Background
John Winthrop, Sr. was born on January 22 (January 12, Old Style), 1588, in Edwardstone, Suffolk, England, the son of Adam Winthrop, III, lord of the manor of Groton, and Anne Browne.
(Excerpt from Winthrop's Journal, Vol. 2: "History of New ...)
Excerpt from Winthrop's Journal, Vol. 2: "History of New England," 1630-1649 This year there came over great store of provisions, both out of England and Ireland, and but few passengers, (and those brought very little money,) which was occasioned by the store of money and quick markets, which the merchants found here the two or three years before, so as now all our money was drained from us, and cattle and all commodities grew very cheap, which enforced us at the next general court, in the 8th month, to make an order, that corn should pass in payments of new debts; Indian at 43. The bushel; rye at 5s., and wheat at 6s.; and that, upon all executions for former debts, the credi tor might take what goods he pleased, (or, if he had no goods, then his lands,) to be appraised by three men, one chosen by the creditor, one by the debtor, and the third by the marshal. One Of the ships, which came this summer, struck upon a whale with a full gale, which put the ship a stays; the whale struck the ship on her bow, with her tail a little above water, and brake the planks and six timbers and a beam, and staved two hogsheads of vinegar. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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( ‘there does not remain a document upon the beginnings in...)
‘there does not remain a document upon the beginnings in any part of the world, of such immense importance’ – The New England Historical Register On April 8th, 1630, John Winthrop and his seven hundred fellow travelers began their voyage to start a new life in the wilderness of North America. Arriving on the eastern seaboard in June they eventually decided to base their Massachusetts Bay Colony around Boston, where Winthrop would build his house and aid in the building of their settlement. Over the course of the next ten years a further twenty-thousand immigrants arrived in New England and established themselves under the leadership of the colony. Despite the fact that these Puritans had escaped the religious persecution they had suffered in England, their lives in the Americas were frequently plagued with disease, crop failures and conflicts with the natives. Yet, the Massachusetts Bay Colony survived and thrived through the early seventeenth century. Winthrop, who became governor of the colony three times, records fascinating details of colonial life, from minor everyday moments through to the wider religious and political events that shaped their new world in the Americas. Winthrop’s Journal is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of New England and how the early settlers of America survived their first trials and tribulations. John Winthrop (12 January 1587 – 26 March 1649) was an English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading figures in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England, following Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led the first large wave of immigrants from England in 1630 and served as governor for 12 of the colony's first 20 years. Winthrop kept a journal of his life and experiences, starting with the voyage across the Atlantic and continuing through his time in Massachusetts, originally written in three notebooks. The first two notebooks were published in 1790 by Noah Webster. The third notebook was long thought lost but was rediscovered in 1816, and the complete journals were published in 1825 and 1826 by James Savage as The History of New England from 1630–1649. By John Winthrop, Esq. First Governor of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay.
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John Winthrop, Sr. was born on January 22 (January 12, Old Style), 1588, in Edwardstone, Suffolk, England, the son of Adam Winthrop, III, lord of the manor of Groton, and Anne Browne.
On December 8, 1602, Winthrop, Sr. was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he matriculated at Easter, 1603. When he was only seventeen he left Cambridge, without taking a degree.
Since 1609 Winthrop, Sr. had been a justice of the peace at Groton; about 1619 his father relinquished to him the lordship of the manor. After adoption his father's profession to augment the income from his lands, Winthrop, Sr. was admitted at Gray's Inn, October 25, 1613, and eventually established a legal practice in London. His legal practice in London was extensive and fairly lucrative; in 1626 he was appointed one of the limited number of attorneys for the court of wards and liveries; he frequently drafted petitions to be presented in Parliament; in 1628 he was admitted to the Inner Temple.
During the late 1620s, Winthrop, Sr. felt increasingly trapped by the economic slump that reduced his landed income and by Charles I’s belligerent anti-Puritan policy, which cost him his court post in 1629.
When, in 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Company obtained a royal charter to plant a colony in New England, Winthrop, Sr. joined the company, pledging to sell his English estate and take his family to Massachusetts if the company government and charter were also transferred to America. The other members agreed to these terms and elected him governor (October 20).
As Winthrop, Sr. sailed west on the Arbella in the spring of 1630, he composed a lay sermon, "A Modell of Christian Charity, " in which he pictured the Massachusetts colonists in covenant with God and with each other, divinely ordained to build "a Citty upon a Hill" in New England.
For the remaining 19 years of his life, Winthrop, Sr. lived in the New England wilderness, a father figure among the colonists. In the annual Massachusetts elections he was chosen governor 12 times between 1631 and 1648, and during the intervening years he sat on the court of assistants or colony council. His American career passed through three distinct phases. On first arrival, in the early 1630s, he did his most creative work, guiding the colonists as they laid out a network of tightly organized towns, each with its church of self-professed saints. Winthrop, Sr. himself settled at Boston, which quickly became the capital and chief port of Massachusetts. His new farm on the Mystic River was much inferior to his former estate at Groton, but Winthrop, Sr. never regretted the move, because he was free at last to build a godly commonwealth.
Opposition against him built up after a few years, however, as dissidents kept challenging Winthrop’s system in the mid- and late 1630s. He was nettled when the freemen (voters) insisted in 1634 on electing a representative assembly to share in decision making. He found Roger Williams’s criticism of church-state relations intolerable, though he secretly helped Williams to flee to Rhode Island in 1636. And he took it as a personal affront when numerous colonists chose to migrate from Massachusetts to Connecticut.
The greatest outrage to Winthrop, Sr. by far, however, came when Anne Hutchinson, a mere woman, gained control of his Boston church in 1636 and endeavoured to convert the whole colony to a religious position that Winthrop, Sr. considered blasphemous. It was he who led the counterattack against her. His victory was complete. Hutchinson was tried before the general court - chiefly for "traducing the ministers" - and was sentenced to banishment.
By 1640 Winthrop, Sr. had become the custodian of Massachusetts orthodoxy, suspicious of new ideas and influences and convinced that God favoured his community above all others. In 1641 Winthrop, Sr. went against the recent trend of accepting Native Americans and Africans into the church (an outgrowth of the Great Awakening) and helped write the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, the first legal sanctioning of slavery in North America. Indeed, Winthrop, Sr. owned at least one Native American slave, taken during the Pequot War (1636 - 1637), as slavery grew in New England, it was more typical for Native American slaves to be sent to the West Indies, where they were exchanged for enslaved Africans.
With the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, many New Englanders returned home to fight against Charles I. Winthrop, Sr. , however, stayed in America, and he criticized the course of the Puritan Revolution. His own political philosophy was best summed up in a speech of 1645, in which he defined the magistrates’ authority very broadly and the people’s liberty very narrowly.
But Winthrop, Sr. was never a petty tyrant, and the colonists respected and loved him to the end. His tender side is best revealed by the loving letters he exchanged with his third wife, Margaret, who was his helpmate from 1618 to 1647.
After struggling six weeks with "a feverish distemper, " John Winthrop, Sr. died on March 26, 1649, at the age 61.
John Winthrop, Sr. was one of the leading figures in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England, following Plymouth Colony, and the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The towns of Winthrop, Massachusetts and Winthrop, Maine are named in his honor. Winthrop House at Harvard University and Winthrop Hall at Bowdoin College are named in honor of him and of his descendant John Winthrop, who briefly served as President of Harvard. He is also the namesake of squares in Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline. A statue of Winthrop by Richard Greenough is one of Massachusetts' two statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection, Capitol in Washington D. C.
( ‘there does not remain a document upon the beginnings in...)
(Excerpt from Winthrop's Journal, Vol. 2: "History of New ...)
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Quotations:
"To love and live beloved is the soul's paradise. "
"A liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest. "
"A democracy is . .. accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government. "
"A woman of haughty and fierce carriage, of a nimble wit and active spirit, a very voluble tongue, more bold than a man. "
"True liberty is not liberty to do evil as well as good. "
On April 16, 1605, John Winthrop, Sr. married Mary Forth. The couple had five children, of whom only three survived to adulthood. In 1615, Mary died from complications of the last birth.
On December 6, 1615, he married Thomasine Clopton. Thomasine died on December 8, 1616, from complications of childbirth; the child did not survive.
On April 29, 1618, at Great Maplestead, Winthrop, Sr. married Margaret Tyndal, by whom he had seven children: Stephen, Adam, Deane, Nathaniel, Samuel, Anne, William and Sarah. Margaret died in Boston on June 14, 1647.
Winthrop, Sr. married his fourth wife Martha Rainsborough some time after December 20, 1647, they had one son.
Adam Winthrop, III was married to Alice Still, by whom he had four daughters. His second wife was Anne Browne, they had several childen.
Thomasine Winthrop died in infancy.
Joshua Winthrop died in infancy.
John Winthrop, Jr. was an American governor of Connecticut.
