Otis History: The Pilgrims and the Puritans
By Peter Cameron
November 2025
This month, with our state’s connection to Thanksgiving in mind, I thought we would touch on the history of two of the founding forces of Massachusetts, the Pilgrims and the Puritans. Both groups fled from the same place, England, for the same reason: religious persecution. The two groups’ religious views were very different, but they both came to the New World and wanted the same thing: to be left alone in pursuing their beliefs.
Both the Pilgrims and Puritans were English Protestant religious sects that were viciously persecuted by King Henry VIII after he declared the creation of the Church of England in 1534. The Church of England outlawed all other religions in England. The results were persecutions, arrests and the surveillance of both groups by the King’s sheriffs. Henry VIII successors, King James I and King Charles I, recognized that this was becoming a burden and in 1620, to rid the kingdom of the Pilgrim problem, King James I, granted the Pilgrims a charter in “Northern Virginia.” Using the same logic, in 1630, King Charles I granted the Puritans a charter in the New World.
Illustration of the Pilgrim Fathers on their way to church in 1620. The engraving was made after a picture by GH Boughton in the 19th century. Stock photograph.
The two groups’ religious views were derived from their differences with the Church of England. When King Henry VII founded the Church of England, he wanted control of England’s religion taken away from the Pope and put into his hands. Henry VIII was not a religious scholar, so rather than reinvent an entirely new religion with new rites and liturgical rituals he simply adopted what he knew previously, the Roman Catholic religious doctrine, with a new name, the Church of England.
The Pilgrims, a Protestant religious group, found this intolerable. They considered many of the Catholic rites and an omnipotent head, the King, outside their religious doctrine, which was a strict interpretation of the Bible. They wanted nothing to do with the Church of England. Once they landed in Plymouth, they had no desire to spread their beliefs, only to be left alone to worship as they wished. They quickly learned survival meant close ties with England, which quashed much of their isolationist leanings.
The Puritans, also a Protestant religious group, wanted to remain within the Church of England. They felt it needed to be purified of many of the Catholic rites and rituals that were incompatible with biblical teachings, their core belief. The monarchy in England would not allow any changes in the church, ostracizing the Puritans.
With a charter granted, the Puritans began planning their settlement of the New World. The Puritan vision of their civilization in the New World was based on a sermon delivered by John Winthrop on the voyage across the Atlantic. He envisioned a “city upon a hill,” a biblical reference to heaven on earth. He wanted a society governed by religious policy, commonly called a theocracy. Once the Puritans landed in Boston Harbor this was translated into a society that wouldn’t tolerate any other religion, thoughts, or anything adverse to Puritan beliefs. In essence they established and spread an authoritarian government and society, not a place where there was freedom of religion, only Puritanism.
Eventually the English authorities were forced to step in, denying the Puritans their dream of theocracy by outlawing many of their oppressive practices. Non-Puritans diluted the population and Massachusetts Bay Colony settled into a moderate religious and democratic colony.
The Puritan's intolerant attitude did remain in the background, reemerging in the 1770s towards England, helping spawn the American Revolution. The important historical point is that these two groups settled, influenced and established Massachusetts and their ancestors carved what would become Otis out of the wilderness. Happy Thanksgiving!
