John Winthrop was the outstanding figure of the Puritan voyages, the first great American. He came to the conclusion that overcrowded, irreligious, ill-governed England was a lost cause, and New England the solution, setting his views down fiercely in 'General Observations for the Plantation of New England':
All other Churches of Europe are brought to desolation and it cannot be but that he like Judgement is coming upon us ... This land grows weary of its Inhabitants, so as man, who is the most precious of all Creatures, is heere more vile and base than the earth they tread upon ... We are grown to the height of intemperance in all excess of Ryot, as no mans estate almost will suffice to keep sayle with his equals ... The Fountains of Learning and Religion are corrupted ... Most children, even the best wittes and fayrest hopes, are perverted, corrupted and uterly overthrowne by the multitude of evil examples and the licensious government of those seminaries.
