What was the role of religion in the founding of the New England Colonies?
Religious considerations entered into the rise and growth of settlements in every English colony. It was in search of freedom for their form of religious worship as well as a livelihood that the Pilgrims, persecuted in England and for a time exiles in Holland, went to Plymouth in 1620. Puritans settled in Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were originally members of the Church of England, but they wanted to alter some of its practices and they soon separated from the Church. after the separation each town set up of church of its own, called Congregational, and taxpayers were required by law to support it. For a long time, every voter in Massachusetts had to be a member of the the Congregational Church. Dissenters and critics who appeared among the Puritans were frowned upon and sometimes severely punished, executed, or exiled into the wilderness. The first English colony in america to grant religious liberty as a matter of law and principle was an offshoot from Massachusetts, at first call
