Background
He was born in Edwardston, Suffolk, on the 12th of January (O. S. ) 1588, the son of Adam Winthrop of Groton Manor, and Anne (Browne) Winthrop.
He was born in Edwardston, Suffolk, on the 12th of January (O. S. ) 1588, the son of Adam Winthrop of Groton Manor, and Anne (Browne) Winthrop.
In December 1602 he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, but he did not graduate.
The years after his brief course at the university were devoted to the practice of law, in which he achieved considerable success, being appointed, about 1623, an attorney in the Court of Wards and Liveries, and also being engaged in the drafting of parliamentary bills. Though his residence was at Groton Manor, much of his time was spent in London.
Meanwhile he passed through the deep spiritual experiences characteristic of Puritanism, and made wide acquaintance among the leaders of the Puritan party.
On the 26th of August 1629 he joined in the "Cambridge Agreement, " by which he, and his associates, pledged themselves to remove to New England, provided the government and patent of the Massachusetts colony should be removed thither.
On the 20th of October following he was chosen governor of the "Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, " and sailed in the "Arbella".
In March 1630, reaching Salem (Massachussets) on the 12th of June (O. S. ), accompanied by a large party of Puritan immigrants. After a brief sojourn in Charlestown, Winthrop and many of his immediate associates settled in Boston in the autumn of 1630.
He shared in the formation of a church at Charlestown (afterwards the First Church in Boston) on the 30th of July 1630, of which he was thenceforth a member. At Boston he erected a large house, and there he lived till his death on the 26th of March (O. S. ) 1649.
Winthrop's history in New England was very largely that of the Massachusetts colony, of which he was twelve times chosen governor by annual election, serving in 1629-1634, 1637-1640, in 1642-1644, and in 1646-1649, and dying in office.
To the service of the colony he gave not merely unwearied devotion; but in its interests consumed strength and fortune. His own temper of mind was conservative and somewhat aristocratic, but he guided political development, often under circumstances of great difficulty, with singular fairness and conspicuous magnanimity.
He opposed the majority of his fellow-townsmen in the so-called "Antinomian controversy" of 1636- 1637, taking a strongly conservative attitude towards the questions in dispute.
He defended Massachusetts against threatened parliamentary interference once more in 1645-1646. That the colony successfully weathered its early perils was due more to Winthrop's skill and wisdom than to the services of any other of its citizens.
Winthrop's Journal, an invaluable record of early Massachusetts history, was printed in part in Hartford in 1790; the whole in Boston, edited by James Savage, as The History of New England from idjo to 1649, in 1825-1826, and again in 1853; and in New York, edited by James K. Hosmer, in 1908.
Between 1629 and his death in 1649, he served 19 annual terms as governor or lieutenant-governor and was a force of comparative moderation in the religiously conservative colony, clashing with the more conservative Thomas Dudley and the more liberal Roger Williams and Henry Vane. In 1634-1635 he was a leader in putting the colony in a state of defence against possible coercion by the English government. He was the first president of the Commissioners of the United Colonies of New England, organized in 1643.
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In March 1630, reaching Salem (Massachussets) on the 12th of June (O. S. ), accompanied by a large party of Puritan immigrants.
Winthrop documented his religious life, keeping a journal beginning 1605 in which he described his religious experiences and feelings. He was more intensely religious than his father, whose diaries dealt almost exclusively with secular matters.
John Winthrop wrote and delivered the lay sermon that became A Model of Christian Charity either before the 1630 crossing to North America or while en route. It described the ideas and plans to keep the Puritan society strong in faith, as well as the struggles that they would have to overcome in the New World.
Winthrop was a respected political figure, and his attitude toward governance seems authoritarian to modern sensibilities. He resisted attempts to widen voting and other civil rights beyond a narrow class of religiously approved individuals, opposed attempts to codify a body of laws that the colonial magistrates would be bound by, and also opposed unconstrained democracy, calling it "the meanest and worst of all forms of government".
Quotations:
In it, he described his failures to keep "divers vows", and sought to reform his failings by God's grace, praying that God would "give me a new heart, joy in his spirit; that he would dwell with me".
Winthrop's attitude toward the local Indian populations was generally one of civility and diplomacy. He described an early meeting with one local chief: "Chickatabot came with his [chiefs] and squaws, and presented the governor with a hogshead of Indian corn. After they had all dined, and had each a small cup of sack and beer, and the men tobacco, he sent away all his men and women (though the governor would have stayed them in regard of the rain and thunder. ) Himself and one squaw and one [chief] stayed all night; and being in English clothes, the governor set him at his own table, where he behaved himself as soberly . .. as an Englishman. The next day after dinner he returned home, the governor giving him cheese, and pease, and a mug, and other small things. "
He used the phrase "city upon a hill" (derived from the Bible's Sermon on the Mount) to characterize the colonists' endeavour as part of a special pact with God to create a holy community. He encouraged the colonists to "bear one another's burdens" and to view themselves as a "Company of Christ, bound together by Love. " He told the colonists to be stricter in their religious conformance than even the Church of England, and to make it their objective to establish a model state. If they did so, God would "make us a prayse and glory, that man shall say of succeeding plantacions: the lord make it like that of New England. "
His own temper of mind was conservative and somewhat aristocratic, but he guided political development, often under circumstances of great difficulty, with singular fairness and conspicuous magnanimity.
Winthrop was four times married. His first wife, to whom he was united on the 16th of April 1605, was Mary Forth, daughter of John Forth, of Great Stambridge, Essex. She bore him six children, of whom the eldest was John Winthrop, Jr. fo. tt). She was buried in Groton on the 26th of June 1615.
On the 6th of December 1615 he married Thomasine Cloplon, daughter of William Clopton of Castleins, near Groton. She died in childbirth about a year later.
He married, on the 29th of April 1618, Margaret Tyndal, daughter of Sir John Tyndal, of Great Maplested, Essex. She followed him to New England in 1631, bore him eight children, and died on the 14th of June 1647. Late in 1647 or early in 1648 he married Mrs Martha Coytmorc, widow of Thomas Coytmorc, who survived him, and by whom he had one son. His son John was the first governor of the Saybrook Colony, and later generations of his family continued to play an active role in New England politics well into the 19th century.
