The Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by the Puritans, a religious group in England. They founded their colony to escape religious persecution and hoped to build a model religious community in the Americas. Productivity and quality of life in the colony were remarkable for the time. Originally established in 1630, they had a profound impact on education and government that still affects the United States today.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was established in 1630 by a group of Puritans from England under the leadership of Governor John Winthrop. A grant from King Charles I empowered the group to create a colony in Massachusetts. While the company intended to transfer the wealth of the New World to shareholders in England, the settlers themselves transferred the letter to Massachusetts. In doing so, they turned a commercial enterprise into politics.
Winthrop arrived as the new governor with 700 settlers on four ships and the center of the colony was moved from the Salem town of Endicott to a newly established site called Boston. The Massachusetts Bay Colony had a closer cohesion than others because of its common vision, and this led to higher productivity. Unable to reform the church themselves, they sought to establish colonies where they could build settlements based on the religious principles of Puritanism. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, therefore, was the main colonizer of the rest of New England, either intentionally or by banishing dissidents.
In 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Company had obtained from King Charles I a charter empowering the company to trade and colonize in New England between the Charles and Merrimack Rivers. In the second war between the Native Americans and the colonizers, the natives living in the southern part of New England were killed and expelled. Fewer settlers from Massachusetts Bay died in the first year than any other English colony founded before 1630 CE. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was a theocracy, which meant that government was closely linked to religion.
Eventually, the province would become the current State of Massachusetts, with its capital in Boston, which would continue to adhere to the Puritan vision, with modifications, until the 19th century AD and, in some respects, until today. The Massachusetts Bay Colony prospered after the first year through agriculture and trade (mainly in hides and wood at first) and later through industries such as shipbuilding. At its peak, it comprised parts of the current states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Although the Plymouth Colony also believed in the importance of spreading the Christian message to Native Americans, they were less zealous, at least initially, than the Massachusetts Bay Colony and, in their early years, did not apply expansionist policies.
Unlike its Chesapeake counterpart, the Massachusetts Bay Colony flourished with literacy, schools, city meetings, longer lives, clean drinking water, a cool climate, and a variety of crops. King Philip's war between 1675 and 1678 AD broke out when the head of the Wampanoag Confederacy, Metacom (known to settlers as King Philip, l. Winthrop) wrote that the Massachusetts Bay Colony should become a “city on a hill,” an example of a perfect religious community. Between 1625 and 1629 AD, Puritan persecutions worsened under the reign of Charles I of England, and in 1628 AD, the newly formed Massachusetts Bay Company financed the expedition of an advance group of Puritans to New England.
