I'll get you started so you can do the research on your own:

The Puritans had some pretty far-right religious values, even for their day, but their politics were mostly left-wing for their day. And since religion and government were so tied up at that time, it can be confusing.

Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church and in the decades that followed, there emerged three political factions. The most conservative, politically, would be the "Papists", or Catholics, who believed the King was wrong, that they should bring England back into the fold of the Catholic Church and the influence of Rome.

The second were the "Protestants," the faction that protested against the Catholic Church. This faction was aligned with the King, thought what the King did was right and just, and were willing to help build up a religious and governmental structure without the influence of the Pope, with the King of England the new head of their new church structure.

The third group were the "Puritans" who thought that the King hadn't gone far enough. They believed that the King had just replaced one political body with another. They wanted to "purify" the church from the effects of national politics.

This third group called themselves the "Puritans" but the king called them the "Separatists" or the "Dissenters". Many of them were under legal threat or even had been arrested for holding illegal meetings and such, which resulted in many of them being exiled to the Netherlands where there was relative religious tolerance. When the Puritans came to America aboard the Mayflower, many of them were actually coming from their exiled homes in the Netherlands.

So look up information on "Separatists" and "Dissenters" as well as "Puritans" in the days of Henry VIII and after and that should get you started. You may also want to delve into the subject of church polity and how the "Congregationalist" Puritans differed from the Anglican Church and how they both differed from the polity of the Catholic Church.

That should get you started. Good luck!

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