This is one of my favorite pages. God acted in a strange way to restore the church to its scriptural foundation. That movement is known as the Reformation. This is a basic website (A Puritan Mind) that explains everything you need to know about the Reformation.
"I’ve made a shorter, more manageable historical sketch of the key and principle characters and events of the Reformation in the 16th century. This is a summary of the immense work done by D’Aubigne. The summary runs about 240 pages. It is divided into “books” following D’Aubigne’s outline of the Reformation." - A Puritan's Mind
Book 2 – The Youth, Conversion and Early Labors of Luther (1488-1517)
Book 3 – The Indulgences and the Theses (1517-May, 1518)
Book 4 – Luther Before the Legate (May to December 1518)
Book 5 – The Leipsic Disputation (1519)
Book 6 – The Papal Bull (1520)
Book 7 – The Diet of Worms (1521, January to May)
Book 8 – The Swiss (1484-1522)
Book 9 – First Reforms (1521-1522)
Book 10 – Agitation, Reverses and Progress (1522-1526)
Book 11 – Switzerland – Germany (1523-1527)
Book 12 – The French (1500-1526)
Book 13 – The Protest and the Conference (1526-1529)
Book 14 – The Augsburg Confession (1530)
Book 15 – Switzerland – Conquests (1526-1530)
Book 16 – Switzerland – Catastrophe (1528-1531)
Book 17 – England Before the Reformation
Book 18 – The Revival of the Church
The Puritans were a widespread and diverse group of people who took a stand for religious purity in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries in Europe. Their rise was directly related to the increased knowledge that came to the common people in the Age of Enlightenment. As people learned to read and write, and as the Bible became more accessible to commoners, many began to read the Bible for themselves (a habit that was strongly discouraged in the established church). Some Puritans were connected with Anabaptist groups in continental Europe, but the majority were connected with the Church of England. The word Puritan was first coined in the 1560s as a derisive term for those who advocated more purity in worship and doctrine. - GotQuestions.org