History: Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home By Susan Hardman Moore Yale University Press, 316pp. £25 The influence of New England Puritanism on American political identity has been powerful and enduring. However, it has often been analysed under only two headings: origins in the Old England of Europe and impact in the New England of America.
Susan Hardman Moore's engaging study of the Pilgrims who sailed from England before 1660 does not deny these essential chapters and her extensive notes and bibliography synthesises all the relevant publications. However, what is refreshing about her important book is that she emphasises a third and largely unexplored strand: how the two sides of the English Atlantic interacted with each other, especially during the 1640s, when one in four of the emigrants of the previous decade returned home.
For the colony's founder, John Winthrop, emigration to America was not necessarily a one-way ticket. It was guided by a challenge to pursue the most "godly" existence. During the 1630s, Archbishop Laud of Canterbury had his own views on what this meant and as a result, "harried" the Puritans out of the kingdom. Moore's research confirms that there is a clear relationship between the implementation of the "Laudian agenda" and emigration to New England.
Equally clear is the extent to which emigrants believed that Providence sanctioned their decisions to leave. As Moore points out, emigration was not necessarily "a militant errand to set up a city on a hill, but a reaction to pressure, a voluntary exile, a search for a safe haven". Even Charles Chauncy, who emigrated in 1635 and later became president of Harvard, held his ministry in England for most of the 1630s. Winthrop also engaged in an extensive discussion before leaving for America.
THUS, WHILE THE desire to establish a "new" England in America remained strong, many came to America during the 1630s with great reluctance and a view to temporary exile rather than permanent settlement.
However, just as Providence guided them there - and Moore stresses the essentially religious framework within which these emigrants left in the first place - Providence would inspire them in their new settlement to evolve the "New England Way". Central to this culture was the Covenant, by which the "godly" were bound together in pursuit of a new "style of faith". However, the "experience of God" was strictly tested among church members in New England and led to a society which was at once orthodox and dissident. In a sense, the paradox reflects the later relationships between the colonial periphery and the imperial centre.
The independent local church was the basis of the "New England Way". It was where the "chosen" met, including the colony's voters and governors. However, it was also the focus for those who were not "elect" because the church was the meeting-house of the community as a whole. Although disputes were not uncommon, not least about how the "godly" were identified, the integrity of the local meeting-house remained strong. The colony was merely the sum of these individual churches. This was the New England Way.
Some contemporaries suggested that this culture explicitly castigated what emigrants had left behind. Although Winthrop was careful not to give the impression of separatism, it is clear there were differences between New and Old, for example, with respect to access to the Sacraments, the appreciation of personal piety and the place of hierarchy, even if in the form of a union of synods rather than bishops.
In these circumstances, the decision to return to England during the 1640s was not one that was either taken lightly in Boston or welcomed in London. However, it was made for the same reasons that had provoked "unsettled spirits" in the other direction a decade earlier: that the "godly" would be always "blessed by Providence", wherever they lived. One in three preachers returned to England, as did seven of the first nine graduates from Harvard and a number of merchants.
There were opportunities in Cromwellian England, just as there had been in America a decade earlier. Cromwell had hoped to divert some of these returning "godly settlers" to Ireland. However, most of them were not interested. After 1660, many of them also decided to settle in their original localities, many even accepting the episcopal arrangements of the Restoration. As such, they faded into an England which thereafter, would engage with America in different ways. However, their legacy in America continued in correlating a particular view of "godliness" with "democracy".
Pilgrims is an excellent study of how this most enduring of topics took root in America and continues to inform the political discourse of our own day.
Maurice Bric is senior lecturer in history at UCD. His book, Ireland, Philadelphia and the Re-Invention of America will be published by Four Courts Press next month