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The English people of the Renaissance lived in an expansive world.  They were making advances on every front-medical, educational, religious, geographical, and political.  They were developing a sense of what it means to be English and were moving forward as one national body into the modern age.  For a people in such an expansive frame of mind, English as they had received it was insufficient.  There were new ideas they needed to express and classical ones that had been buried in the Middle Ages.  The language of the Renaissance, of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth and the King James Bible, was the first English spoken in the New World, which was itself near boundless.  Early maps show how little the colonists new about the strange new land.  They didn't even know how far away the Pacific Ocean was.  Early colonial maps assign territories to the individual colonies by extending the boundary lines into the infinite West,

which has led to such geographical oddities as Ohio's Western Reserve being, for centuries, technically part of Connecticut.  The wording of early charters also reflects this idea, promising the Virginia colonists:

"all those Lands, Countries, and Territories, situate, lying, and being in that Part of America, called Virginia, from the Point of Land, called Cape or Point Comfort, all along the Sea Coast to the Northward, two hundred miles, and from the said Point of Cape Comfort, all along the Sea Coast to the Southward, two hundred Miles, and all that Space and Circuit of Land, lying from the Sea Coast of the Precinct aforesaid, up into the Land throughout from Sea to Sea, West and Northwest; And also all the Islands lying within one hundred Miles along the Coast of both Seas of the Precinct aforesaid; Together with all the Soils, Grounds, Havens, and Ports, Mines, as well Royal Mines of Gold and Silver, as other Minerals, Pearls, and precious Stones, Quarries, Woods, Rivers, Waters, Fishings, Commodities, Jurisdictions, Royalties, Privileges, Franchises, and Preheminences within the said Territories, and the Precincts thereof, whatsoever, and thereto, and thereabouts both by Sea and Land, being, or in any sort belonging or appertaining."

King James promised his colonists the entire width of the American continent, "from Sea to Sea," without having any idea what a massive tract that was.  Other charters, like the ones for Connecticut and the Carolinas, denote the "South Seas," known to us as the Pacific Ocean, as their Western boundary.