Many English colonists who came to the New World were political/social outcasts due to their religious beliefs. This included Puritans, Anabaptists, and Quakers. In answer to the original question, you could say that a fundamental difference between English and Spanish colonization is the presence of the Catholic Church, which tended to act as a political/economic entity all by itself in the new Spanish colonies. As far as I know, there was no landowning entity in the English colonies that compares to the Catholic church.