ing accounts of earlier English voyages that might other-
wise have been lost.
Puritans In England, those Protestant reformers who
rejected the ELIZABETHAN SETTLEMENT of 1560, which
sought a compromise between Roman Catholicism and
the reforming forces of CALVINISMand LUTHERANISM. The
Puritans placed emphasis above all on the Bible as the
Word of God, on the validity of an individual’s conscience,
and on preaching, and their uncompromising world-view
was informed by the Calvinist doctrine of PREDESTINA-
TION. The Puritans objected to what they saw as supersti-
tion in church services, including religious images and the
wearing of VESTMENTSby priests, and propagated a form of
worship stripped bare of the ceremonial and trappings of
the old Catholic faith, for which they said there was no
biblical warrant. Although united in their opposition to
Catholicism and in their insistence on simplicity in reli-
gious practice, Puritans disagreed on matters of doctrine
and ecclesiastical government. The three principal sects in
England were Presbyterians (Calvinists), Congregational-
ists (known as Brownists in the 16th century—see BROWN-
ISM) and, from the early 17th century, Baptists.
Puritanism, insofar as it was a coherent religious
movement, originated in England with people who had
fled to Europe to keep their faith pure during the reign
(1553–58) of the Catholic MARY I. This impulse extended
on their return to rejection of the BOOK OF COMMON
PRAYERalong with vestments; in the 1560s ELIZABETH I, de-
termined to impose uniformity of worship, told her bish-
ops to insist on conformity. From this grew wider conflict
in the 1570s as the Puritans questioned the authority of
the episcopal hierarchy—which ultimately challenged
Elizabeth’s position as Supreme Governor of the Church of
England. Elizabeth was more concerned with order in her
realm than with individual religious conscience, and it
was on the authority issue, rather than religious opinion,
that Puritan academics such as Thomas Cartwright
(1535–1603) lost their posts, Puritan extremists ended up
in the Tower of London, the Puritan John Stubbs (c. 1543–
91) had his right hand cut off (1579) for his tract attack-
ing Elizabeth’s proposed French marriage, and the ring-
leaders in the MARPRELATE CONTROVERSYof 1588–89 were
sentenced to death. Puritan sympathizers however existed
even in the highest echelons of the Anglican Church, no-
tably Archbishop GRINDAL. It was the Puritan Millenary
Petition presented to James I in 1603 that led to the call-
ing of the HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCEand ultimately to
the Authorized Version of the Bible.
Puritanism is often thought to imply antagonism to-
ward the arts. In England Puritans engaged in a sustained
pamphlet war against the theater, partly based on the
premise that playhouses were places of moral depravity.
Yet it was also a result of the strict Puritan emphasis on
truth and a corollary distrust of fiction, thought to be syn-
onymous with lying. However, such Puritan writers as
Sir Philip SIDNEY, Edmund SPENSER and John Milton
(1608–74) produced poetry that is widely held to embody
the spirit of the English Renaissance.
Further reading: Margo Todd, Christian Humanism
and the Puritan Social Order (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1988).PPuurriittaannss 3 39977