Chapter 2: Beginnings of English America Flashcards
Virginia Company
a private business organization whose shareholders included merchants, aristocrats, and members of Parliament; sponsored 1607 voyage
Roanoke
failed 1585 settlement started by Sir Walter Raleigh
A Discourse Concerning Western Planting
written by Protestant Minister Richard Hakluyt; 23 reasons Queen Elizabeth I should support the establishment of colonies
enclosure movement
landlords sought profits, raised sheep and evicted small farmers; some benefitted but 1000s uprooted from the land
indentured servents
settlers who signed on for a temporary period in order to get free transport to America
John Smith
governor; regime of forced labor; “He that will not work, shall not eat.”; iron rule
headright system
introduced by Virginia Company; awarded 50 acres of land to any colonist who paid for his own or another’s passage to the New World
House of Burgesses
first elected assembly in colonial America
Uprising of 1622
surprise attack by Indians that wiped out 1/4 of Virginia’s settler population
tobacco
crop grown in Virginia that grew the colony’s wealth/power; colonists believed it had medicinal effects
dower rights
possessed by married English women; 1/3 husband’s property hers when he died
Puritanism
English religion that sought to purify the Church of England; founded in Massachusetts bay Colony under John Winthrop
John Winthrop
first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony; defined “natural liberty” and “moral liberty”
pilgrims
puritan separatists who broke completely with the Church of England and sailed to the New World aboard the Mayflower founding Plymouth Colony on Cape Cod in 1620
Mayflower Compact
plan pilgrim leaders drew up on Mayflower, men agreed to obey “just and equal laws” by representatives of their own choosing