The quest for a godly kingdom
John Winthrop’s home and church in Groton, Suffolk. Thousands of English Puritans left their homes to establish a godly community. Photo: John Morrison
The story of how the two historic Bostons are linked starts in the sixteenth century with the English Reformation. The ideas of continental reformers such as Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli reached East Anglia (the counties of Essex, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, and Cambridge) via the trade routes across the North Sea. The port of Boston, Lincolnshire, and the surrounding area became a hotbed of Protestant ideas during the religious shifts during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. When Mary Tudor sought to restore Catholicism during her brief reign, 1553-1558, many East Anglian reformers were burned at the stake for their commitment to their faith, sacrifices that were recounted by Boston’s John Foxe in his Book of Martyrs.
Queen Elizabeth recommitted England to the Protestant faith, but many reformers believed that the Church of England was insufficiently reformed. Called Puritans, these men and women sought to have qualified preachers in every parish, rejected ceremonies such as the wearing of clerical vestments and the use of the sign of the cross in Baptism, sought Calvinist theological foundation for church teachings, and advocated a strong anti-Catholic foreign policy. In some parts of the country the support of sympathetic bishops and prominent laymen allowed Puritans to institute some of their beliefs and practices in individual parishes, and this continued for a time into the reign of James I (1603-1625).
One of these Puritan areas was the Stour River Valley, on the border between Essex and Suffolk. This valley, where John Winthrop lived, became known as a godly kingdom. John Cotton, who became vicar of St. Botolph’s parish in Boston in 1612, also advanced a Puritan agenda. His preaching drew many godly men and women (likely including Anne Hutchinson) from surrounding towns to hear him preach.
A different path… via Leiden
Not all who sought such spiritual guidance could find it in their parish churches. A group of Puritans in the neighborhood of Scrooby, Nottinghamshire (about sixty miles from Boston), thwarted from implementing parish reforms, began to meet privately in the local manor house occupied by William Brewster. There they prayed, discussed sermons they had heard, sang psalms and shared their religious experiences. In around 1606 they formed their own congregation, agreeing to a covenant whereby they pledged to follow God’s will as it was made known to them. By separating from their parish churches these men and women were breaking the law. After a period of harassment, fines, and imprisonment, the Scrooby congregation emigrated to the Netherlands, where they were able to worship as they believed God called them to do. But after a decade in the Dutch city of Leiden, in 1620 members of the congregation emigrated to America, sailing on the Mayflower and establishing the Plymouth colony.
As darkness closed on the godly kingdom, Puritans considered emigration. Photo: Francis J. Bremer
During the years after the Scrooby congregation left England, Puritan hopes for reforming the national church diminished. Under James I and his son Charles I there were shifts in belief and the introduction of new practices that seemed to suggest a return to Catholicism. In addition, greater pressures were placed on puritan clergy to conform to these new directions. Some were deprived of their livings (fired from their posts) for refusing to conform. Others, seeing the handwriting on the wall, left on their own. As darkness closed on the godly kingdom of the Stour Valley and other such centers of reform, Puritan laymen and clergy began to consider emigration.
God’s Promise to His Plantation
One such group, consisting largely of Puritans from East Anglia, obtained a royal charter for the Massachusetts Bay Company, a corporation intended to establish a colony in New England. They sent an advance party of colonists led by John Endecott that settled Salem in 1629. In July 1629 supporters of the venture gathered at the Sempringham estate of the Earl of Lincoln (eighteen miles from Boston) to plan future steps. Among those at the meeting were John Winthrop, his brother-in-law Emmanuel Downing, the Earl’s steward Thomas Dudley, and the clergymen John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and Roger Williams.
Based on this and other meetings, the leaders decided to move the seat of the company’s government to the colony itself. John Winthrop was chosen the first company governor to govern in Massachusetts, and Thomas Dudley deputy governor. Preparations were made for a fleet to carry the first wave of what would be a Great Migration of Puritans.
In late March, 1630 that fleet was ready to sail. The passengers and their friends gathered in Southampton to hear two sermons, likely in the Church of the Holy Rood. One of those, later published as God’s Promise to His Plantation, was preached by John Cotton, who had accompanied Boston-area emigrants such as William Coddington and Thomas Dudley to see them off. The other was a lay sermon preached by governor John Winthrop that has come to be known as “A Model of Christian Charity.” (The belief that it was preached during the crossing on the flagship the Arbella, and thus to a small portion of the colonists, is erroneously based on an eighteenth-century note affixed to the 17th century manuscript.)
“I thought to come to this place [where] the Lord might be found.”
Katherine, a servant in Cambridge, Massachusetts
A new Boston
After arriving initially at Salem, the colonists soon dispersed to form various small communities, including Watertown, Medford, Lynn, Dorchester. Winthrop, along with others, settled in Charlestown. Finding the water source in Charlestown inadequate for the number of colonists, in September 1630 Winthrop and most of that group crossed the Charles River and established the town which they called Boston, which was the largest city in the Puritan East Anglian heartland, and the original home of some of the principal settlers. While there were some questions over where the colony government would meet – Thomas Dudley lobbied for Newtowne (later Cambridge) – Boston became both the government and cultural center of Massachusetts.
Atherton Hough, a former mayor of Boston, Lincolnshire, and William Coddington were among the first settlers of the new Massachusetts town. Others from the English Boston and its surrounding towns – including John Cotton himself and the family of Anne Hutchinson – would settle in the new Boston in the following years.
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Francis J. Bremer is a world-renowned scholar of puritanism and an advisor to the Partnership of Historic Bostons. Professor of history emeritus at Millersville University, he has also been editor of the Winthrop Papers for the Massachusetts Historical Society. He is author of the award-winning John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father and many other books and articles. His latest book, One Small Candle: The Plymouth Puritans and the Beginning of English New England, is available here.
Find out more
Francis J. Bremer, Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) offers a fascinating and important understanding of English Puritan communities.
Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). A beautifully written, masterful biography.
Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). A nuanced look at the forces compelling the Puritan migration - and the stories of many who returned home to England.