Chesapeake versus the religiously driven ordered society of New England,

how did they set the stage for what America would become?

These weren't just different colonies.

They were almost different foundational ideas creating tensions that you could argue.

We still wrestle with today.

That's a powerful question to ponder how those initial diverse paths shaped the fundamental conflicts and identities of American history right up to the present.

A lot to think about.

Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into the complex beginnings of English America.

We hope this journey through phoners analysis has given you a clearer picture of these crucial and often contradictory founding years.