sentences:  They came in family groups rather than as isolated individuals and were motivated chiefly by a quest for freedom to practice their Puritan religion.King James I of England made some efforts to reconcile the Puritan clergy who had been alienated by the lack of change in the Church of England.Puritans embraced Calvinism (Reformed theology) with its opposition to ritual and an emphasis on preaching, a growing sabbatarianism, and preference for a presbyterian system of church polity, as opposed to the episcopal polity of the Church of England which had also preserved medieval canon law almost intact.