The Difference Between the English Colonies of New England and the Spanish Settlements in the Southwest

The Spanish settled in southwest and the English settled in New England. Despite originally being from the same region of the world, the Spanish and English settlers’ views on religion and politics vary greatly. The differences between Spanish settlements in the southwest and the English colonies in New England are the greatly contrasting religious views and political behaviors between their own settlement and that of the mother country.

One of the differences between the Spanish settlers in the southwest and English in New England was the contrasting religious views on involvement of the church and mother country and how the settlers went about converting people to the religion practiced. The religion that the English mother country had practiced was a completely different from the religion of the English settlers. At one time Great Britain was a staunch Roman Catholic nation like France and Spain. The British monarchs were close allies with the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. King Henry VIII broke from the Roman Catholic Church when the Pope refused the king an annulment from his Spanish Catholic wife Catherine of Aragon. The Pope refused to give King Henry VIII the annulment due to the king’s wife being the Spanish king’s sister, and annulment would cause the Spanish to stop funding the Roman Catholic Church. King Henry VIII broke away and formed the Anglican Church, naming himself the monarch, and head of the Anglican Church. Many groups wanted to make changes to this new church. This group became known as the Puritans, for their want to “purify” the Anglican Church. It was the responsibility of the governors and mayors of Great Britain to make sure people were practicing the Puritan values and beliefs or be faced with criminal charges and public humiliation. Through all of this, there was a group of separatists, who would soon be known as Pilgrims, which decided to go to the New World and make a new life for themselves. In the New World the Pilgrims made changes to the Puritan faith. The Pilgrims formed the belief of predestination, That God chose a select few, before a person was born, to save from sin and elevate to heaven. These people that were believed to have been saved from sin, were called the Elect. The Elect, were of high standard in the church and community. God chose these people to be saved from sin, so the rest of the community looked up to the Elect. The people made the Elect the church leaders and village leaders. The English settlers did everything in their power to appear to be apart of the Elect. For the English settlers everything was appearance. If a person appeared to be Elect, people would believe that to be true. If the people believed a person to be Elect the other settlers would make sure that that person was the leader of church and government. The English settlers set out to be a model for the rest of the world, to illuminate the flaws of the politics and religion in Great Britain. The idea