The events of history shaped the lives and views of the colonists in very many ways. According to pages 76 and 77, “At his insistence, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy which outlawed the Catholic Church and proclaimed the King, “The only supreme head on Earth of the Church of England.” In my opinion, this basically meant the King Henry the VIII wanted power over the church. I believe that this very situation may actually be the reason Puritanism was created in the first place. By way of The Mayflower, the Puritans migrated to New England to escape the persecution of England. One of the first Protestant groups to migrate was the Pilgrims were the first to migrate. What comes next is the story about the Pilgrims that we all know very well. Once the Pilgrims came in contact the Wampanoag Indians, they began to learn the skills that they so desperately needed to survive the harsh winters in their new land. Thus, we celebrate Thanksgiving every year in remembrance of this. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the seventeenth century was New England governed by Puritans for Puritanism, page 83. The Puritans were people who came here with a purpose, and they made sure that they stuck to their agendas. I’m not quite sure if this was a bad this, or a good thing. According to page 102, “Colonists of different ethnic groups, races, and religions lived in varied environments under thirteen different colonial governments, all of them part of the British empire.” The ethnic diversity grew because of the large amounts of immigration that was happening during that time. People still immigrate to America from all over the world; now more than ever! The population also grew at a very rapid pace because people had way more children back then. Page 103 says, “The perils of childbirth gave wives a shorter life expectancy than husbands, but wives often lived to have six, seven, or eight babies.”
