Editing Puritans (section)

=== Puritans in North America ===
{{Further|History of the Puritans in North America}}
[[File:InteriorOldShip.jpg|thumb|right|Interior of the [[Old Ship Church]], a Puritan [[meetinghouse]] in [[Hingham, Massachusetts]]. Puritans were [[Calvinists]], so their churches were unadorned and plain.]]
Some [[Puritan migration to New England (1620–40)|Puritans left for New England]], particularly from 1629 to 1640 (the [[Personal Rule|Eleven Years' Tyranny]] under [[Charles I of England|King Charles I]]), supporting the founding of the [[Massachusetts Bay Colony]] and other settlements among the northern colonies. The large-scale Puritan migration to New England ceased by 1641, with around 21,000 persons having moved across the Atlantic. This English-speaking population in the United States was not descended from all of the original colonists, since many returned to England shortly after arriving on the continent, but it produced more than 16&nbsp;million descendants.{{sfn|Fischer|1989}}<ref>"[http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/english2/puritans_intro.html The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100116020829/http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/english2/puritans_intro.html |date=16 January 2010 }}". Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson.</ref> This so-called "Great Migration" is not so named because of sheer numbers, which were much less than the number of English citizens who immigrated to [[Virginia]] and the [[Caribbean]] during this time, many as indentured servants.<ref>"[http://www.virtualjamestown.org/essays/horn_essay.html Leaving England: The Social Background of Indentured Servants in the Seventeenth Century] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090106140842/http://www.virtualjamestown.org//essays/horn_essay.html |date=6 January 2009 }}", The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.</ref> The rapid growth of the New England colonies (around 700,000 by 1790) was almost entirely due to the high birth rate and lower death rate per year. They had formed families more rapidly than did the southern colonies.<ref>{{cite book |first=Francis J. |last=Bremer |title=The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards |date=1995}}</ref>

[[File:New England death Head (c).jpg|upright=1.0|left|thumb|Death's head, [[Granary Burying Ground]]. A typical example of early [[Funerary art in Puritan New England]]]]
Puritan hegemony lasted for at least a century. That century can be broken down into three parts: the generation of [[John Cotton (minister)|John Cotton]] and [[Richard Mather]], 1630–1662 from the founding to the Restoration, years of virtual independence and nearly autonomous development; the generation of [[Increase Mather]], 1662–1689 from the Restoration and the [[Half-Way Covenant|Halfway Covenant]] to the Glorious Revolution, years of struggle with the British crown; and the generation of [[Cotton Mather]], 1689–1728 from the overthrow of [[Edmund Andros]] (in which Cotton Mather played a part) and the new charter, mediated by Increase Mather, to the death of Cotton Mather.{{Sfn|Carpenter|2003|p=41}} Puritan leaders were political thinkers and writers who considered the church government to be God's agency in social life.<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://doi.org/10.2307/2139228 | doi=10.2307/2139228 | jstor=2139228 | title=The Political Ideas of the Puritans | last1=Osgood | first1=Herbert L. | journal=Political Science Quarterly | date=7 August 1891 | volume=6 | issue=1 | pages=1–28 }}</ref>

The Puritans in the Colonies wanted their children to be able to read and interpret the Bible themselves, rather than have to rely on the clergy for interpretation.<ref>{{cite book |first=James |last=Axtell |title=The School upon a Hill: Education and Society in Colonial New England |date=1976}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=McCullough |first=David |title=John Adams |date=22 May 2001 |page=223 |location=New York |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |isbn=0-684-81363-7}}</ref>{{sfn|Bremer|2009|pp=81–82}}{{sfn|Fischer|1989|pp=132–134}} In 1635, they established the Boston Latin School to educate their sons, the first and oldest formal education institution in the English-speaking New World. They also set up what were called dame schools for their daughters, and in other cases taught their daughters at home how to read. As a result, Puritans were among the most literate societies in the world. 

By the time of the American Revolution there were 40 newspapers in the United States (at a time when there were only two cities—New York and Philadelphia—with as many as 20,000 people in them).{{sfn|Fischer|1989|pp=132–134}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Copeland |first=David A. |title=Debating the Issues in Colonial Newspapers |page=viii |publisher=[[Greenwood Press]] |location=Westport, Connecticut |date=2000 |isbn=0-313-30982-5}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Eric |date=2006 |url=https://archive.org/details/infamousscribble00burn |title=Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism |pages=6–7 |location=New York |publisher=Public Affairs |isbn=978-1-58648-334-0}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Wroth |first=Lawrence C. |date=1965 |title=The Colonial Printer |pages=230–236 |location=New York |publisher=Dover Publications, Inc. |isbn=0-486-28294-5}}</ref> The Puritans also set up a college (now [[Harvard University]]) only six years after arriving in Boston.{{sfn|Fischer|1989|pp=132–134}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Rudolph |first=Frederick |title=The American College and University |page=3 |publisher=[[University of Georgia Press]] |date=1961 |isbn=0-8203-1285-1}}</ref>