Join the 17th Century
Explore the story of early Boston, Massachusetts, and the wider 17TH century world
We need you!
It’s been a fabulous year. What topics have we not covered? From enslavement in Sudbury to revolution in England to overthrowing received wisdom in Concord, our superb presenters have brought you insight, original research, and new ideas throughout 2025. We thank them for their immense contributions to 17th public history, and we thank you, our audience, for your curiosity, support, and observations.
The year ahead will also be great. Have a look at our Events page! Still in progress is our major program Metacom’s Resistance, a re-telling from an Indigenous perspective of King Philip’s War and its legacy. We’ll keep you posted on this important series.
We can’t wait to see you in 2026, but our ability to get through the year will depend on you. We are, frankly, an exceptionally bare-bones organisation: no paid staff, no office, no overheads but the minimum of tech platforms, tech support and honoraria. Like everyone else, we’re now being squeezed by rising costs and the loss of major donors who themselves have been hit by federal cuts.
The number of people who donate to us is tiny compared to the thousands of you who watch our events. So please, if you love 17th century public history and have enjoyed our events this year, donate! Fill our glass with your bounty and become a PHB supporter.
reading made quite easy
Autumn leaves are falling, the dark is closing in… It’s time to curl up with a book. What better way to find the perfect volume than to check our READ page, newly launched with book reviews written by yours truly (the Partnership of Historic Bostons) and members of our new virtual book club.
If you haven’t had a look at our READ page, look now! You’ll find not only a Book of the Month but recommended reading on topics from witchcraft to slavery to Indigenous people. Two new PHB book club members, Stephen Hahn and David Achenbach, have written wonderful reviews, of Squanto: A Native Odyssey and Edmund Morgan’s The Puritan Family, respectively. Next up in January: Stuart Christie on The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts. Check them out!
Events
music: it’s a sin!
natalie kershaw
ONLINE, THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2026, 6-7:30PM ET
The theatres were closed and public entertainment banned - that was life in Cromwell’s English republic. The previous decade was marked by violence, disruption, conflict in two civil wars between Royalists and Parliamentarians. How was the ordinary person to carry on? With music, says historian and musician Natalie Kershaw. In this tuneful presentation, we see the past through the eyes of the musician and hear what they had to play.
“We need a full and honest
reckoning with our history.”
— attendee, Tyranny vs Liberty series
Knowing the full picture
When we asked our audience why the 17th century mattered, they replied with gusto. “Knowing the whole picture can’t help but change what we think we are,” wrote one person. “The dispossession of Native nations has left a long painful legacy,” wrote an Indigenous woman. “We are today a ‘nation of rebels’,” wrote another person, “the outgrowth of radical protestantism.” What more did they say? Find out now!
a path not taken
We sometimes think of early New England as containing entirely separate people: white English Puritans; free and enslaved Black people; Indigenous people. A new book, Gathered into a Church, explodes this myth, showing how the heart of woodland New England - its faith - was an Indigenous-English creation, with Indigenous people not only embracing the faith but embodying its highest ideals.
surprising revolutionaries
New England Puritans insisted on self-government, bearing with them their charter. They drafted the first American bill of rights, enshrining liberties which far surpassed any in the English-speaking world. Who would have thought that Puritans could be so revolutionary? Francis J. Bremer explores the 1641 Body of Liberties and its guarantee of due process, the right to protest, and equality under the law.
“This talk opened a new world for me.”
— attendee, ‘I Pledge Allegiance’: Sovereignty and Sanctuary in the Dawnland