The Migration of New Englanders to England, 1640–1660

Abstract

TWENTY years after the landing of the Pilgrims the influx of Englishmen to the New England colonies came virtually to a halt. The century's fourth decade, particular, had poured thousands of political and religious nonconformists into the wilderness, but with the advent of the forties men no longer felt constrained to ship kin and worldly goods and to seek a new life on an unknown shore. The orders which the Privy Council issued January, I640, clearing seven ships for New England, rang down the curtain on the Great Migration.1 Political alterations Westminster encouraged many an Englishman, as John Winthrop remarked, to remain his native land in expectation of a new world.2 Even as the Puritan England now chose to remain there, his counterpart New England-and Holland, too-now turned his thoughts, and many instances set his course, toward home. A countermigration began which was to prevail until the Restoration undid the work of the Saints and invoked new disabilities against the Dissenter. Though we may hesitate to accept Hutchinson's allegatio.n, repeated by Palfrey, that the century and a quarter after i64o more persons left Massachusetts for England than came thence to the colony,' it is unquestionably true of the two decades after this date. Various motives-political, economic, and religious-induced New Englanders to make the homeward crossing. In the pioneer communities of seventeenth century New England, as all frontier societies, there was a large measure of instability and restlessness. From the beginning the threat of dispersal had worried the colony builders. At no time did the difficulties and rigors of a transatlantic voyage prevent some dissatisfied or maladjusted colonists from withdrawing from their associates and either seeking new