Puritans, a name first given, according to Fuller, in 1564, and according to Strype in 1569, to those clergymen of the Church of England who refused to conform to its liturgy, ceremonies, and discipline as arranged by Archbishop Parker and his coadjutors. The history of Puritanism within the church is sketched at ENGLAND (CHURCH OF), Vol. IV. pp. 358-359. In spite of the sharpest repressive measures, the principles of the party amongst the clergy who believed that the church did not separate itself markedly enough from Roman Catholicism and needed further reformation gradually spread among the serious portion of the laity, who were also called Puritans. But the name appears not to have been confined to those who wished for certain radical changes in the forms of the church. The character that generally accompanied this wish led naturally enough to a wider use of the term; hence, according to Sylvester, 'the vicious multitude of the ungodly called all Puritans that were strict and serious in a holy life were they ever so conformable.' This is the sense in which the Elizabethan dramatists use the word. From this very breadth of usage one sees that there were different degrees of Puritanism. Some would have been content with a moderate reform in the rites, discipline, and liturgy of the church; others (like Cartwright of Cambridge) wished to abolish Episcopacy altogether, and to substitute Presbyterianism; while a third party, the Brownists or Independents, were out-and-out dissenters, opposed alike to Presbyterianism and Episcopacy. During the reigns of James I. and Charles I. the spirit of Puritanism continued more and more to leaven English society and the English parliament, although the most violent efforts were made by both monarchs to extirpate it. Up till the time of the Synod of Dort (1618-19) both the Puritans and their opponents in the church had been substantially Calvinist; the strong tendency towards Arminianism amongst churchmen raised a new ground of controversy between the Puritans and the other sections of the church, both Laudian and Latitudinarian. The policy of Laud and the outrages practised by Charles on the English constitution led many who were not at all Genevan in their ideas to oppose both church and king for the sake of the national liberties. In the memorable 'Westminster Assembly of Divines' (1643) the great majority of the ministers were Presbyterians. But the more advanced Puritans, who were predominant in the army and the parliament, ultimately triumphed in the person of Cromwell (q.v.). The Restoration (1660) brought back Episcopacy, and the Act of Uniformity (1662) threw the Puritans of the church into the position of dissenters. Their subsequent history is treated under the different forms of dissent. Before the Civil War broke out so great were the hardships to which the Puritans were exposed that many of them emigrated to America, to seek liberty and peace on the solitary shores of the New World. There they became the founders of the New England states, and cultivated unmolested that form of Christianity to which they were attached. Nowhere did the spirit of Puritanism in its evil as well as its good more thoroughly express itself than in Massachusetts. In Scotland Puritanism dates rather from the 'Second Reformation' of 1638 than from the original establishment of Presbyterianism after the Reformation.
See Neal's History of the Puritans (ed. by Toulmin, 5 vols. 1822); the histories by Stowell (1849; new ed. 1878) and Marsden (1850); Bacon, The Genesis of the New England Churches (New York, 1874); Ellis,
Puritan Age in Massachusetts (Boston, 1888); several of the works cited under S. R. GARDINER; Professor Dowden's Puritan and Anglican (1901); the articles in this work on INDEPENDENTS, BROWNE, PRESBYTERIANISM, WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY, PRYNNE, MARPRELATE, HAMPTON COURT, SMECTYMNUS; on ELIZABETH, JAMES I., CHARLES I., CROMWELL, MILTON; on LAUD, PARKER, GRINDAL, WHITGIFT; and on the Puritans HOWE, BAXTER, OWEN. In Nichol's edition of the Puritan divines (26 vols. 1861 et seq.) other names included are those of Manton, Adams, Goodwin, and Clarkson.