Us Ch.3 Terms

House of Burgesses

Representative parliamentary assembly created to govern Virginia, establishing a precedent for government in the English colonies.

Act of Toleration

Guaranteed toleration to all Christians but decreed the death penalty for those, like Jews and atheists, who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Barbados slave code

First formal statute governing the treatment of slaves, which provided for harsh punishments against offending slaves but lacked penalties for the mistreatment of slaves by masters

English Civil War

Armed conflict between royalists and parliamentarians, resulting in the victory of pro-Parliament forces and the execution of Charles I.

squatters

Frontier farmers who illegally occupied land owned by others or not yet officially opened for settlement.

Tuscarora War

Began with an Indian attack on New Bern, North Carolina. After the Tuscaroras were defeated, remaining Indian survivors migrated northward, eventually joining the Iroquois Confederacy as its sixth nation.

Yamasee Indians

Defeated by the South Carolinians in the war of 1715–1716. The Yamasee defeat devastated the last of the coastal Indian tribes in the southern colonies.

buffer

a territory between two antagonistic powers, intended to minimize the possibility of conflict between them.

Calvinism

Dominant theological credo of the New England Puritans based on the teachings of John Calvin. Calvinists believed in predestination—that only “the elect” were destined for salvation.

predestination

Calvinist doctrine that God has foreordained some people to be saved and some to be damned. Though their fate was irreversible, Calvinists, particularly those who believed they were destined for salvation, sought to lead sanctified lives in order to demonstrate to others that they were in fact members of the “elect.”

conversion

Intense religious experience that confirmed an individual’s place among the “elect,” or the “visible saints.”

Puritans

English Protestant reformers who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic rituals and creeds.

Separatists

Small group of Puritans who sought to break away entirely from the Church of England

Mayflower Compact

Agreement to form a majoritarian government in Plymouth, signed aboard the Mayflower. Created a foundation for self-government in the colony.

Massachusetts Bay Colony

Established by non-separating Puritans, it soon grew to be the largest and most influential of the New England colonies.

Great English Migration

Migration of seventy thousand refugees from England to the North American colonies, primarily New England and the Caribbean.

Fundamental Orders

Drafted by settlers in the Connecticut River valley, this document was the first “modern constitution” establishing a democratically controlled government.

Pequot War

Series of clashes between English settlers and Pequot Indians in the Connecticut River valley.

King Philip’s War

Series of assaults by Metacom, King Philip, on English settlements in New England.

New England Confederation

Weak union of the colonies in Massachusetts and Connecticut led by Puritans for the purposes of defense and organization; an early attempt at self-government during the benign neglect of the English Civil War.

Navigation Laws

Series of laws passed, beginning in 1651, to regulate colonial shipping; the acts provided that only English ships would be allowed to trade in English and colonial ports and that all goods destined for the colonies would first pass through England.

Dominion of New England

Administrative union created by royal authority, incorporating all of New England, New York, and East and West Jersey. Placed under the rule of Sir Edmund Andros, who curbed popular assemblies, taxed residents without their consent, and strictly enforced Navigation Laws.

Glorious Revolution

Overthrow, in 1688, of the Catholic King James II of England. Rebellious English nobles invited the Protestant William of Orange to replace James II in a relatively bloodless coup.

salutary neglect

Unofficial policy of relaxed royal control over colonial trade and only weak enforcement of Navigation Laws. Lasted from the Glorious Revolution to the end of the French and Indian War in 1763.

Quakers

Religious group known for their tolerance, emphasis on peace, and idealistic Indian policy, who settled heavily in Pennsylvania in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

blue laws

Also known as sumptuary laws, they are designed to restrict personal behavior in accord with a strict code of morality

John Rolfe

(1585-1622) English colonist whose marriage to Pocahontas in 1614 sealed the peace of the First Anglo-Powhatan War.

Lord Baltimore

(1605-1675) Established Maryland as a haven for Catholics. Baltimore unsuccessfully tried to reconstitute the English manorial system in the colonies and gave vast tracts of land to Catholic relatives,

Oliver Cromwell

(1599-1658) Puritan general who helped lead parliamentary forces during the English Civil War and ruled England as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death in 1658.

James Oglethorpe

(1696-1785) Soldier-statesman and leading founder of Georgia. A champion of prison reform, Oglethorpe established Georgia as a haven for debtors seeking to avoid imprisonment.

Martin Luther

(1483-1546) German friar who touched off the Protestant Reformation when he nailed a list of grievances against the Catholic Church to the door of Wittenberg’s cathedral in 1517.

John Calvin

(1509-1564) French Protestant reformer whose religious teachings formed the theological basis for New England Puritans, Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, and members of the Dutch Reformed Church. Calvin argued that humans were inherently weak and wicked, and he believed in an all-knowing, all-powerful God who predestined select individuals for salvation.

William Bradford

(1590-1657) Erudite leader of the separatist Pilgrims who left England for Holland and eventually sailed on the Mayflower to establish the first English colony in Massachusetts. His account of the colony’s founding, Of Plymouth Plantation, remains a classic of American literature and an indispensable historical source.

John Winthrop

(1588-1649) First governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. An able administrator and devout Puritan, Winthrop helped ensure the prosperity of the newly established colony and enforce Puritan orthodoxy, taking a hard line against religious dissenters like Anne Hutchinson.

Anne Hutchinson

(ca. 1591-1643) Antinomian religious dissenter brought to trial for heresy in Massachusetts Bay after arguing that she need not follow God’s laws or man’s and claiming direct revelation from God. Banished from the Puritan colony, Hutchinson moved to Rhode Island and later New York, where she and her family were killed by Indians.

Roger Williams

(ca. 1603-1683) Salem minister who advocated a complete break from the Church of England and criticized the Massachusetts Bay Colony for unlawfully taking land from the Indians. Banished for his heresies, he established a small community in present-day Rhode Island, later acquiring a charter for the colony from England.

Massasoit

(ca. 1590-1661) Wampanoag chieftain who signed a peace treaty with Plymouth Bay settlers in 1621 and helped them celebrate the first Thanksgiving.

Charles II

(1630-1685) Assumed the throne with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Charles sought to establish firm control over the colonies, ending the period of relative independence on the American mainland.

Sir Edmund Andros

(1637-1714) Much loathed administrator of the Dominion of New England, which was created in 1686 to strengthen imperial control over the New England colonies.

William III

(1650-1702) Dutch-born monarch and his English-born wife Mary, daughter of King James II, installed to the British throne during the Glorious Revolution of 1689.

William Penn

(1644-1718) Prominent Quaker activist who founded Pennsylvania as a haven for fellow Quakers in 1681.