A Puritan heartland

John Cotton’s pulpit at St. Botolph’s Church, Boston, Lincolnshire, was placed in the midst of the congregation, so that he would not be separated from his parishioners in worship. Photo: John Morrison

The original Boston was founded just over a thousand years ago, around 1080. By the time the Puritans set sail, it was a borough in Lincolnshire on the east coast of England. Boston was a busy port in the 1600s, though less active than it had been prior to 1300, when trade in wool and other goods was at its peak and it could claim to be one of the few English ports where the powerful Hanseatic League had built trading premises of its own. The town was governed by a corporation created in 1545 by charter by King Henry VIII. There was only one church and one school. The corporation appointed both the vicar (or parish priest) of St Botolph’s and the master of the grammar school. The mayor and leading members of the corporation were the town’s magistrates. 

Ever since the 1580s, Puritan ideas had seeped into Boston and men with such beliefs were appointed as vicars, the most significant of whom was the young John Cotton, appointed in 1612.  His preaching inspired his followers and attracted other Puritans. By the early 17th century, Puritans held an unusual degree of power.

“The Boston men”

Many of the people who led the Massachusetts Bay Colony in its first sixty years came from this town and became known as the Boston men.  Some had lived in Boston, Lincolnshire, all their lives before they emigrated to New England; others had been drawn by Cotton’s preaching.  

People who were born in the original Boston and later emigrated to Massachusetts included alderman Atherton Hough, who was mayor of Boston in 1628, and his colleague alderman Thomas Leverett, whose son John became lieutenant governor of Massachusetts Bay.  Other emigrants included the Rev. Thomas James, master of the grammar school, and the Rev. Samuel Whiting, rector of Skirbeck next to Boston, who was a member of a prominent Boston family and lived in Hussey Hall in the borough. 

The coat of arms of Boston, Lincolnshire, the only English town in the Hanseatic League, granted in 1568.  Photo: John Morrison 

The nearest aristocratic influence to Boston was that of the young Earl of Lincoln at Tattershall Castle, ten miles to the north. The Earl was a Puritan like his mother. Much of the planning for the Massachusetts Bay Colony took place at Lady Lincoln’s home in Sempringham, about 15 miles from Boston. Those connected to the Lincoln household also emigrated. The Earl’s sister, the Lady Arbella (after whom the lead ship in the Winthrop fleet was named), and her husband Isaac Johnson lived in Wide Bargate, Boston, in a house belonging to Lord Lincoln. Thomas Dudley, future deputy governor and governor of the colony, had been steward to the Earl, putting the Earl’s estate in better shape than when it had been inherited. On retirement, Dudley moved to Boston, and his son-in-law Simon Bradstreet, another future New Englander, became steward.   

Other people were attracted to Boston because of its Puritan ethos and clergy. These included Lincolnshire-born men like William Coddington, who moved to Boston in 1626 when his son was baptised in St Botolph’s, and Richard Bellingham, who arrived that year. Like all boroughs, Boston sent two Members to Parliament and in 1628 Richard Bellingham was elected MP. Anne Hutchinson and her family lived in Alford, some 20 miles distant from Boston, and occasionally travelled to Boston to hear John Cotton preach. 

Laudian repression… and Puritan migration 

As King Charles I became ever more autocratic, and Bishop (later Archbishop) Laud put increasing pressure on clergymen to conform to the doctrines and practices of the Church of England, the Puritan community in Boston found itself in difficulty.  Some leading men were imprisoned for refusing to pay the so-called “loan” by which the King tried to raise funds. The wider Boston population was also affected when John Cotton was forced into hiding and people lost his spiritual leadership. By the late 1620s, plans were being laid for a large-scale migration to Massachusetts Bay.

After the move to New England, many of the men who dominated the new Boston and the colony for the next sixty years had strong connections with its namesake. John Winthrop and others came from other Puritan strongholds, in Suffolk, Essex, London and elsewhere. He was, however, connected to the Lincolnshire Pelham family who owned property in the nearby village of Swineshead. They were men of standing in the old Boston and were accustomed to working together in running the affairs of their community. They had been worshipping and working with each other in the original Boston in Lincolnshire for several years. Dudley, Bradstreet, Bellingham, Leverett, and John Cotton were already part of a closely knit group before they left the original Boston. The choice of name of their main settlement in Massachusetts perhaps reflected a desire to recreate the Puritan ethos they had enjoyed in the Boston they had been forced to leave.

There are no surviving houses in the original Boston associated with particular Puritans, though the location of some is known – John Cotton’s, Isaac Johnson and Lady Arbella’s, and Samuel Whiting’s. But several significant buildings do remain.  These include St Botolph’s church, or “The Stump,” that still has the pulpit from which John Cotton preached, the Guildhall of the Corporation, the grammar school, Hussey Tower and Pescod Hall.  

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Neil Wright was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, and has written numerous books and articles about Boston and Lincolnshire history. He is a leading member of the Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, of which he has been chair three times. His latest book, on Georgian Boston, will be published in 2021. 

Find out more

Neil Wright, Boston: A History and Celebration (Dinton, Wiltshire: The Francis Firth Collection, 2005). A lovely illustrated story of Boston from its origins to today.

For a visual overview, see Historic England’s “A Brief Introduction to Boston: The Making of a Market Town”

Clive Holmes, Seventeenth-Century Lincolnshire (Lincoln: History of Lincolnshire Committee, 1980). Hard to find but well worth the hunt.