Skate-Wear Central

Puritan Men

Introduction to Colonial American History – Migration

Why did so many Englishmen migrate to the Americas in the seventeenth century ?

It has been estimated that some 58,000 English left their native land from 1620 to 1642 for the Americas. A steady influx of settlers entered Maryland and Virginia throughout the seventeenth century whereas New England received the bulk of its immigrants between the two above dates. In an attempt to answer the question why did so many Englishmen migrate to the Americas in the seventeenth century we have to first explain who these Englishmen were in order to provide some clue as to why they came to the Americas.

This should be followed by a discussion of the factors that inclined them to leave their home. This is the theory of emigration and special reference should be made to the means of disseminating the ideas of emigration. Finally we should not overlook the actual process of emigration – how did the would be settler set about the process ? In an attempt to answer the first of these questions a healthy debate has developed. D Souden thinks that the stereotype of indentured servants migrating may not be as atypical as was once thought. He draws on Peter Laslett’s findings – mainly physical mobility and the institution of labour service for men and women before full maturity and marriage were embedded in the life style of pre-industrial England.

From Souden’s analysis of the ‘Servants to foreign plantations’ records of Bristol 1654-79 he finds that many of the emigrants were from the ‘middling sort’ and not after all the rogues, whores and vagabonds that anti-America contemporary literature would have us believe. These findings are partially confirmed by J. Horn’s investigation of indentured servant lists of London, Liverpool and Bristol. The majority came from the middling classes. A large proportion were from agricultural backgrounds or textiles and trades. Many yeomen were included and the London figures in particular show numerous professionals emigrating.

However, there are a number of problems when consulting the indenture lists as a source. The problem of analyzing the former occupations of the servants is that they provide only a rough guide to social status. The criteria of age and wealth are not taken into account. Most emigrants were between the age of 15 to 24 and had no household and were therefore not established members of society. On a more general level there are the usual problems to be bourne in mind when consulting any seventeenth century ‘statistics’. The lists are totally representative of the emigrants – free emigration accounts for 15-30% of arrivals according to Horn. In addition many immigrants were unrecorded – especially laborers and a tiny fraction were forced to leave the country. In addition Horn’s evidence is drawn from a wider geographical spread than Souden’s but not all emigrants left via Bristol, Liverpool and London. D.G. Allen thinks different types of person emigrated from different parts of England but this will be included in our discussion of migrant’s motives.

Perhaps we should now move on to a closer examination of these motives. What were the push and pull factors that encouraged so many middling sort Englishmen and women to move from their established communities in England to the New World ? Carl Bridenbough explains the ‘swarming of the English’ as a consequence of national shock at the failure of the Church of England. Such a collective change of outlook can be understood only as expressing the sum of the sentiments of each individual concerned and in the light of his immediate personal and spiritual and material status. Bridenbough goes on state that there were as many reasons for emigrating as there were emigrants.

This may be true but it is not a particularly helpful method of finding what motivated seventeenth century people. They left few diaries or the records of personal feelings in their wake. The best that we can do is to look at some broader reasons for their movements. Let us first examine the push factors. Here we have the traditional trio of famine, disease and war as well as a host of other propellant factors. We have to place the emigrations to the Americas in its European context to make any sense of the movement. England was experiencing a sharp population increase in the first half of the seventeenth century which was in turn to have an adverse effect on prices.

J. Horn cites enclosure as causing unemployment but there can be no doubt that there was a slump in the cloth trade. Combine these elements with religious and political upheaval of the civil war, Commonwealth and Restoration years and we receive a very grim picture of life in England. The Puritans were under pressure from Laud and Lords commissioners for the Plantations. Thomas Shepherd preaching in Earle Colne in Essex in the late 1630s was summoned to London by Laud. One of the most convincing studies of the various push factors was undertaken by D.G. Allen. He thinks there no uniform laws of migration . Each society appears to have been affected by different forces: some causes that deeply affected some communities were non existent or of little importance in others.

Even the most recent studies of modern migrations that contained good documentation have failed to produce a model for migration employing economic, geographic, demographic and social psychological variables, despite Sume Akerman’s attempts. Realistically Allen thinks we can never be certain of individuals motives but some conclusions can be reached by the use of case studies. The crux of Allen’s argument is that economic and religious motives were uppermost in men’s minds when it came to migration but they were always modified by local circumstances. His studies of the Massachusetts settlements of Rowley, Newbury, Ipswich, Watertown and Hingham reveal this. Some modifications to the general economic decline theme needed to be made. The emigrants from Yorkshire and Hampshire were not experiencing recession but economic conditions were poor in the Suffolk and Essex cloth towns. Religious discrimination was not evident in Hampshire but it was in Suffolk and Essex. In fact these settlers’ old societies could not have been so hated because emigrants still maintained a strong desire to live as they always had. They retained many of their social, economic and institutional practices, kept households, neighborhood, church and inter-family connections. This was the unusual feature of the New England immigration.

Many here were not people who were pushed to the New World by miserable circumstances in the old. However, this is not to deny that many left England because of harsh conditions. Most historians have their favorite cause. For Campbell it is religion, for Frank Craven bad harvests are dominant. I do not see why we have to rely on any monocausal explanation and surely an interaction of individual, local and general reasons outlined above was the stimulus for emigration. The negative side of migration has been discussed but there were many features of the New World that positively attracted settlers.

Carr and Menard’s study of freedmen i.e. ex-industrial servants in Maryland provides some useful insights. Virginia and Maryland experienced a continual influx of settlers in the seventeenth century. The opportunities available to new settlers and the ability of Chesapeake society to assimilate immigrants into the New World community are central themes to this discussion. The prospects of settlers were initially a pull factor. From their survey of St Mary’s, Calvert, Charles and Prince George counties 1658-1703 Menard and Carr conclude that the great majority of freedmen were agricultural workers and there was a steady demand for their labor. Settlers could work for a share of the crop, lease his own land or work for daily wages. There is every indication that the wages were good because of the relatively high ratio of land to labor in the Chesapeake colonies. Menard and Carr saw the settlers’ economic position as declining towards the end of the seventeenth century. They have been perceptive enough to show that although the mean figures show an increase in wealth the falling trend line of the meridian indicates that the majority were loosing ground. This was a consequence of a stagnation in the tobacco prices poor whites were increasingly been faced by slave competition. In addition an increase in population had to share an income from tobacco that was not increasing proportionately.

From this we can see why so many Englishmen migrated to the Americas in the seventeenth century – there was a chance of an improved economic position with high wages on the tobacco coast and the sugar islands but towards the year 1700 the tobacco economy stagnated. Closely connected to settlers economic welfare was their social position within Chesapeake. Carr and Menard thought this was deteriorating. A decline in opportunities directly related to tobacco prices led to rifts in status. The formation of a household could improve status but less of these were being formed after 1680. In addition newcomers were faced with the white creole society. The native born had a headstart over new immigrants because they had parental support and would potentially start working for themselves at an earlier age. Such a decline in opportunities may account for the slowing of immigration into Chesapeake but it is important to remember that immigration still continued strongly throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

But we should not concentrate on socio-economic attractions to the New world alone. Religion was also to play its part . Not only did men, particularly Puritans, want to escape religious harassment in the Old World but they also had Utopian visions. Some ministers such as Peter and Cotton succeeded in identifying the emigration with the will of God. This probably gave the Puritan legion a moral power which was largely lacking in other attempts at colonization. The attraction of the Americas is closely connected to the next theme of discussion. This concerns the way in which ideas about the colonies were spread. C. Bridenbough thinks there was a conscious campaign to educate the English public. Hakluyt was probably the first on the scene but the Virginia Company was responsible for many tracts, ballads, sermons and exhortations by word of mouth. John Mason and Richard Eburne produced well known promotional works and Captain John Smith’s “A description of New England” 1616 was a surprisingly accurate account. Indeed Smith became the promoter of the colonies par excellence. The Council of New England was under the guidance of the indefatigable promoter Sir Ferdinand Gorges – this was a further agent to manipulate public opinion.

The message of the New World was spread to most classes. The letters of dedicated ministers sent many on their way such as the sermons of Master Thomas Welde in Terling in Essex in 1633. As Peter Heylyn perceived ‘those who held the helm of the Pulpit always steer the people’s hearts as they please’. Nor was the word confined to the departure ports but chapmen and agents circulated the rural areas. Hence we have examined the type of person who emigrated and the reasons why they emigrated. Both the push and pull factors have been considered and the means of dissemination of knowledge throughout England. These factors help us to answer the question ‘why did so many Englishmen migrate to the Americas in the seventeenth century ?’

However, it could be argued that we have only discussed the theory of emigration . What about the actual process and organization of emigration ? Horn conducted an analysis of the merchant community that conducted the indentured servant trade. He found that the masters came from a wide variety of trades and were not just planters. There was no monopoly and the vast majority of servants were contracted by small merchants in the Chesapeake. The organization was on a larger scale for the West Indies sugar plantations and there were more large scale enterprises such as that of John Bright in London than elsewhere in England.

Servants were usually indentured in the summer kept in victualling houses ready to sail a month or two later to coincide with the rhythm of the tobacco trade. Agents that had previously sold the colonies goods throughout England now also recruited – these men were known as ‘spirits’ and were responsible for the provision of indentured labor. However, the exodus of English Puritans from 1629 to 1642 differs from this pattern of organization. Most puritans paid their own way across the Atlantic. The Puritans had an impressive organization for emigration by seventeenth century standards. The 1628 New England Company for a Plantation in Massachusetts Bay had good support from different sections of society. Merchants such as Cradock, lawyers White and Humfrey, country gentlemen such as Pelham and of course the noble Say and Seale and Warwick all supported the Puritan emigration. Without such organizations both in New England and the Chesapeake many who would have had reasons to emigrate could not have done so.

The combination of incentives, socio-economic, political and religious for the settlers to seek a new start were linked to the actual means of physically transporting them to their destination by the organizations of merchants and Puritan leaders. These factors persuaded and enabled so many Englishmen to migrate to the Americas in the seventeenth century.

Dr Simon Harding

www.chronosconsulting.com

www.coberon.com

 

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