Puritans sign "the Mayflower Compact" binding their community "to the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian Faith"

During Winthrop's youth, colonial settlement was already underway: the first permanent English settlement was established in Jamestown, VA in 1607; English Puritans founded a colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. Born to a wealthy family, John Winthrop became committed to Puritanism during student days. Winthrop was a successful lawyer in London by the time Charles I became King of England in 1625. Under Charles, Puritans suffered discrimination and persecution. This provoked the "great migration" in which thousands of Puritans left England, mostly for New England. In 1630 John Winthrop led the first group of colonists to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In a now-famous sermon delivered on board their ship Arbella, Winthrop exhorted the colonists to keep their "covenant" or solemn obligation to God and to each other. Their community would be like a "city on a hill," with the eyes of all the world upon it. Winthrop served as governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony for seventeen years. During his first year the vote was extended to include all free male citizens who were members of the church--a much wider franchise than existed at the time in England. Winthrop's critics saw him as too lenient, although under Winthrop's rule the dissident Puritans Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams both were banished from the Bay colony for disturbing the civil and religious peace.