50 Fun Facts About The Puritans

Which holiday did Puritan leaders in Boston outlaw in 1659, with a five-shilling fine for anyone caught celebrating?

Christmas struck Puritans as a Catholic invention, and the ban stood until 1681. Boston went on ignoring the day for generations, and it only became fashionable there in the mid-1800s.

Despite the popular image of burning at the stake, how did nineteen people convicted in the Salem witch trials die?

Hanging killed all nineteen, fourteen women and five men. The idea that American witches were burned is a later myth, though one more man died under torture after refusing to enter a plea.

Which college did Massachusetts Puritans found in 1636 to train ministers, now the oldest in the United States?

Harvard was named for a Puritan clergyman who, on his deathbed, left the new college £780 and his library of several hundred books. He was its first benefactor, not its founder.

Which Hawthorne novel set in Puritan Boston follows Hester Prynne, forced to wear a badge of shame for adultery?

The Scarlet Letter is set in the 1640s, two centuries before Hawthorne wrote it. Hester's sentence is three hours on the scaffold and a lifetime wearing an embroidered red A.

Which Puritan general ruled England as Lord Protector in the 1650s and turned down Parliament's offer of the crown?

Oliver Cromwell agonised for six weeks over the crown before deciding that God had spoken against the office of king. He was sworn in as Lord Protector in plain black clothing instead of royal regalia.

Which governor, long credited with the "city upon a hill" sermon, led the Puritan fleet to Massachusetts in 1630?

John Winthrop served as governor for 12 of the colony's first 20 years. The sermon lay forgotten for nearly two hundred years until it was printed in the 1830s, and presidents have quoted its phrase since.

Which Arthur Miller play used the Salem witch trials as an allegory for the anti-communist hunts of the 1950s?

The Crucible opened on Broadway in January 1953 and won that year's Tony Award for Best Play. Three years later Miller himself was questioned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Which minister, expelled by Massachusetts Puritan leaders, founded Providence as a refuge for liberty of conscience?

Roger Williams argued for a full separation of church and state, a shocking idea to his neighbours. In 1638 he also founded the First Baptist Church in America, though he stayed a Baptist only briefly.

Which places of entertainment did England's Parliament, urged on by Puritans, order closed across London in 1642?

Theatres stayed dark for eighteen years, until the monarchy returned in 1660. Shakespeare's Globe did not outlast the ban: it was demolished while the playhouses were shut.

Which colony, founded by the Pilgrims in 1620, was merged into its bigger Puritan neighbour Massachusetts in 1691?

Plymouth was the older colony but much the smaller. Its Pilgrims were Separatists who had quit the Church of England outright, while most Puritans hoped to reform that church from within.

Under which monarch did the Puritan movement emerge, demanding more reform than the church settlement of 1559 allowed?

Elizabeth I kept bishops, clerical vestments and a set prayer book, which Puritans saw as leftovers of Catholicism. They never used the name Puritan themselves: it began as an insult.

Which French-born Protestant reformer wrote the theology that English Puritans followed on grace, sin and salvation?

John Calvin taught in a Swiss city that sheltered English Protestant exiles during the 1550s. Those exiles came home with his ideas and formed the core of the early Puritans.

Which doctrine left Puritans anxiously searching their own lives for signs that they were among God's elect?

Predestination held that God had already destined some people for salvation and the rest for Hell. Some Puritans kept detailed records of their own behaviour, looking for proof of which they were.

Which Boston midwife did Puritan leaders banish in 1637 after her religious meetings at home drew large crowds?

Anne Hutchinson's weekly gatherings grew so popular that the colony's young governor attended. After her banishment she moved on to New Netherland, where she was killed five years later.

Members of which religious group, including Mary Dyer, did Puritan Massachusetts put to death between 1659 and 1661?

Quakers were banished on pain of death under a law passed at the end of 1658, and four who defied it were killed. The executions ended in 1661, when the king forbade Massachusetts to kill anyone for the faith.

Which Bible translation was commissioned after Puritan John Rainolds proposed it at the 1604 Hampton Court Conference?

The King James Version appeared in 1611, seven years after the conference. It was the main thing the Puritans gained: the monarch rebuked them and rejected their requests to change church services.

Which king, who clashed for years with Puritans in Parliament, was tried for high treason and beheaded in January 1649?

Charles I had ruled for eleven years without calling a Parliament at all. He died in one clean stroke on a scaffold put up in front of the Banqueting House in Whitehall.

Which nickname for Parliament's Civil War supporters mocked the closely cropped hair worn by some Puritans?

Roundheads was a term of derision, and plenty of Puritans did not fit it. After an archbishop ordered clergy to wear short hair in 1636, many grew theirs longer out of contempt for him.

What name is given to rules restricting Sunday trade and leisure, a term a 1781 book applied to strict Puritan codes?

Blue laws were described in a 1781 book now regarded as unreliable and probably satirical. The story that they were printed on blue paper is widely told, but the term's true origin remains a mystery.

Which university, where many early Puritan leaders studied, gave its name to a Massachusetts town in 1638?

Cambridge was an important centre of Puritan theology, and the town's ministers and first schoolmaster were all alumni. Until the renaming, the settlement had been known simply as Newtowne.

Which translation of scripture, favoured by Puritans and carried on the Mayflower, was known for pointed margin notes?

The Geneva Bible was the primary Bible of late 16th-century English Protestants, and Shakespeare used it too. It is nicknamed the Breeches Bible, after the garments it says Adam and Eve sewed from fig leaves.

What name do historians give the movement of roughly 20,000 English Puritans to New England, mostly in the 1630s?

The Great Migration dropped off sharply once Parliament was recalled in 1640. By one estimate, 7 to 10 percent of the colonists then sailed back to England, including about a third of the clergymen.

Which colony did the minister Thomas Hooker found after falling out with the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts?

Connecticut remembers Hooker as its father. In a 1638 sermon at Hartford he declared that the foundation of authority lies in the free consent of the people.

What was the first volume printed in British North America, produced by Massachusetts Puritans on a new press in 1640?

The Bay Psalm Book set the psalms to metre so that congregations could sing them. One of eleven known surviving first editions sold in 2013 for $14.2 million, then a record for a printed book.

Which Puritan poet of Massachusetts had her verses published in London in 1650 as The Tenth Muse?

Anne Bradstreet did not take the poems to a printer herself: her brother-in-law carried the manuscript to London. She is remembered as America's first published poet.

Which Boston Puritan minister championed smallpox inoculation in 1721, having learned of it from a slave named Onesimus?

Cotton Mather's campaign caused violent controversy in Boston during the 1721 outbreak. A young Benjamin Franklin took part in the opposition, yet later called one of Mather's books a major influence on his life.

Which Puritan preacher, jailed for twelve years for refusing to give up preaching, wrote The Pilgrim's Progress?

John Bunyan had been a tinker, mending pots and pans, before he took to the pulpit. His allegory became one of the most published books in English, with 1,300 editions printed by 1938.

Which Puritan poet served the Commonwealth as Secretary for Foreign Tongues and dictated Paradise Lost when blind?

John Milton was totally blind by 1652, so he dictated his epic to helpers. In his government post a fellow poet, Andrew Marvell, served as his deputy from 1657.

What name did New England Puritans give the plain building used for both Sunday worship and town business?

Meeting house suits the building's double life: it was paid for with tax money and hosted local debates as well as sermons. Inside there were no statues, stained glass or crosses.

Which German sociologist argued that Puritan ethics, with their devotion to hard work, helped give rise to capitalism?

Max Weber made the case in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In 1998 the International Sociological Association ranked it the fourth most important sociological book of the 20th century.

Which Archbishop of Canterbury, hated by Puritans for enforcing ceremony in worship, was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1645?

William Laud went to the block despite holding a royal pardon. Parliament had arrested him back in 1640 and finally condemned him by a bill of attainder.

Which flagship of the 1630 Puritan fleet to Massachusetts, once called Eagle, was renamed to honour a noblewoman aboard?

Arbella honoured Lady Arbella Johnson, an earl's daughter who sailed with her husband Isaac. The ship also carried the company's charter, so the colony's government crossed the ocean with it.

By what name is the 1647 Massachusetts law known that made every town of over 50 families hire a teacher?

The Old Deluder Satan Law takes its nickname from its opening sentence, which blames the devil for keeping people from knowing scripture. Towns of over 100 families also had to open a grammar school.

Which 1662 compromise let baptised but unconverted New England Puritans present their own children for baptism?

The Half-Way Covenant answered a crisis: the founders' grown children often had no conversion experience to report. Their babies could now be baptised, but the parents were still kept from the Lord's Supper.

Which 1675 war, named for the English nickname of the Wampanoag sachem Metacom, destroyed twelve New England towns?

King Philip's War is considered by many the deadliest war in colonial American history. A majority of New England's towns were drawn in, and settlers did not regain their pre-war borders until 1700.

Which Puritan missionary, called the apostle to the Indians, translated the entire Bible into the Massachusett language?

John Eliot's translation, published in 1663, was the first complete Bible printed in the Western hemisphere. Indigenous people, among them a Nipmuc leader, helped to create it, and Eliot also founded Roxbury Latin School.

Which preacher, an heir to the Puritan tradition, delivered the 1741 sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?

Jonathan Edwards helped to shape the First Great Awakening with sermons like it. He died in 1758 from a smallpox inoculation, taken to encourage others, soon after becoming president of what is now Princeton.

Which Shakespeare comedy mocks the pompous steward Malvolio, who is described by another character as a kind of Puritan?

Twelfth Night tricks Malvolio into wearing yellow stockings and cross garters, a fashion his mistress detests. His name comes from the Italian for ill will.

What 80-foot structure topped with deer antlers did Thomas Morton raise at Merrymount, outraging his Puritan neighbours?

A maypole was the centrepiece of Morton's drunken May Day revels. The Puritans cut it down and later renamed the settlement Mount Dagon, after a god of the Philistines.

Which kind of testimony, behind many convictions at the Salem witch trials, did the court of 1693 refuse to accept?

Spectral evidence meant an accuser's claim to have seen the apparition or shape of the person tormenting them. Once leading clergymen came to doubt it, the trials collapsed.

Which Puritan church officer carried a knobbed staff to rap the heads of sleepers during the long Sunday sermon?

The tithingman used the knobbed end of his staff on dozing men and restless boys. From the other end hung a foxtail or a hare's foot, for tickling sleeping women awake more gently.

Which schoolbook, first issued in Boston around 1690, taught Puritan children the alphabet alongside religious maxims?

The New England Primer reportedly sold 2 million copies during the 18th century. Its first publisher was a printer who had moved to Boston in 1686 to escape a brief Catholic ascendancy at home.

Which Salem witch trials judge stood before his congregation in 1697 as his minister read out his confession of guilt?

Samuel Sewall is the judge best known for apologising over the trials. In 1700 he also published The Selling of Joseph, a tract arguing from scripture that slavery was unjustified and sinful.

Which English legislature of 1653 takes its nickname from a member, a London leather seller named Praise-God?

Barebone's Parliament was not elected at all: every member was nominated. It was also known as the Little Parliament and the Parliament of Saints, and its members voted to dissolve it after five months.

Which 1640s council of Puritan divines wrote a Confession of Faith that Presbyterian churches still treat as a standard?

The Westminster Assembly first met in the Henry VII Chapel, then moved to the warmer Jerusalem Chamber. Parliament adopted the presbyterian system it favoured but lacked the power to implement it.

Which royal declaration angered Puritans by allowing Sunday archery and dancing and was burned by Parliament in 1643?

The Book of Sports also listed leaping and vaulting among its harmless recreations. Clergy were ordered to read it from the pulpit, and under its second royal sponsor those who refused could lose their posts.

Which animal's severed head did New England Puritans nail up outside their place of worship to claim a town bounty?

A wolf was dreaded far more than a bear, because it attacked the settlers' flocks. In 1640 two Massachusetts towns paid ten shillings for a dead one and fifteen for one brought in alive.

From sunset on which day did strict New England Puritans stop shaving, sweeping, cooking and even making beds?

Saturday evening counted as part of the Puritan Sabbath, which ran on to the end of Sunday. An early order to one governor had everyone stop work at three o'clock that afternoon.

Which brass-bound timekeeper stood beside a Puritan pulpit so the whole congregation could follow a sermon's length?

An hourglass was turned each time its sand ran out, and one preacher's sermons often needed four turns. At home, families told the time by sundials and by noon marks on the floor.

Which woman enslaved by the minister of Salem Village was the first person to confess to witchcraft in 1692?

Tituba's confession gave credence to the accusations and helped to set the panic going. She later said that the minister had beaten the confession out of her and coached her on what to say.