Most of the stuff you have on there sounds pretty good, but one major aspect of English colonies you may want to mention is indentured servitude. This is the practice that initially brought a lot of the workers to the New World. Indentured servants were men who were contracted in England to work for a period (usually four to seven years) for their contract owner. At the end of their term, they would receive payment, usually in the form of land and materials to begin their own farm. This process gave labor to burgeoning plantations or artisans, and gave poorer English men a way to travel to the New World. However, the system was not perfect, and as good land became harder to find, it eventually started to collapse. The strain on indentured servitude is one factor that helped cause Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. That rebellion can be seen as the first turning point of labor from indentured servants to African slavery in the English colonies.

Since you're writing an essay, here are just some other things to keep in mind:

• Dates are important for understanding the history of anything. There were major differences between the years of colonization for the Spanish and the English. On the mainland of North America, Mexico City was founded in 1521 and St. Augustine was founded in 1565. The English did not even arrive on the scene until 1585 with the Lost Colony in North Carolina. There was not a successful English Colony in North America until 1607 with the founding of Jamestown, and that colony was not even stable until around 1611. The Spanish basically had a 90 year head start in mainland North America, and the English weren't able to get a real foothold until after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The Spanish had conquered virtually everything they wanted before the English ever reached the shore.

• If your essay is more studying the territory within the modern-day United States, it's important to realize that while the Spanish initially were looking for riches, they quickly realized they would not find any. There are no cities of gold in the deserts of the Southwest or the swamps of Florida. These settlements served more strategic purposes than anything. Areas such as Santa Fe in New Mexico were to serve as frontier outposts, and St. Augustine in Florida helped guard the trade routes of the Caribbean.

• Religiously, English colonies were also complicated. While Puritans get a lot of the credit for founding colonies, other minorities fled to the New World too. Maryland, founded in 1632, was created to give refuge for Catholics. Georgia, while originally conceived as a penal colony, was protestant but allowed Jews and Lutherans to settle.

• The English also had an extremely complicated relationship with Native Americans. While they did originally rely on them for survival, as more people arrived in the colonies, the Natives were pushed farther and farther away. Tribes frequently fought with each other and the English as a result. In some instances the English even used Native Americans as slaves, but preferred Africans as they were easier to prevent from escaping. (Native Americans knew the local land, and had a population they could blend back into)

• Also make sure you mention mercantilism because every European power including England and Spain practiced it. You touched on it in the first English bullet point. Mercantilism is essentially when a colony can only trade with the mother country. The colony provides raw materials for the mother country, and serves as a market for that country's exports. Colonies could not manufacture, all those goods had to come from the mother country. It made colonies dependent, and provided a source of revenue for the mother countries.