When the Puritans arrived in the New World in the seventeenth century, they believed they were the Chosen Ones, placed in the Promised Land by the hand of God. They had extricated themselves from the oppressions and inequalities of the ancien régime and, in hopeful moments, fantasized that the iron laws of decay endemic to western civilization might not apply in the New World. What they ultimately concluded was that such laws would apply, but only as a test, a rite of passage. Life in the New World would be, in the words of J.G.A. Pocock, “the imperfect experience of the perfection of history.”