The Massachusetts Bay Colonies essays

The Massachusetts Bay Colonies essays The year 1607 marked an important event in English history. Jamestown, the first colony in America, was set up on an inland peninsula of Chesapeake Bay by English people. Later, the Pilgrims' Mayflower reached by accident to a place called Massachusetts Bay, and settled in the town called Plymouth; that was 1620, about a decade after the settlements of Jamestown. Though English people founded these two areas, they had many differences and similarities in between. All in all, we can broadly classify them into four directions: Initial goals and characters of the colonies, early difficulties, colonial conflicts and the Royal policies toward them. For the Chesapeake Bay colonists, the initial goal of these people for expanding out of England is that they wanted to search for more wealth, fame and glory. In an early 17th century, when King James I saw Spain's success in making reasonable profits in Caribbean islands, he granted a charter to some English merchants, gentlemen, and aristocrats, who founded the Virginia Company for colonizing Northern America. They hoped that through trading and exploring gold deposits in America, their dreams would somehow come true. Since the Spanish had occupied eastern America for settlements, they had to choose among those areas atop the Spanish colonies, which was the Chesapeake Bay of Virginia. In a sense, Jamestown was founded by commercial prospects, under greedy investments of rich people in England. However, the reasons for founding Massachusetts Bay were much different than its Chesapeake counterpart; it was founded due to religious conflicts. The first town Plymouth was established by the Pilgrims, the Separatists who suffered persecution from the government. Although that was the first colony in Massachusetts Bay, the major settlements did not come until 1629 when the Puritan merchants, landed gentlemen and lawyers organized the Massachusetts Bay Company and founded the town of Salem. As opp...