[colorado tanker]

Merritt also noted the strong misconception commonly found with English settlers arriving to North America is that they were there for “religious freedom.”

The reporter may have mangled Merritt's statement, so I'll give him the benefit of a doubt.

The religious freedom motive varied dramatically from colony to colony. Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and to some extent Maryland were settled by people seeking religious freedom. Jamestown was not. The settlers were there to make money, at first with gold and later with tobacco, but that is not to say they didn't practice the Christian faith. The settlers initially were adherents to the Church of England, which in the early seventeenth century was not about religious freedom, but religious conformity. The established religion in Jamestown was C of E. Eventually, adherents to other religions arrived in Virginia and in the eighteenth century there would be a movement to disestablish the C of E, long after Jamestown's heyday.

[muawiyah]

The adherence to C of E was more political than religious. Members of the Spanish settlement/mission up the James came down to Jamestown and immediately attended Anglican services.

Several reasons for that ~ 1. Nobody came to get them, 2. It was the only church around, 3. The English were making beer and you were not likely to find beer anywhere else North of Florida in those days.

It's always best to go along to get along when in dire straits.

[Pharmboy]

Indeed...as was Niew Amsterdam. The Dutch came there for beaver pelts. The seal of NYC still has a beaver present.