Why did English people want to move to the America's?

Many immigrants came to America seeking greater economic opportunity, while some, such as the Pilgrims in the early 1600s, arrived in search of religious freedom. From the 17th to 19th centuries, hundreds of thousands of African slaves came to America against their will.

Two powerful motives drove the first Englishmen who ventured into the New World. Some, like the Puritans or the Quakers, wanted to escape religious persecution and bigotry in their times. Their religious ideas and practices put them at odds with established ecclesiastical traditions. Other people embarked to the new lands in order to look for economic opportunites that were denied to them in England because of its rigid social order.