I'd never read about the english sending convicts to New England, but it doesn't surprise me, the Puritans were certainly persona non gratis in England at the time, a drive around Cape Breton will tell you where all the pesky highlanders went after 1745, actually we're all pretty much descended from the rebels, misfits and dregs of Europe, however that was defined at the time.
History is a funny thing, because only one side ever gets told. I'll bet 9 out of 10 people with college educations would tell you the civil war was fought over slavery, or that the colonists won their revolution because Washington was a military genius or maybe because the French entered the war, And that's the highly educated people, or the ones that can regurgitate whats been put in their head, and have a retention period of more than 5 minutes. Doesn't mean they've learned how to think, or to see patterns or know that history is going to repeat over and over and over again as long as those with the power aren't relieved of it often, very often.