There are several popular models of migration to the New World proposed by the anthropological community. The question of how, when and why humans first entered the Americas is of intense interest to anthropologists and has been a subject of heated debate for centuries. As new discoveries come to light, past hypotheses are reevaluated and new theories constructed.

Berengia

The land bridge joined present-day Alaska and Russia in a kind of pre-cold war geologic detente. The bridge "rose" from the ocean as vast amounts of ocean water became tied up in the enormous glaciers of the last ice age. That exposed the broad continental shelves now covered by the Bering Strait and created the land bridge

The Columbian Exchange has been one of the most significant events in the history of world ecology, agriculture, and culture. The term is used to describe the enormous widespread exchange of plants, animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases, and ideas between the Eastern and Western hemispheres that occurred after 1492. Many new and different goods were exchanged between the two hemispheres of the Earth, and it began a new revolution in the Americas and in Europe. In 1492, Christopher Columbus' first voyage launched an era of large-scale contact between the Old and the New Worlds that resulted in this ecological revolution: hence the name "Columbian" Exchange.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther (November 10, 1483 – February 18, 1546) was a German monk,^[1] theologian, university professor, Father of Protestantism,^[2][3][4][5] and church reformer whose ideas influenced the Protestant Reformation and changed the course of Western civilization.^[6]

Luther's theology challenged the authority of the papacy by holding that the Bible is the only infallible source of religious authority^[7] and that all baptized Christians under Jesus are a universal priesthood.^[8] According to Luther, salvation is a free gift of God, received only by true repentance and faith in Jesus as the Messiah, a faith given by God and unmediated by the church.

Christopher Columbus (1451^[1] – May 20, 1506) was a navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. Though not the first to reach the Americas from Afro-Eurasia — preceded some five hundred years by Leif Ericson, and perhaps by others — Columbus initiated widespread contact between Europeans and indigenous Americans. With his several hapless attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, he personally initiated the process of Spanish colonization which foreshadowed general European colonization of the "New World." (The term "pre-Columbian" is sometimes used to refer to the peoples and cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and his European successors.)

The Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of English joint stock companies chartered by James I in 1606 with the purposes of establishing settlements on the coast of North America^[1]. The two companies, called the "Virginia Company of London" (or the London Company) and the "Virginia Company of Plymouth" (or Plymouth Company) operated with identical charters but with differing territories. An area of overlapping territory was created. Within the area of overlap, the two companies were not permitted to establish colonies within one hundred miles of each other. The Plymouth Company never fulfilled its charter ,and its territory that later became New England was then also claimed by France.

The charters of the companies called for a local council for each, but with ultimate authority residing with the King through the Council of Virginia^[2] in England.

The Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island in Dare County in present-day North Carolina was an enterprise financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh in the late 16th century to establish a permanent English settlement in the Virginia Colony. Between 1585 and 1587, groups of colonists were left to make the attempt, all of whom either abandoned the colony or disappeared. The final group disappeared after a period of three years elapsed without supplies from England, leading to the continuing mystery known as "The Lost Colony." The principal hypothesis is that the colonists were absorbed by one of the local indigenous populations.

Jonh Rolfe

The Virginia House of Burgesses was the first elected lower house in the legislative assembly in the New World established in the Colony of Virginia in 1619. Over time, the name came to represent the entire official legislative body of the Colony of Virginia, and later, after the American Revolution, the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Burgess is an English word that originally meant a freeman of a borough or burgh. It later came to mean an elected or un-elected official of a municipality, or the representative of a borough in the English House of Commons

Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of England and Lord of Ireland, later King of Ireland and claimant to the Kingdom of France, from 21 April 1509 until his death. Henry was the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his father, Henry VII.

Henry VIII was a significant figure in the history of the English monarchy. Although in the first parts of his reign he energetically suppressed the Reformation of the Roman Catholic Church, which had been building steam since John Wycliffe of the 14th century, he is more often known for his ecclesiastical struggles with Rome. These struggles ultimately led to him separating the Anglican Church from Roman authority, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and establishing the English monarch as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Although some claim he became a Protestant on his death-bed, he advocated Catholic ceremony and doctrine throughout his life; royal backing of the English Reformation was left to his heirs, Edward VI and Elizabeth I, while his daughter Mary I fought to return papal authority over the church. Henry also oversaw the legal union of England and Wales (see Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542). He is noted for being married six times.

Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. The daughter of Henry VIII, she was born a princess, but her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed three years after her birth, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her brother, Edward VI, cut her out of the succession. His will, however, was set aside, and in 1558 Elizabeth succeeded her half-sister, the Catholic Mary, during whose reign she had been imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.

Elizabeth set out to rule by good counsel,^[1] and she depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil, Baron Burghley. One of her first moves as queen was to support the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the Supreme Governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement held firm throughout her reign and later evolved into today's Church of England. It was expected that Elizabeth would marry, but despite several petitions from parliament, she never did. The reasons for this choice are unknown, and they have been much debated. As she grew older, Elizabeth became famous for her virginity, and a cult grew up around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants and literature of the day.

The first Act of Supremacy granted King Henry VIII of England Royal Supremacy which is still the legal authority of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. Royal Supremacy is specifically used to describe the legal sovereignty of the civil laws over the laws of the Church in England.

Mary I (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558), was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 19 July 1553 until her death. The fourth crowned monarch of the Tudor dynasty, she is remembered for restoring England to Roman Catholicism after succeeding her short-lived half brother, Edward VI, to the English throne. In the process, she had almost 300 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian Persecutions, earning her the sobriquet of Bloody Mary. Her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her successor and half-sister, Elizabeth I.

Edward VI (12 October 1537 – 6 July 1553) became King of England and Ireland on 28 January 1547 and was crowned on 20 February at the age of nine.^[2] The son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Edward was the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty and England's first Protestant ruler. During Edward’s reign, the realm was governed by a Regency Council, because he never reached maturity. The Council was led from 1547 to 1549 by his uncle Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, and from 1550 to 1553 by John Dudley, 1st Earl of Warwick, who in 1551 became 1st Duke of Northumberland.

Edward's reign was marked by economic problems, military withdrawal from Scotland and Boulogne, and social unrest that in 1549 erupted into riot and rebellion. It also saw the transformation of the Anglican Church into a recognisably Protestant body.^[3] Henry VIII had severed the link between the Church of England and Rome, and during Edward's reign, Protestantism was established for the first time in England, with reforms that included the abolition of clerical celibacy and the mass, and the imposition of compulsory services in English. The architect of these reforms was Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose Book of Common Prayer has proved lasting.

When Edward fell terminally ill in 1553, he and his Council drew up a "Devise for the Succession" in an attempt to prevent a Catholic backlash against the Protestant Reformation. Edward named his cousin Lady Jane Grey as his heir and excluded his two half sisters, the Catholic Mary and Protestant Elizabeth. On Edward's death at the age of 15, the succession was disputed. Jane survived as queen for only nine days, before the Privy Council proclaimed Mary, for whom the people had risen in support in the counties. As queen, Mary proceeded to undo many of Edward's Protestant reforms, but Elizabeth's religious settlement of 1559 was to secure his Protestant legacy.

A Puritan of 16th and 17th century England was an associate of any number of religious groups advocating for more "purity" of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and group piety. Puritans felt that the English Reformation had not gone far enough, and that the Church of England was tolerant of practices which they associated with the Church of Rome. The word "Puritan" was originally an alternate term for "Cathar" and was a pejorative used to characterize them as extremists similar to the Cathari of France. The Puritans sometimes cooperated with presbyterians, who put forth a number of proposals for "further reformation" in order to keep the Church of England more closely in line with the Reformed Churches on the Continent.

Plymouth’s history goes back to the Bronze Age, when its first settlement grew at Mount Batten. This settlement continued to grow as a trading post for the Roman Empire, until the more prosperous village of Sutton, the current Plymouth, surpassed it. In 1620 the Pilgrim Fathers left Plymouth for the New World, establishing the first colony of the United States of America. During the English Civil War the town was held by the Parliamentarians and was besieged between 1642 and 1646.

Throughout the Industrial Revolution Plymouth grew as a major shipping port, handling imports and passengers from the Americas and the construction of ships, ranging from small fishing boats to battleships for the Royal Navy. This later led to its targeting and partial destruction during World War Two, an act known as the Plymouth Blitz. After the war the city centre was completely rebuilt.

Today the city is home to nearly 250,000 people, making it the 15th most populous city in England. It has its own city council and is represented nationally by three MPs. Plymouth’s economy is still strongly influenced by shipbuilding, but has since the 1990s become a more service-based economy with the 11th largest university in the United Kingdom. Its naval base, HMNB Devonport is the largest operational naval base in Western Europe. Plymouth has ferry links to France and Spain and an airport with international services

Massachusetts

Bay

Company

The Massachusetts Bay Colony (sometimes called the Massachusetts Bay Company, for the institution that founded it) was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, centered around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The area is now in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of the 50 United States.

Prior to 1753, England and its colonies used the Julian calendar, and the dates for all events in England and its colonies are reported using this calendar, unless specified otherwise. When using the Julian calendar, all dates from January 1 to March 22 must be reported using the "double date" notation, such as 1628/29.

The Mayflower Compact was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was drafted by the Pilgrims who crossed the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower, seeking the freedom to practice Christianity according to their own determination. It was signed on November 11, 1620 (OS)^[1] by 41 of the ship's more than one hundred passengers^[2], in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod.

Thomas Hooker (July 5, 1586 – July 7, 1647) was a prominent Puritan religious and colonial leader remembered as probably the pre-eminent founder of the Colony of Connecticut.

He was born in rural Marefield, Leicestershire. After Mr. Hooker's conversion, his keenly reasoned reflections upon the meanings of Biblical passages and upon the life of a Christian helped his rise into the leadership of the Puritan movement in England. But this status as a leader in the Puritan movement would cause him to emigrate first to Holland and then to New England in 1633, on the ship Griffin, [1] to escape the persecution of Archbishop William Laud for non-conformity. He was appointed the first pastor of the church at Newetowne, Massachusetts (now Cambridge). He is attributed as being the first minister of the First Parish in Cambridge, a church that still exists in the present day. His home was on a plot of land which today is part of the yard at Harvard College. His departure from the Colony of the Massachussettes Bay (the nucleus of the present-day Commonwealth of Massachusetts) was one of the key events leading to the creation of the Colony of Connecticut (the nucleus of the present-day State of the same name).

John Davenport (April 9, 1597 – May 30, 1670) was a puritan clergyman and co-founder of the American colony of New Haven.

Born in Coventry, Warwickshire, England to a wealthy family, Davenport was educated at Oxford University. He matriculated at Merton College in 1613 but migrated to Magdalen College two years later, eventually leaving Oxford before completing his degree.^[1]

His father was Henry Davenport (d. May 29, 1627), draper, alderman, and Mayor of Coventry, son of Edward Davenport, Mayor of Coventry (1551), and Margery Harford. His mother, Winifred Barnaby (1569 - April 12, 1597), is most probably a descendant of William I of Scotland and of Henry I of England and a direct descendant of an illegitimate son of Henry II and Rosamond de Clifford.^[2] After serving as the chaplain of Hilton Castle he became the minister of St. Stephen Coleman Street in London. In 1625 he returned to Oxford for further studies.

Anne Huthinson

Anne Hutchinson (July 20, 1591 – August 20, 1643) was the unauthorized Puritan minister of a dissident church discussion group and a pioneer settler in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Netherlands. Her brilliant mind and kindness won admiration and a following. Hutchinson held Bible meetings for women that soon had great appeal to men as well. Eventually, she went beyond Bible study to proclaiming boldly facets of her own theological interpretations of the ministers sermons of that day, some of which offended colony leadership. Great controversy ensued, and after an arduous trial before a jury of officials from both government and clergy, eventually she was banished from her colony.^[1]

She is a key figure in the study of the development of religious freedom in England's American colonies and the history of women in ministry. The state of Massachusetts honors her with a State House monument calling her a "courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration."

The Great Migration may refer to the Winthrop Fleet of 1630, wherein eleven ships delivered 1,000 passengers migrating from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It may refer more generally to the Puritan migration of approximately 40,000 English refugees to what is now the Northeastern United States, the Chesapeake Bay area, and the Caribbean during the 1630s. This greatly increased the (European) population of North America, which is why it is called the "Great Migration". Many Puritans migrated from England to North America during the 1620s to the 1640s due to belief that the Church of England was beyond reform. However, most Puritans in England and New England were non-separatists. They continued to profess allegiance to the Church of England despite their dissent with leadership and practices.

The English Civil War (1642-1651) was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists. The first (1642–1646) and second (1648–1649) civil wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third war (1649–1651) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The Civil War ended with the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.

The Civil War led to the trial and execution of Charles I, the exile of his son, Charles II, and replacement of English monarchy with first, the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653), and then with a Protectorate (1653–1659), under Oliver Cromwell's personal rule. The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England ended with the victors consolidating the established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that a British monarch cannot govern without Parliament's consent, although this concept was established only with the Glorious Revolution later in the century.