Why would you leave England in the late 1600's?

Virginia has a nice climate, you can get land fairly cheaply, and you have exited rigid social system in England. Political repression is also another possibility. Conflict over religious beliefs was intense and some people were actively being repressed by the government.

England just came off a civil war in the 1600s. Power shifted from monarchs, to a dictator, to a new monarch, and then finally to parliament in a short two decades. The religious turmoil was also a big problem at the time, England was protestant and its kings did not do much to help other Protestant kingdoms and eventually a Catholic king (after the dictator) came to rule the Protestant country and he was actually deposed and banished by Parliament who invited another claimant, William of Orange, to the throne who allowed Parliament to take true power with the bill of rights. It is likely that many immigrants left England to escape whoever they disliked that assumed power. English control over its colonies was limited due to the strife.

Also, there was the Great Fire of 1666 where London was burned to the ground which could have caused emigration.

I do believe there was a recession going after all this which could have incited people to try their luck abroad.

He wasn't a Roundhead from the Civil War, possibly? The monarchy was restored in 1660, creating some of a public confution towards the former revolutionaries. Also, the Puritans had supported Cromwell, creating a popular lashback towards the movement which was blamed for sanctioning the outlawing of popular holidays like Christmas and the genocide in Ireland. Many emigrated to the colonies to escape the public eye.

The only other notable event I can think of that may cause someone from Durham to emigrate during that time was a nationwide plague epidemic in 1665.

From the lecture that the park ranger gave us at the ruins of Jamestown, VA, apparently the economy was bad in England back in the 1600s, so the poorest of the poor had a choice of either starving in England, or else take their chances in the New World as employees of the Virginia Company of London. The original plan was to trade with the Indians, look for gold, and to find a route to the spices of the Orient (in other words, to try to become rich and famous). Later, settlers in Virginia began to plant tobacco as a way to make money, as they realized that there was no route to China, and the Virginia indians had no gold.

A large number of people came to the new world colonies looking for free land. Growing cash crops like sugar (in the Caribbean) and tobacco (in Virginia) was the main way for a commoner to make some money for himself, and eventually raise his social status from a peasant to a wealthy land owner. Even if he didn't become rich, owning your own plot of land at least allowed you to support yourself by growing your own food, so you didn't have to become a tenant farmer (serf) growing crops for some wealthy land owning lord back in England (the appeal of "being your own landlord" must have drawn many,as life in the colonies gave a degree of social mobility impossible in England at the time).

Some of the people who came to the New World were pirates (sorry, they were "privateers" -- pirates were criminals, while privateers worked for the British crown, with official papers giving them the right to attack foreign merchants) who were there to attack Spanish ships and steal Aztec gold that was being sent back to Spain (and send it back to England instead). Most of the state sponsored pirates were based in the Caribbean, but they also resupplied in Virginia too, and some retired to become plantation owners in VA.

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Most of Virginia's white immigrants in the 1600s were either indentured servants or convicts.