Abstract
This chapter offers a survey of the first development of Congregationalist convictions and their subsequent development in seventeenth-century England and New England. It positions the Congregationalists as a ‘third way’ between the Separatists and the Church of England; it explores how Congregationalism tended to look uneasily in both directions at the same time, making it difficult to define and disentangle from adjacent Puritan groups that otherwise held so much in common. It follows the development of Congregationalism from its early emergence in England across to New England and back to the contexts of the English Civil War, the Interregnum, and the Restoration period. It closes with some overall reflections on the place and significance of Congregationalism within Dissent.