The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628–1691) was an English settlement on the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay. A second wave of English Puritans left England in the 1630s, establishing the new colony along with the New Haven Colony, the Connecticut Colony, and Rhode Island.
Unlike the exodus of young men to the Chesapeake colonies, these migrants were families with young children and their university-trained ministers. Their aim—according to John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay—was to create a model of reformed Protestantism, a “city upon a hill,” a new English Israel.