1 MAHSC, 4th series, IV, 293.

2 Most American historians agree on the centrality of religion in the Puritan great migration, but some English historians take a more secular view, and one wishes to abolish the word “Puritan” from historical usage altogether; see Tyack, “Migration from East Anglia”; Cressy, Coming Over, 74-106; Patrick Collinson, “Concerning the Name Puritan,” JECH 31 (1980), 483-88.
   Empirical evidence for the primacy of religion appears in repeated statements not only by leaders such as Richard Mather, John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, John Cotton, Thomas Shepard and Thomas Hooker, but also by ordinary emigrants such as indentured servant Roger Clap, tailor John Dane, housewife Lucy Downing and many others. Evidence to the contrary consists of occasional complaints by Puritan leaders that some migrants were not religious enough; and of criminal proceedings against men such as bigamist Christopher Gardiner (banished from the Bay Colony) and fugitive William Schooler (hanged for rape and murder). Altogether, most American historians agree with John White, who observed the great migration at first hand and wrote as early as 1630, “necessity may press some, novelty draw on others, hopes of gain in time to come may prevail with a third sort; but that the most and most sincere and godly part have the advancement of the Gospel for their main scope I am confident” (The Planter’s Plea (London, 1630)).

3Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, ed. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff (5 vols., Boston, 1853-54), I, 1.