In the 1630s, the Puritans had fled England, where a small elite of nobles and gentry owned 75 percent of the arable land, while tenants (renters) and propertyless workers farmed it. In New England, the Puritans created a yeoman society of relatively equal landowning farm families. But by 1750, the migrants’ numerous descendants had parceled out the best farmland, threatening the future of the freehold ideal.