Religion
Dominant theological credo of the New England Puritans based on the teachings of John Calvin.
Calvinism
Armed conflict between royalists and parliamentarians, resulting in the victory of pro-Parliament forces and the execution of Charles I.
English Civil War
Passed in Maryland, it guaranteed toleration to all Christians but decreed the death penalty for those, like Jews and atheists, who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Act of Toleration
Representative parliamentary assembly created to govern Virginia, establishing a precedent for government in the English colonies.
House of Burgesses
Frontier farmers who illegally occupied land owned by others or not yet officially opened for settlement.
Calvinist doctrine that God has foreordained some people to be saved and some to be damned
predestination
Began with an Indian attack on Newbern, North Carolina. After the Tuscaroras were defeated, remaining Indian survivors migrated northward, eventually joining the Iroquois Confederacy as its sixth nation.
Tuscarora War
Series of laws passed, beginning in 1651, to regulate colonial shipping; the acts provided that only English ships would be allowed to trade in English and colonial ports, and that all goods destined for the colonies would first pass through England.
Navigation Laws
Agreement to form a majoritarian government in Plymouth, signed aboard the Mayflower.
Mayflower Compact
In politics, a territory between two antagonistic powers, intended to minimize the possibility of conflict between them.
buffer
Intense religious experience that confirmed an individual's place among the "elect," or the "visible saints."
conversion
Defeated by the South Carolinians in the war of 1715-1716. Their defeat devastated the last of the coastal Indian tribes in the Southern colonies.
Yamasee Indians
Administrative union created by royal authority, incorporating all of New England, New York, and East and West Jersey. Placed under the rule of Sir Edmund Andros who curbed popular assemblies, taxed residents without their consent, and strictly enforced Navigation Laws.
Dominion of New England
Belief that the elect need not obey the law of either God or man; most notably espoused in the colonies by Anne Hutchinson
Antinomianism
Established by non-separating Puritans, it soon grew to be the largest and most influential of the New England colonies.
Massachussets Bay Colony
English Protestant reformers who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic rituals and creeds.
Puritans
Series of clashes between English settlers and Pequot Indians in the Connecticut River valley.
Pequot War
First formal statute governing the treatment of slaves, which provided for harsh punishments against offending slaves but lacked penalties for the mistreatment of slaves by masters.
Barbados Slave Code of 1661
Weak union of the colonies in Massachusetts and Connecticut led by Puritans for the purposes of defense and organization, an early attempt at self-government during the benign neglect of the English Civil War.
New England Confederation
Migration of seventy thousand refugees from England to the North American colonies, primarily New England and the Caribbean
Great English Migration
Small group of Puritans who sought to break away entirely from the Church of England
Separatists
Series of assaults by Metacom, King Philip, on English settlements in New England.
King Philip's War
Unofficial policy of relaxed royal control over colonial trade and only weak enforcement of Navigation Laws.
salutary neglect
Relatively peaceful overthrow of the unpopular Catholic monarch, James II, replacing him with Dutch-born William III and Mary, daughter of James II.
Glorious Revolution
Drafted by settlers in the Connecticut River Valley, document was the first "modern constitution" establishing a democratically controlled government
Fundamental Orders of Connecticut