Question

Which of the following was a push factor that encouraged people to leave England?

A. a thriving economy

B. the desire for gold

C. the attraction of fertile land

D. religious persecution

Answer 1

If you mean for the United States, then the last, religious persecution, dominated. Keep in mind many of the 17th century settlers were of various Protestant sects that had fought to bring the Reformation to England and generally failed, and were being vigorously harassed by an upper class sympathetic to the organized Church. It's obscured a little by the weirdness of Henry VIII technically dividing the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church, but the Anglican Church is actually not Protestant, just a variation on Catholicism. Furthermore, English persecution never reached the levels seen in, e.g. Spain. Perhaps for that very reason there *were* Protestants that survived in an organized way to flee to the New World. In Spain and France they were simply dispossessed, imprisoned, killed.

Answer 2

Mind you, if you are talking about 18th and 19th century immigration, the lure of fertile land for the owning would have become quite important, too. Also, although it's not listed, an even bigger factor would have been a lack of social mobility at home. In Europe right up to the 20th century, your station in life -- wealth, respect, power, comfort -- was largely determined at birth, by which class you were born into. Clever people born into lower classes could not better themselves through hard work. That was, at least before the late 20th century, not true in the United States, and it was greatly attracted to poor but clever and hard-working people in a very class-conscious Europe.

Answer 3

B