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In the early 17th century, thousands of English Puritans settled in North America, almost all in New England.Puritans were intensely devout members of the Church of England who believed that the Church of England was insufficiently reformed, retaining too much of its Roman Catholic doctrinal roots, and who therefore opposed royal ecclesiastical policy.
The Puritans were originally members of a group of English Protestants seeking "purity", further reforms or even separation from the established church, during the Reformation.
In the 17th century, the word Puritan was a term applied not to just one group but to many. Historians still debate a precise definition of Puritanism. [6] Originally, Puritan was a pejorative term characterizing certain Protestant groups as extremist. Thomas Fuller, in his Church History, dates the first use of the word to 1564.
The Puritan's main purpose was to purify the Church of England and to make England a more Christian country. History of the Puritans under Elizabeth I, 1558–1603; History of the Puritans under James I, 1603–1625; History of the Puritans under Charles I, 1625–1649; History of the Puritans from 1649; History of the Puritans in North America
In 1625, shortly before the opening of the new parliament, Charles was married by proxy to Princess Henrietta Maria of France, the Catholic daughter of King Henri IV.In diplomatic terms this implied alliance with France in preparation for war against Spain, but Puritan MPs openly claimed that Charles was preparing to restrict the recusancy laws and even to grant Catholic Emancipation.
Puritan experience underlay the later Latitudinarian and Evangelical trends in the Church of England. Divisions between Presbyterian and Congregationalist groups in London became clear in the 1690s, and with the Congregationalists following the trend of the older Independents, a split became perpetuated.
The Puritan movement in Elizabethan England was strengthened by the fact that many of Queen Elizabeth's top political advisers and court officials had close ties with Puritan leaders and were partial to Puritan views of theology, politics, and the reformation of the English church and society.
Hall proposes Puritan casuistry as a "common denominator" of types of Puritan that is of value to historians, and also was inherited by later nonconformists. More specifically, he points to "cases of conscience", and sermons preached on them. The Cripplegate Lectures were one vehicle by which this tradition was passed on.