Puritans

Why it matters for the novel

Daniel Waterhouse is a Puritan’s son. His father Drake lost his ears and nose for the cause. The Waterhouse family’s entire worldview — suspicion of monarchy, hostility to the Church of England’s rituals, millenarian expectations of the apocalypse, moral seriousness bordering on fanaticism — comes from Puritanism. Daniel spends the novel trying to honor his father’s principles while living in a world that has moved on from them. Stephenson invented a fictional sect called the “Barkers” for the Waterhouse family, but they represent a real and diverse movement.

What Puritanism was

A reform movement within the Church of England, beginning in the late 1500s. Puritans wanted to “purify” the church of what they saw as leftover Catholic practices — vestments, altars, bishops, ceremony. They wanted stripped-down worship focused on scripture and preaching. The name was originally an insult.

What they believed

Scripture alone — The Bible was the only authority. Church tradition, papal decrees, royal edicts about religion — all illegitimate.
Predestination — Following Calvin, many Puritans believed God had already chosen who would be saved and who damned. This sounds fatalistic but in practice produced intense self-examination: you scrutinized your own behavior for signs of election.
The visible saints — Church membership should be limited to those who could demonstrate genuine conversion. This made Puritan communities tight-knit and exclusive.
Apocalyptic expectation — Many Puritans believed they were living in the last days. Drake Waterhouse’s obsession with the coming apocalypse is typical, not eccentric.

The persecution

Elizabeth I tolerated Puritans uneasily. James I was hostile (“I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land”). Charles I and Archbishop Laud were actively repressive — Puritan pamphleteers were pilloried, had their ears cropped, and were branded. Drake Waterhouse’s mutilation in the novel reflects real cases like William Prynne, who lost his ears in 1634 for publishing an attack on theater (which the queen patronized).

This persecution drove the Great Migration: between 1620 and 1640, roughly 20,000 Puritans emigrated to New England. Boston, where the novel opens, is a Puritan city.

The Civil War and after

The English Civil War was partly a Puritan revolution. Cromwell’s New Model Army was famous for its godliness — soldiers who prayed before battle and sang psalms on the march. The Interregnum (1649-1660) was the closest Puritans came to building their ideal society: theaters closed, Christmas celebrations restricted, strict moral codes enforced.

The Restoration ended that. After 1660, Puritans became “Nonconformists” or “Dissenters” — tolerated but excluded from universities, government, and military commissions. The Toleration Act of 1689 (after the Glorious Revolution) granted them freedom of worship but not full civil rights. This is the world Daniel Waterhouse navigates: respected for his intellect, marginalized for his faith.

The many sects

“Puritan” was an umbrella term covering enormous variety:

Presbyterians — Wanted a national church governed by elected elders, not bishops.
Independents/Congregationalists — Each congregation should govern itself. Cromwell was broadly in this camp.
Baptists — Only adult believers should be baptized.
Quakers — No clergy, no sacraments, direct experience of God. Founded by George Fox in the 1650s.
Diggers, Levellers, Ranters, Fifth Monarchists — Radical groups with political and economic programs. The Levellers wanted something like democracy; the Diggers practiced communal farming; the Fifth Monarchists wanted to overthrow all earthly government to prepare for Christ’s return.
Barkers — Stephenson’s fictional sect for the Waterhouse family. “There were plenty of real ones,” he noted in his own annotation, “such as Diggers, Levellers, Ranters, Quakers, etc.”