Background
Emigration to and Settlement in Virginia
In the 1620s, Puritan leaders began to establish religious communities on the south side of the James River. Christopher Lawne, a leading Puritan who had settled in Holland for a time, emigrated to the Southside region with other dissenters in 1619; in November 1621, the Virginia Company granted land to Edward Bennett, a Puritan merchant from London, and other men "who undertook to settle 200 persons in the colony." Bennett established a large property called Bennett's Welcome near the former Indian village of Warraskoyack. His nephews, Philip and Richard Bennett, soon followed. By the end of the 1630s, the Bennetts held more than 10,000 acres in the colony. The Lawne and the Bennett families helped introduce several hundred Puritans to the southern reaches of Virginia. Another Puritan colonist, Daniel Gookin, transported nearly fifty people to the colony and, under the headright system, received a grant of 2,500 acres along the Nansemond River.
Religious and Political Unrest
John Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts Bay, granted the Virginia Puritans' request, noting that the people of New England now had the opportunity to ensure the "advancement of the kingdom of Christ in those parts." In January 1643, the New England ministers—William Thompson, John Knowles, and Thomas James—arrived in Jamestown. Winthrop wrote that, upon their arrival, the dispatched ministers "found very loving and liberal entertainment … by some well disposed people who desired their company."
About a year later, on April 18, 1644, some Virginia Indians under the leadership of Opechancanough launched a devastating attack on English settlements in Virginia. Several hundred Virginians were killed, but the Puritan community was spared. (Virginia's Puritan settlers were no strangers to Indian attack, however; twenty-two years earlier, nearly half of the planters at Bennett's Welcome had been killed in an assault that also had been ordered by Opechancanough.) Some Puritans interpreted the attack as divine vengeance for the government's treatment of the New England pastors. Others reasoned that the Indians attacked because, as Winthrop recorded in his journal, they "understood that they [the English] were at war in England, and began to go to war among themselves …"
Indeed, tension between the colony's Puritan and Anglican settlers was rising. The news of the civil war raging in England had widened the divide between the two religious groups; meanwhile, the Berkeley administration, perhaps hoping to decrease political opposition within the colony, passed increasingly aggressive conformity policies. Men who had tacitly endorsed Puritan pastors early in the 1640s ceased to do so, and certain vestry leaders began to crack down on Puritan religious leadership.
Harrison left Elizabeth River by 1647 and began ministering in neighboring Nansemond County, which had been without religious guidance since the New England ministers were driven out in 1643. Durand, acting as a lay preacher, began ministering to the Puritans of Lower Norfolk in Harrison's stead. In November 1647 the General Assembly passed an act reinforcing the use of the Book of Common Prayer by allowing parishioners to withhold tithes from nonconforming ministers. With this law, Berkeley's government delegated the enforcement of religious uniformity to individual parishes. On May 28, 1648, Durand was arrested at church by the county sheriff. With Durand's arrest and trial, the lines between nonconformists and Anglicans became more clearly drawn: those who supported Durand were declared "Abettors to much sedition and Mutiny." Shortly after the arrest, Berkeley became involved and banished Durand and Harrison from the colony.
Emigration to Maryland
Ironically, news of the resolution of the civil war in England reached Virginia in the summer of 1649, just after most of its Puritans had relocated north. Charles I had been tried by Parliament and executed, and Berkeley, who had done so much to encourage Virginia's intolerance of Puritanism, found himself without political support in England. Though Virginia initially refused to recognize the Commonwealth government of England, it capitulated on March 12, 1652, and Berkeley was ousted later that year.
Time Line
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1609 - A letter reports an "unhappy dissension" among the settlers at Jamestown "by reason of their Minister," who is "somewhat a Puritan."
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1617 - Sir Edwin Sandys leads the negotiations with the Leyden Puritans that results in the journey of the Mayflower and the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620.
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1619 - Puritan leader Christopher Lawne and his followers settle in the Southside region of Virginia.
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1621 - Edward Bennett, one of the great London and Amsterdam merchants and auditor of the Virginia Company of London, patents a large property called Bennett's Welcome near the former Indian village of Warraskoyack in what will become Isle of Wight County.
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1628 - About this year, Richard Bennett travels to Virginia to take over management of Bennett's Welcome from his uncle, Edward Bennett. In the next ten years he will patent more than 2,000 acres of his own and amass more than 7,000 acres in Virginia and Maryland.
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1629 - Richard Bennett is elected to the House of Burgesses as a representative from Warrosquyoake.
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1631 - Richard Bennett becomes a commissioner for Warrosquyoake.
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1640 - Having amassed thousands of acres of land in Virginia and Maryland and imported 600 settlers, many of them Puritans, Richard Bennett establishes a base of political influence.
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1642 - Sir William Berkeley arrives in Virginia as the new governor and captain general of the colony.
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1642 - Richard Bennett is appointed to the governor's Council. In the same year he patents 2,000 acres along the south bank of the Rappahannock River and recruits three Puritan ministers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to serve the Calvinists of Upper Norfolk County.
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July 15, 1642 - In a letter to Reverend John Davenport of New Haven, Puritan William Durand writes that God has condemned "many poore soules in Virginia" for their ungodly conduct, and "if ever the lord had cause to consume the cittyes of Sodom and Gomorrah he might justly and more severely execute his wrath upon Virginia."
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1643 - Governor Sir William Berkeley and the General Assembly agree to legislation ordering that "all nonconformists … shall be compelled to depart the collony with all conveniencie."
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January 1643 - Three ministers from New England—William Thompson, John Knowles, and Thomas James—arrive in Jamestown in response to a petition signed by some seventy Virginia Puritans.
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April 18, 1644 - Opechancanough and a force of Powhatan Indians launch a second great assault against the English colonists, initiating the Third Anglo-Powhatan War. As many as 400 colonists are killed, but rather than press the attack, the Indians retire.
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January 3, 1645 - The English Parliament passes a law abolishing the use of the Book of Common Prayer in the Church of England's services.
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April 1645 - Thomas Harrison, the Puritan minister of Lower Norfolk County's Elizabeth River vestry, is charged with criminal nonconformity "for not reading the booke of Common Prayer and for not administering the sacrament of Baptisme according to the Cannons and order p[re]scribed."
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1646 - Richard Bennett organizes a mercenary Puritan army to assist the exiled governor of Maryland, Leonard Calvert, in ousting a gang of brigands from his capital at Saint Mary's City.
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1647 - Puritan minister Thomas Harrison leaves the Elizabeth River parish and begins ministering in neighboring Nansemond County.
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November 1647 - The General Assembly passes an act reinforcing the use of the Book of Common Prayer by allowing parishioners to withhold tithes from nonconforming ministers.
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1648–1650 - A vast Puritan migration to Maryland is led, in part, by a group of Puritan mercenaries who came to the colony in 1646 under the leadership of Richard Bennett.
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1648 - Governor Sir William Berkeley banishes nonconforming Puritans Thomas Harrison and William Durand from Virginia. Durand settles in Maryland.
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May 28, 1648 - William Durand, who had been ministering to the Puritans of Lower Norfolk County in Thomas Harrison's absence, is arrested for nonconformity by the county sheriff.
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1652–1660 - No longer governor, Sir William Berkeley remains in Virginia, enlarging his house, continuing his crop trials, and strengthening his commercial ties abroad. He remains on good terms with Puritan Virginias while still maintaining contact with the exiled Charles II.
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July 5, 1652 - Governor Richard Bennett and a select group of Virginia Puritan émigrés end a decade of Indian warfare in Maryland by negotiating a comprehensive peace treaty with the powerful Susquehannocks.
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March 25, 1655 - The bloody Battle of the Severn is fought between the Catholic pro-Calvert forces and Puritans near Governor Richard Bennett's own lands at Greenbury Point, Maryland.
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December 1, 1656 - The General Assembly convenes and commissions Edward Digges to represent the colony's interests in London, especially regarding political turbulence in Maryland, where Puritans have wrested control from the proprietary governor.
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1657–1658 - During the winter, Edward Digges, in London as a lobbyist on behalf of Virginia, helps to negotiate a settlement of the political strife in Maryland, where Puritans have wrested control from the proprietary governor.
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March 1660 - William Claiborne, despite being a supporter of Parliament and the Puritans, helps ease the return to the governorship of Sir William Berkeley just prior to Charles II's return.
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March 1661 - William Claiborne, a supporter of Parliament and the Puritans, retires from public life not long after Charles II returns to England as king.
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Categories
- Colonial History (ca. 1560–1763)
- Religion
References
Further Reading
Cite This Entry
- APA Citation:
Butterfield, K. Puritans in Colonial Virginia. (2014, July 17). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Puritans_in_Colonial_Virginia.
- MLA Citation:
Butterfield, Kevin. "Puritans in Colonial Virginia." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 17 Jul. 2014. Web. READ_DATE.
First published: August 1, 2011 | Last modified: July 17, 2014