That was very interesting, thank you.
My own 10th great-grandfather left England for North Carolina before 1725.
Over the years, I've been fortunate to be able to travel to Europe quite frequently. It really is (was?) quite nice - it's easy to see why so many Euros stayed put & never left.
One thing that never ceases to strike me is to consider just how terrible it must have been to cause someone to uproot everything in their life - most importantly family - and strike off for an unknown, harsh place like N America (or Australia). No safety net, no health care, no welfare, if you dropped or got sick, you simply died there in the mud and no one cared or tried to help.
We Americans are the descendants of these hardy pioneers. Euros may be our cousins, but we really are different. Euros think we are loud & brutish, and I guess we are in the context of the culture they come from. The English really are polite - like a Lab that was bred to be friendly, any rough types were either sent to the gallows or overseas, leaving only the meek and mild behind.
The common people could survive as long as their 'betters' thought it was in their own best interests to protect the country. But, once the elite realized they could make a financial killing (after all, the nobility still owns something like 90% of all the land) from open borders, then the flood gates were let open.
Who speaks for the commoner? No one, that's who. And if you even so much as utter anything remotely controversial (sectarian) in public, you can be arrested and sentenced to jail. It's only now that the English are apparently waking up to realize the trap in which they find themselves.