Analysis of the Driving Factor Behind Early Colonists Colonists began coming to the new world for a number of reasons. As numerous as the reasons may be they can be separated into two divisions, spiritual and material. In this course we have studied two sets of colonists in depth, the Puritans and the Chesapeake/Virginia colonists. The Puritans made the journey across the Atlantic for spiritual reasons while the settlers of the Chesapeake Bay colony came solely for material reasons. I will attempt to prove this by using “A Modell of Christian Charity” by John Winthrop and “Looking Out for Number One: Conflicting Cultural Values in Early Seventeenth-Century Virginia” by T.H. Breen.I will speak first on the Puritans. There is a famous line in John Winthrop’s 1630 essay about building a “city on a hill.” He says this because “The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and by word throughout the world; we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all believers for God's sake... For this end we must be knit together.” This excerpt shows beyond a shadow of doubt that he saw the Massachusetts Bay Company as an important mission and the fate of the world relied on it’s success.There was further evidence of the driving spiritual aspect in their theological democratic government. There government was very simple. There was a governor elected every year by the town’s citizens. The only people allowed to be a citizen of the town were members of the church. Every aspect of their life revolved around their religion. The main reason they fled to America was to filter “popish idolatry” out of the Church of England and only by extraction from the corruption of Europe. America was their...
