The puritans didn’t just leave because they were being persecuted religiously. England was over crowded, disease therefore was rampant, they wanted a reform of the Church of England. They were not looking for religious freedom, that is a myth (I’d like to kick the person who started that). They were not interested in other peoples beliefs either. The were against the idea of freedom of religion…

” 1. It will be a service to the church of great consequence to carry the gospel into those parts of the world…to raise a bulwark against the kingdom of AnteChrist which the Jesuites labor to rear up in those parts.

2. All other churches of Europe are brought to desolation and sins for which the Lord begins already to frown upon us and to cut us short, do threaten evil times to be coming upon us and who knows, but that God hath provided this place to be a refuge for many whom he means to save out of

the general calamity….

3. This land grows weary of her inhabitants…masters are forced by authority to entertain servants, parents to maintain their own children, all towns complain of the burden of their poor….

6. The fountains of learning and religion are so corrupted as…most children…are perverted, corrupted, and utterly overthrown by the multitude of evil examples….”

John Winthrop, first government of Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1629

These were the main issues…. here is a bit more detail… below…

No group has played a more pivotal role in shaping American values than the New England Puritans. The seventeenth-century Puritans contributed to our country’s sense of mission, its work ethic, and its moral sensibility. Today, eight million Americans can trace their ancestry to the fifteen to twenty thousand Puritans who migrated to New England between 1629 and 1640.

Few people, however, have been as frequently subjected to caricature and ridicule. The journalist H.L. Mencken defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy.” And particularly during the 1920s, the Puritans came to symbolize every cultural characteristic that “modern” Americans despised. The Puritans were often dismissed as drably-clothed religious zealots who were hostile to the arts and were eager to impose their rigid “Puritanical” morality on the world around them.

This stereotypical view is almost wholly incorrect. Contrary to much popular thinking, the Puritans were not sexual prudes. Although they strongly condemned sexual relations outside of marriage–levying fines or even whipping those who fornicated, committed adultery or sodomy, or bore children outside of wedlock–they attached a high value to the marital tie. Nor did Puritans abstain from alcohol; even though they objected to drunkenness, they did not believe alcohol was sinful in itself. They were not opposed to artistic beauty; although they were suspicious of the theater and the visual arts, the Puritans valued poetry. Indeed, John Milton (1603-1674), one of England’s greatest poets, was a Puritan. Even the association of the Puritans with drab colors is wrong. They especially liked the colors red and blue.

Although the Puritans wanted to reform the world to conform to God’s law, they did not set up a church-run state. Even though they believed that the primary purpose of government was to punish breaches of God’s laws, few people were as committed as the Puritans to the separation of church and state. Not only did they reject the idea of establishing a system of church courts, they also forbade ministers from holding public office.

Perhaps most strikingly, the Puritans in Massachusetts held annual elections and extended the right to vote and hold office to all “freemen.” Although this term was originally restricted to church members, it meant that a much larger proportion of the adult male population could vote in Massachusetts than in England itself (roughly 55 percent, compared to about 33 percent in England).

John Winthrop (1606-1676) was a well-off landowner who served as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for much of its early history. Unlike the Pilgrims, Winthrop and the other Puritans who traveled to Massachusetts were not separatists. Rather than trying to flee the corruptions of a wicked world, they hoped to establish in New England a pure church that would offer a model for the churches in England.