Synopses & Reviews
A revelatory account of the aspirations and accomplishments of the people who founded the New England colonies, comparing the reforms they enacted with those attempted in England during the period of the English Revolution.
Distinguished historian David D. Hall looks afresh at how the colonists set up churches, civil governments, and methods for distributing land. Bringing with them a deep fear of arbitrary, unlimited authority grounded in either church or state, these settlers based their churches on the participation of laypeople and insisted on “consent” as a premise of all civil governance. Encouraging broad participation and relying on the vigorous use of petitioning, they also transformed civil and criminal law and the workings of courts. The outcome was a civil society far less authoritarian and hierarchical than was customary in their age—indeed, a society so advanced that a few dared to describe it as “democratical.” They were well ahead of their time in doing so.
As Puritans, the colonists also hoped to exemplify a social ethics of equity, peace, and the common good. In a case study of a single town, Hall follows a minister as he encourages the townspeople to live up to these high standards in their politics. This is a book that challenges us to discard long-standing stereotypes of the Puritans as temperamentally authoritarian and their leadership as despotic. Hall demonstrates exactly the opposite. Here, we watch the colonists as they insist on aligning institutions and social practice with equity and liberty.
A stunning re-evaluation of the earliest moments of New Englands history, revealing the colonists to be the most effective and daring reformers of their day.
Synopsis
A revelatory account of New England’s Puritans that shows them to have been the most daring and successful reformers of the Anglo-colonial world.
Distinguished historian David D. Hall delineates the program of reform that the colonists undertook and chronicles the previously unheralded success with which they put it into practice. He explains that while they took for granted the benefits of English law, hierarchy, and obedience, they broke with England’s customary forms of political and ecclesiastical authority. He describes how they accomplished a daring revision of church government that eliminated centralized and hierarchical authority; a thorough revamping of law and judicial practices that eliminated most of the cruelty and abuses rampant in England; and forms of civil government that some dared to call “democratical” and that many regarded as protecting them from arbitrary rule. Finally, he makes clear that the reforms achieved by the Puritans were the most complete expression of the English Revolution: animus against special privilege, and the fullest realization of “fundamental liberties” and the “principle of consent.”
A stunning reevaluation of the earliest moments of New England’s history.