Those were the years that King Charles the 1st ruled without a parliament and Archbishop William Laud purged the Anglican Church of its Protestant members. The Protestants had long been trying to eliminate the office of bishop, these bishops composed one quarter of Parliament's upper house and the removal of this office could greatly jeopardize the Anglican Church's power. This was also a time of great economic depression and epidemics. The cities were overcrowded and poverty was everywhere. These factors, and many others, helped contribute to the migration of a great number of Puritans to the new world. The protestants held a strong belief that suffering was caused by a displeased God and that they would suffer themselves as long as they were surrounded by people who did not worship God the way they believed that he should be. The people who settled the area of Massachusetts had left Europe in the hope to create a "City on the Hill". They wanted to create an ideal religious community where there was no separation of church and state, were they could live in harmony with their beliefs. They were also searching for a place where their worship of God could go on unrepressed by the Anglican church of king Charles the
Those were the years that King Charles the 1st ruled without a parliament and Archbishop William Laud purged the Anglican Church of its Protestant members. The Protestants had long been trying to eliminate the office of bishop, these bishops composed one quarter of Parliament's upper house and the removal of this office could greatly jeopardize the Anglican Church's power. This was also a time of great economic depression and epidemics. The cities were overcrowded and poverty was everywhere. These factors, and many others, helped contribute to the migration of a great number of Puritans to the new world. The protestants held a strong belief that suffering was caused by a displeased God and that they would suffer themselves as long as they were surrounded by people who did not worship God the way they believed that he should be. The people who settled the area of Massachusetts had left Europe in the hope to create a "City on the Hill". They wanted to create an ideal religious community where there was no separation of church and state, were they could live in harmony with their beliefs. They were also searching for a place where their worship of God could go on unrepressed by the Anglican church of king Charles the