Wars/Protests
Armed conflict between royalists and parliamentarians, resulting in the victory of pro-Parliament forces and the execution of Charles I.
English Civil War (1642-1649)
Dominant theological credo of the New England Puritans based on the teachings of John Calvin. Calvinists believed in predestination—that only "the elect" were destined for salvation.
Calvinism
Established Maryland as a haven for Catholics; unsuccessfully tried to reconstitute the English manorial system in the colonies and gave vast tracts of land to Catholic relatives, a policy that soon created tensions between the seaboard Catholic establishment and backcountry Protestant planters
Lord Baltimore
Prominent Quaker activist who founded Pennsylvania as a haven for fellow Quakers in 1681; established friendly relations with neighboring Indian tribes and attracted a wide array of settlers to his colony with promises of economic opportunity and ethnic and religious toleration
William Penn (1644-1718)
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. Ensured that Maryland would continue to attract a high proportion of Catholic migrants throughout the colonial period.
Act of Toleration (1649)
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 (1711-1713)
Intense religious experience that confirmed an individual's place among the "elect," or the "visible saints." Calvinists who experienced conversion were then expected to lead sanctified lives to demonstrate their salvation.
conversion
Wampanoag chieftain who signed a peace treaty with Plymouth Bay settlers in 1621 and helped them celebrate the first Thanksgiving.
Massasoit (ca. 1590-1661)
Antinomian religious dissenter brought to trial for heresy in MA Bay after arguing that she need not follow wither God's laws or man's claiming direct revelation from God; banished from the Puritan colony she moved to Rhode Island and later New York where she and her family were killed by Indians
Anne Hutchinson (ca. 1591-1643)
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. Similar statutes were adopted by Southern plantation societies on the North American mainland in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Barbados Slave Code of 1661
Series of clashes between English settlers and Pequot Indians in the Connecticut River valley. Ended in the slaughter of the Pequots by the Puritans and their Narragansett Indian allies.
Pequot War (1636-1638)
English Protestant reformers who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic rituals and creeds. Some of the most devout believed that only "visible saints" should be admitted to church membership.
Puritans
Wampanoag chief who led a brutal campaign against Puritan settlements in New England between 1675 and 1676; he was eventually captured and killed and his wife and son sold into slavery which halted England's westward expansion for several decades
Metacom (King Philip) (ca. 1638-1676)
Salem minister who advocated a complete break from the Church of England and criticized the MA Bay Colony for unlawfully taking land from the Indians; banished for his heresies, he established a small community in present-day Rhode Island, later acquiring a charter for the colony from England
Roger Williams (ca. 1603-1683)
Agreement to form a majoritarian government in Plymouth, signed aboard the Mayflower. Created a foundation for self-government in the colony.
Mayflower Compact (1620)
Series of assaults by Metacom, King Philip, on English settlements in New England. The attacks slowed the westward migration of New England settlers for several decades.
King Philip's War (Metacom's War) 1675-1676
Small group of Puritans who sought to break away entirely from the Church of England; after initially settling in Holland, a number of English Separatists made their way to Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts in 1620.
Separatists
Assumed the throne with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. He sought to establish firm control over the colonies, ending the period of relative independence on the American mainland.
Charles II (1630-1685; r. 1660-1685)
German friar who touched off the Protestant Reformation when he nailed a list of grievances against the Catholic Church to the door of Wittenberg's cathedral in 1517.
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Drafted by settlers in the Connecticut River Valley, document was the first "modern constitution" establishing a democratically controlled government. Key features of the document were borrowed for Connecticut's colonial charter and later, its state constitution.
Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639)
Relatively peaceful overthrow of the unpopular Catholic monarch, James II, replacing him with Dutch-born William III and Mary, daughter of James II. William and Mary accepted increased Parliamentary oversight and new limits on monarchical authority.
Glorious Revolution (1688)
Religious group known for their tolerance, emphasis on peace, and idealistic Indian policy, who settled heavily in Pennsylvania in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Quakers
Dutch-born monarch and his English-born wife, daughter of King James II, installed to the British throne during the Glorious Revolution of 1689. They relaxed control over the American colonies, inaugurating a period of "salutary neglect" that lasted until the French and Indian War.
William III and Mary II
Erudite leader of the separatist Pilgrims ho left England for Holland and eventually sailed on the Mayflower to establish the first English colony in MA; his account of the colony's founding, Of Plymouth Plantation, remains classic of American literature and an indispensable historical source
William Bradford (1590-1657)
Also known as sumptuary laws, they are designed to restrict personal behavior in accord with a strict code of morality. Blue laws were passed across the colonies, particularly in Puritan New England and Quaker Pennsylvania.
blue laws