The Puritans were a group of English Reformed Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to "purify" the Church of England from most Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England was only partially reformed.
Puritanism in this sense was founded by some of the returning clergy exiled under Mary I shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England.
Puritanism played a major role in English history during the first half of the 17th century, but the magnitude of that role is still a matter of debate. The English Civil War was first defined as a "Puritan Revolution" by Samuel Rawson Gardiner in the 19th century. Anti-Catholic feeling was stoked by John Pym, a significant and alarmist politician at the time of the Grand Remonstrance of 1641; but revisionist historians such as Kevin Sharpe have cast doubt on the simple outlines of this description.

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