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Chock full of helpful resources to help you get ready for tough conversations.

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Our key curriculum resource

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A wealth of information from the National Council of Teachers of English

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What an amazing time we had with Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, hearing from them about their latest novel Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You! The discussion was timely and well received, so thank you for your participation, and a special thank-you to our moderator Sonja Cherry-Paul.

Below we've compiled a list of resources to help you continue the conversation within your communities.

IBRAM X. KENDI www.ibramxkendi.com
Facebook - /ibramxkendi
Twitter -@DrIbram
Instagram -@IbramXK

NEW BOOK COMING JUNE 16!

With bold art and thoughtful yet playful text, Antiracist Baby introduces the youngest readers and the grown-ups in their lives to the concept and power of antiracism. Learn more.

DR. SONJA CHERRY-PAUL
Educator's Guide

"This guide suggests a month-long approach to reading and discussing Stamped with middle-school and high-school readers in English, English language arts, social studies, history, and humanities classrooms." Access it here.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzl

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Roads

How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Adapted for Young Readers) by Trevor Noah

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

March by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina L. Love

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

A Black Women's History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali N. Gross

Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women's Fight for Their Rights by Mikki Kendall

All American Boys by Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Black Appetite. White Food.: Issues of Race, Voice, and Justice Within and Beyond the Classroom by Jamila Lyiscott

Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Metzl

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race by Jesmyn Ward

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood . . . and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education by Christopher Emdin

The Gold Cadillac by Mildred D. Taylor

The Guide for White Women Who Teach Black Boys by Eddie Moore, Jr., Ali Michael, and Marguerite W. Penick-Parks

Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans by Kadir Nelson

The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter

How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Letting Go of Literary Whiteness: Antiracist Literature Instruction for White Students by Carlin Borsheim-Black and Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

Miles Morales: Spider-Man by Jason Reynolds

"Multiplication Is for White People": Raising Expectations for Other People's Children by Lisa Delpit

Murder on the Red River by Marcie Rendon

Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom by Matthew R. Kay

Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson

Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist by Eli Saslow

So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Stamped: For our Classrooms, Homes, and Communities from Hachette Book Group

Sulwe by Lupita Nyong'o

Surviving Becky(s): Pedagogies for Deconstructing Whiteness and Gender by Cheryl E. Matias

The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession by Dana Goldstein

Teaching Race: How to Help Students Unmask and Challenge Racism by Steven Brookfield

There, There by Tommy Orange

This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work by Tiffany Jewell

What If All the Kids Are White? Anti-bias Multicultural Education with Young Children and Families by Julie Olsen Edwards, Louise Derman-Sparks, and Patricia Ramsey

White Rage by Carol Anderson

*These texts were shared by participants within the chat during the live discussion.

What Antiracist Language Teachers Do

Antiracist language teachers consciously work to create safe learning environments for all students. This poster provides a description of what these teachers do.

Qualities of Antiracist ELA Curricula

Antiracist ELA curricula must celebrate and sustain diversity as part of educational justice in a changing world. This poster describes the qualities of such curricula.

Take a look at what we discussed with Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi.

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Stamped: Resources for your Classroom - NCTE

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IBRAM X. KENDI www.ibramxkendi.com Facebook - /ibramxkendi Twitter -@DrIbram Instagram -@IbramXK NEW BOOK COMING JUNE 16! With bold art and thoughtful yet playful text, Antiracist Baby introduces the youngest readers and the grown-ups in their lives to the concept and power of antiracism. Learn more.

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A graphic organizer you can use

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More helpful materials on teaching Stamped

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All February Picks For Teen Readers
Using humor and a conversational style, author Jason Reynolds deftly reworks Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning, exposing young adult readers to the history of America's racist past that textbooks leave out.

Get This Book

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"Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You" - NEA Read Across America Official Selection

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All February Picks For Teen Readers Using humor and a conversational style, author Jason Reynolds deftly reworks Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning, exposing young adult readers to the history of America's racist past that textbooks leave out. Get This Book

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Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of many award-winning books, including Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks and more.

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Resources for the D. T. Howard Middle School school-wide reading of Stamped

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National Ambassador for Young People's Literature:  Write. Right. Rite.

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National Ambassador for Young People's Literature:  Write. Right. Rite.

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Sign up for the Grab the MIC newsletter: https://guides.loc.gov/jason-reynolds/grab-the-mic/newsletter

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Welcome to the "Write. Right. Rite.," a "GRAB THE MIC: Tell Your Story" video series! The "Write. Right. Rite." is meant to be an entertaining and inventive way to engage with the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Jason Reynolds.

According to Reynolds, the "Write. Right. Rite." is all about learning the ritual of "authentic"-not to be confused with "correct" or "exact"-expression. Throughout the series, Reynolds shares his passion for storytelling while discussing topics like creativity, connection, and imagination. At the end of each video, Reynolds shares a prompt that encourages young people to work toward a specific idea. The activities are fun-filled and some are more challenging than others, but Reynolds always makes sure to include brainstorming "get-you-going" questions.

So, what do you say? Are you ready to dive into, try on, and work through all the "Write. Right. Rite." episodes?

Go for it!

Watch the Entire "Write. Right. Rite." Series:

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Research Guides: Jason Reynolds, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature: "Write. Right. Rite." Series

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On January 13, 2020, Jason Reynolds was announced as the seventh National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Learn more about Jason and his activities as National Ambassador through this guide.

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Jason Reynolds Wants Young People’s Stories to be Heard

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Jason Reynolds Wants Young People’s Stories to be Heard

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Award-winning YA Author Jason Reynolds wants kids and teens to have the language they need for constructive conversations about race.

In his new book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, Reynolds remixes Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning into an accessible primer on antiblack racism in America that he calls "not a history book."

Reynolds was recently named the seventh National Ambassador for Young People's Literature by the Library of Congress.

In his two-year appointment, Reynolds plans to travel the country and interview children about their lives and hometowns to create what he describes as "proof of life on record."
Produced by Victoria Chamberlin

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Jason Reynolds Wants Young People's Stories To be Heard - The Kojo Nnamdi Show

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Award-winning YA Author Jason Reynolds wants kids and teens to have the language they need for constructive conversations about race. In his new book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, Reynolds remixes Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning into an accessible primer on antiblack racism in America that he calls "not a history book."

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Jason Reynolds is the Bard of Black YA Fiction

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Jason Reynolds is the Bard of Black YA Fiction

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Jason Reynolds arrives for breakfast at the Busboys and Poets on V Street one winter Saturday, he looks, atypically for a writer, like a model-black Saint Laurent coat and boots, black Rag & Bone jeans, silver 1960 Rolex GMT-Master. (Luxury watches are his new collecting obsession.) On his fourth finger, though, is possibly the cheapest and also most constant item in his wardrobe: a wide silver-colored ring.

Reynolds, now 36, bought it for $8 when he was 15 or 16, at a church flea market in Prince George's County. He says that after he left the stand, the seller told police he'd stolen it. Officers questioned him, a confusing and terrifying turn of events. But one of them recognized him from another part of town-the U Street poetry scene-and said he was no thief. Reynolds doesn't remember being angry, only hugely grateful: "Like, Man, that was close.

"I wear it every day as a reminder that true wealth, by definition, is a good name. And my name at that moment had gotten me out of trouble."

Today Reynolds's name is much more widely known, for popularizing stories not so unlike that one: of what it can be like to grow up young and black in America. His young-adult novels-he has published 13 in the last six years-tackle fraught subjects including violence and deeply troubled families, and they typically star a male teenager in a tough city neighborhood, almost always underestimated or misunderstood.

Until recently, these were perspectives rarely seen in YA fiction. While lucrative, the genre was a historically homogeneous corner of the book world. But Reynolds, who grew up in Oxon Hill, has helped expand the pantheon in spectacular fashion. At 2.5 million copies sold, his books are monster bestsellers. He's a two-time National Book Award finalist and a Newbery honoree who headlines dozens of appearances before teenage audiences every year. He wrote Marvel Comics' first novelization of a non-white Spider-Man-the biracial Miles Morales-which earned him a cameo mention in the most recent Spider-Man movie. His novel Long Way Down, about a young man considering retaliation for his brother's murder, has been optioned by Universal and a producer of The Social Network. And in January, the Library of Congress named him the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, an honor that will send him on a cross-country tour.

At this rate, Reynolds could likely carry on easily in YA. With a seven-figure book deal, he has already netted accoutrements of a life he never imagined for himself-collections of Langston Hughes letters, programs from James Baldwin plays, a signed first edition of Toni Morrison's Beloved. Instead, he's making something of a professional swerve.

This month, the publisher Little, Brown released his first attempt at nonfiction, and as you might expect, it's neither a reductive nor comfortable tale. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You is an adaptation of the trenchant, highly influential work by American University scholar Ibram X. Kendi. Reynolds's job: to make this history readable for the 11-to-17-year-old set.

How do you distill a 592-page, 400-year account of our country's most painful legacy into something a kid might actually want to read? With a lot of false starts, it turns out. As Reynolds says, "It was the hardest thing I've ever done."

To understand how Reynolds became a literary star whom kids flock to see, maybe all you need to know is that when he was their age, he wasn't a reader. He says he didn't finish a book until he was 17-Richard Wright's Black Boy -because the stuff he was exposed to didn't reflect life in his largely African American patch of Washington.

Not that he didn't love language. As a teenager, he started frequenting U Street spoken-word events designed for adults. Friends would come to see him at the now-defunct Bar Nun. "They'd be like, 'Bro, we don't know what you talkin' about, but we here,' " Reynolds says. " 'We are in the building, and we are going to support you.' "

At the University of Maryland, Reynolds self-published two poetry collections. He and a friend, Jason Douglas Griffin, also spent $30,000 printing a coffee-table book, with Reynolds running up debts on the kind of high-limit credit card no longer available to students. An agent was impressed by their nerve, and from there the two Jasons collaborated on a YA book, heavy on visuals, about a white artist and a black writer trying to make it in New York. It tanked. Reynolds wrote and wrote but couldn't sell anything.

Around 2009, when he was 25, he picked up Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, wanting to see why everyone in publishing made such a fuss about it. He couldn't relate to a girl getting her period, but he was struck by the honesty of Judy Blume's story. Next up was The Young Landlords by Walter Dean Myers, an early YA giant. The 1979 novel follows young black teens who take over a rundown building in Harlem-and speak like Reynolds's childhood friends. It felt like permission to tell stories he knew.

He began laboring over a gritty novel about an African American teen with a price on his head after a small misunderstanding: When I Was the Greatest, his breakout hit. Partly autobiographical, the story was inspired by Reynolds's older brother, a bruiser stabbed in the face at age 16 who came out of surgery to discover an unexpected bond with his younger, mellower sibling. It showed off what would become other hallmarks of a Reynolds novel: layered subplots yoked to supporting characters with rich backstories, dashes of humor (wherein the word "fartleks"-running jargon-becomes "fart licks"), and symbolism you don't discover until a second or third reading. In his most recent novel, there's a friendship handshake that, if you were to see it, would be sign language for "I can hear you even when the world can't."

Reynolds frequently examines friendships and their sustaining power in the lives of teenagers with broken families. (His parents split up when he was ten, and he was raised mostly by his mother, who worked in insurance. He's still so close to his childhood friends that they now have keys to his house.) "Track," a multi-book series, looks at four kids on an elite track team who become unlikely pals. They hail from varied backgrounds-one is albino, another's neighborhood is "not to be played with," a third is motherless-but all share the experience of running to escape something painful.

The point is to render life in its messy, three-dimensional particulars-and bust stereotypes. "There are so many basketball books. So many good ones. You know, because black kids just wanna play basketball," Reynolds says, tongue in cheek. "I'm not going to ever pretend that part of my mission isn't to push back against the stereotype about what black children are. I mean, we do everything like everybody else, we're children like everybody else's children, but we don't often get the opportunity to be that in media."

In 2017, Reynolds released Long Way Down, perhaps his knottiest plot and most daring stylistic treatment yet. Many of his novels read like a performance on the page, in the rhythmic prose of rap. ("The pancakes I had this morning had turned back into batter. A bitter batter, pitter-pattering up my throat," says one narrator who's nervous.) But Reynolds chose to tell this one entirely in verse.

The book takes place over 60 seconds, as a young man descends an elevator, meeting ghosts from his past who help him weigh whether to seek revenge for his brother's death. It's a scene from the author's own life: At age 19, Reynolds got a late-night call saying a friend had been brutally murdered. "There was a moment when I realized that I could completely avenge his death-that I had that kind of anger and that kind of pain," he says. He and some buddies met up to debate whether to retaliate. The novel isn't supposed to vilify youth facing a similar calculation, "or even to make any grandiose statement about gun violence," Reynolds explains. "It's more to humanize those young people who are going through that, who have nowhere else to put that pain."

The story spent 77 weeks on the New York Times YA bestseller list. "I was destroyed," wrote a critic in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Aja Clark, the manager of reading programs for DC libraries, used to teach high-school English and run a book club for African American youth. "I wish we had had his books then," says Clark, who often resorted to helping students analyze rap lyrics. "These boys never had the words to say how it felt walking down the street or experiencing anger and pain. With Mr. Reynolds, it's 'We're seen, we're heard, people can empathize with us.'"

Last year, people checked his books out of the DC libraries 2,028 times-basically, six times a day.

Kendi, the American University prof who founded its Antiracist Research & Policy Center, wasn't that into books in high school, either. So when he had the idea to adapt Stamped From the Beginning for a younger audience, he knew he'd need a partner. He had liked Reynolds's "Track" series; the bonds between such different characters "made me think about what's possible for this country," he says. After meeting Reynolds at the 2016 National Book Awards dinner, he felt the author was plenty intellectual for the job. "He's deeply reflective about his past and about what he's trying to do and why."

Reynolds fended off Kendi's requests. He wasn't much of a scholar, he'd say: "I don't know how to study, you know?"

Many months in, he finally relented-in hopes that a reimagined Stamped might change the conversation. With novels, Reynolds says, "you hope to make somebody laugh or cry-that's pretty much the end of it. Ibram's like, 'We have the opportunity to make a thing that could be a sea change. It's bigger than either one of us.' "

But how? Kendi gave Reynolds an outline of what he thought were the most essential stories, but Reynolds struggled. He filed two drafts that were just slightly edited versions of Kendi's tome-each an unwieldy 300 pages.

His editor reminded him that they wanted a Jason Reynolds book. Were they sure? "I'm gonna have to ruin what he's done," Reynolds remembers replying-ruin "one of the most important race documents of this century." Still, the directive freed him. Out came a chatty, irreverent story, one that's supposed to read, he says, like it's "from your barber who happens to be a history buff."

The book has the same hyper-personal opening as his novels, a character speaking directly to you-"Before we begin, let's get something straight"-who promises that the story won't feel like a list of dates with an occasional war thrown in. While Kendi's version begins with the Great Hurricane of 1635, Reynolds gets straight to race: "Uh-oh. The R-word. Which for many of us still feels rated R. Or can be matched only with another R word-run. But don't." Instead of a winding account of Gomes Eanes de Zurara, the 15th-century biographer who built up Portuguese Prince Henry's evangelical justification for enslaving Africans, Reynolds just dubs him "World's First Racist"-as if it's a senior-class superlative in one very messed-up yearbook-and explains that he's like a cheerleader who "made sure Prince Henry was looked at as a brilliant quarterback making ingenious plays, and that every touchdown was the mark of a superior player."

With its nicknames (Thomas "Contradiction" Jefferson), wordplay ("When the going gets tough, the tough get racist"), and chatty asides (cockamamie is the "best word ever"), the book shares DNA with Reynolds's fiction. The whole manuscript actually sounds as if it could be performed, down to written-in pauses-"P A U S E"-after particularly abhorrent historical ideas. "I'm probably the most proud of it," Reynolds says.

Yet for all the sweat of completing the book, he won't cop to worrying about its reception. "It's coming out of something that already exists, you know? All I was is the translator of the information."

Reynolds sometimes writes at Maketto, the high-concept coffee shop/clothing boutique/restaurant on Northeast DC's H Street, other times at home in nearby Kingman Park. He bought a condo there in 2018, a couple years after moving back from New York to be closer to his mother. He chose the neighborhood where she'd grown up, where his grandmother and cousins had resided for years, and he's been living that head-jerking experience common to Washington natives who leave for a while and return to find a whiter, glossier, bougier city. You can probably see where this story's going: It's all new material.

Reynolds has been working on a novel about a twentysomething who's obsessed with writing eulogies. The setting is a changing city-DC-that's grappling with the relationship between preservation and erasure. But as much as it sounds like a paean to his hometown, the project also scans like a new chance to prove himself: It's his first novel for adults.

"I don't know when this started, I don't know who said something the first time, but there's so much disparaging stuff that's said about people who write for kids," he tells me. "I choose to write for children because I love children, but my abilities are my abilities." He wants the freedom to write for any audience he pleases-and due respect. "You read To Kill a Mockingbird in eighth grade. You read Of Mice and Men in the seventh grade. You read Lord of the Flies in eighth grade. You call those classics. You think they're brilliant pieces of capital-L literature, but what I make is less than?"

His agent, naturally, is betting otherwise. She recently sent an archivist to town to start cataloguing Reynolds's papers-drafts with his editor's handwritten notations (some 20 takes of Long Way Down alone), pieces of Fabriano paper with possible book titles. It's a weird exercise for someone so young to sell rights to his literary estate-authors often do so late in life-but people have been asking, he says. No decisions have been made yet, but Reynolds is pretty sure his papers won't go to the highest bidder.

"I don't need the money," he says. "It's all about who I'm in conversation with. It's like, where's Baldwin? Where's Judy Blume?"

This article appears in the March 2020 issue of Washingtonian.

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Jason Reynolds, the Bard of Black YA Fiction, Just Released a Book on an Impossibly Challenging Topic

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Jason Reynolds arrives for breakfast at the Busboys and Poets on V Street one winter Saturday, he looks, atypically for a writer, like a model-black Saint Laurent coat and boots, black Rag & Bone jeans, silver 1960 Rolex GMT-Master. (Luxury watches are his new collecting obsession.)

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Booklist interview with Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

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Booklist interview with Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

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Shelf Care Interview: Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds on Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Booklist's Shelf Care Podcast

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Welcome to the Shelf Care Interview, an occasional conversation series where Booklist talks to book people.

This Shelf Care Interview is sponsored by Little Brown Books for Young Readers.

In this episode of the Shelf Care Interview, Maggie Reagan talks to Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds.

Ibram X. Kendi, a professor of history and international relations, is one of America's foremost historians and leading anti-racist voices. He is the New York Times' bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning, and the founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington, D.C.

Jason Reynolds is the New York Times bestselling multi-award winning author of many books for children, including the Track series and the Printz, Newbery, and Coretta Scott King Honor book, Long Way Down. Recently he was appointed the new National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, Jason's remix for young readers of Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped From the Beginning, comes out in March from Little Brown.

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In addition to the resources on the DEI Guide, check out Britannica School in the Galileo folder in MyBackpack. We have access to tons of primary sources through this resource.

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Welcome to Britannica School, a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.

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Gomes Eanes de Zurara (c. 1410 - c. 1474), sometimes spelled Eannes or Azurara, was a Portuguese chronicler of the Age of Discovery, the most notable after Fernão Lopes.

Zurara adopted the career of letters in middle life. He probably entered the royal library as assistant to Fernão Lopes during the reign of King Edward of Portugal (1433-1438), and he had sole charge of it in 1452. His Chronicle of the Siege and Capture of Ceuta, a supplement (third part) to Lopes's Chronicle of King John I, dates from 1450, and three years later he completed the first draft of the Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, our authority for the early Portuguese voyages of discovery down the African coast and in the ocean, more especially for those undertaken under the auspices of Prince Henry the Navigator. It contains some account of the life work of that prince, and it has biographical as well as geographical interest.

On 6 June 1454, Zurara became chief keeper of the archives and royal chronicler in succession to Lopes. In 1456 King Afonso V commissioned him to write the history of Ceuta, the land-gate of the East, under the governorship of D. Pedro de Menezes, from its capture in 1415 until 1437, and he had it ready in 1463. A year afterwards, the king charged him with writing a history of the deeds of D. Duarte de Menezes, captain of Alcácer-Ceguer. Proceeding to Africa, he spent a year collecting materials and studying the scenes of the events he was to describe, and in 1468 he completed the chronicle. Afonso corresponded with Zurara on terms of affectionate intimacy, and no less than three comendas of the order of Christ rewarded his literary services.

Zurara had little of the picturesque ingenuousness of Lopes, and he loved to display his erudition by quotations and philosophical reflections, showing that he wrote under the influence of the first Renaissance. Many leading classical, early Christian and medieval writers figure in his pages; he was acquainted with the notable chronicles and romances of Europe and had studied the best Italian and Spanish authors. In addition, he had mastered the geographical system of the ancients and their astrology. As a historian he is laborious, accurate and conscientious, though his position did not allow him to tell the whole truth about his hero, Prince Henry.

Chronicle of Discovery and Conquest of Guinea

The preface to the English version of The Chronicle of Discovery and Conquest of Guinea contains a full account of the life and writings of Azurara and cites all the authorities.

Chronicle of the Henrican Discoveries

Zurara's Crónica dos feitos da Guiné is the principal historical source for modern conception of Prince Henry the Navigator and the Henrican age of Portuguese discoveries (although Zurara only covers part of it, the period 1434-1448). Commissioned by Henry himself, Zurara's chronicle is openly hagiographic of the prince and reliant on his recollections. As a result, the reliability of Zurara's chronicles is considered suspect by modern historians. Nonetheless, having little else to draw upon, historians have had to rely heavily on Zurara.

Zurara claims to have based his account of the expeditions on a more detailed draft manuscript compiled by a certain "Antonio Cerveira". Alas, no copy of Cerveira's original account has ever been found. Zurara's own chronicle remained in manuscript form and hidden from the public eye for centuries. Indeed, until the publication of João de Barros's Primeira Década da Ásia in 1552, there were no published works about the Henrican discoveries, save for the two brief memoirs of Alvise Cadamosto (published originally in Italy in 1507).

João de Barros claimed to have constructed his 1552 account on the basis of a copy of Zurara's manuscript he found scattered in the archives. However, a little over a decade later, Damião de Góis (writing in 1567), announced that the Zurara manuscript had disappeared. A hunt for a copy of the manuscript began, but would turn up nothing for a while. The Spanish cleric Bartolomé de las Casas, writing in the 1540s, suggested he had a copy of Zurara, but that copy too was never tracked down.

It was only in 1839 that an intact and splendidly preserved manuscript copy of Zurara's Cronica was rediscovered in the Royal Library of Paris (now the Bibliothèque nationale de France) by Ferdinand Denis (how it ended up there is a mystery). Significantly, the Paris codex included a frontispiece with a portrait of a man with a thin moustache in a black Burgundian chaperon that was instantly assumed to be the physical image of Prince Henry the Navigator (there were no pictures of Henry before this; the Paris frontispiece became the basis of modern images of the prince, reproduced in countless books, paintings and monuments since). Luís António de Abreu e Lima (Viscount de Carreira), the Portuguese minister to France at the time, arranged for the first publication of Zurara's Cronica in 1841, with a preface and notes by Manuel Francisco de Macedo Leitão e Carvalhosa (Viscount of Santarém). The publication was a sensation, particularly as Portugal was then engaged in a diplomatic quarrel over recent Anglo-French colonial encroachments in West Africa where questions of priority of discovery were involved (to which Santarém contributed.)

A second manuscript copy was found shortly after, in 1845, by J.A. Schmeller in the Hof- und Staats-Bibliothek in Munich (Codex Hisp. 27), as part of a collection of miscellaneous accounts of Portuguese expeditions originally compiled in 1508 by a Lisbon-based German printer known as Valentinus Moravus (or in Portuguese, as "Valentim Fernandes"). However, this version contains only much-abridged extracts.

In 2017 the role of Zurara in systemic racism was called into question in Ibram X. Kendi's book Stamped From The Beginning, which described Zurara's chronicle as the first characterizing people of African descent as inferior. Zurara says that the Africans that were captured and sold into the slave trade were heathens and were in need of religious and civil salvation. Kendi suggests that Zurara, who was commissioned by Henry the Navigator of Portugal, was the first to justify slavery as salvation, thus starting the systemic racism that has spread through the Western world.

1. For a brief note on the possible identities of Cerveria, see ^ Monumenta Henricina (Almeida, Costa Brochado & Dinis 1967, vol 8: p.87). However, Teixeira da Mota believes that Duarte Pacheco Pereira may have had access to sources outside of Zurara (Teixeira da Mota 1946, pp. 12-13), so possibly Cerveira's manuscript was still extant in the archives around 1507-10. However, Barros, writing in 1552, found no trace of it (Barros 1552)

2. Original title in full was: ^ Chronica do Descobrimento e Conquista da Guiné, escrita por mandado de El-Rei D. Affonso V, sob a direcção scientifica, e segundo as instrucções do illustre Infante D. Henrique, pelo Chronista Gomes Eannes de Azurara, fielmente trasladada do manuscrito original contemporaneo, que se conserva na Bibliotheca Real de Pariz, e dada pela primeira vez á luz per deiligencia do Visconde de Carreira, Enviado Extraordinario e Ministro Plenipotentiario de S. Majestade Fidelissima na corte da França, precedida de uma Introducção, e illustrada com algumas notas pelo Visconde de Santarem, Socio da Academia real das Sciencias de Lisboa, e de um grande numero d'Academias e sociedades sabias em Hespanha, França, Italia, Inglaterra, Hollanda, Suecia, e America, etc., e seguida d'um Glossario das Palavras e Phrases Antiquadas e Obsoletas. It was published in Paris by J.P. Aillaud in quarto., running 474 pages, with the frontispiece portrait. copy online

3. ^ Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning; Chapter 2: Origins of Racist Ideas

Zurara's works include:

Chronica del Rei D. Joam I de boa memória. Terceira parte em que se contém a Tomada de Ceuta (Lisbon, 1644)

Chronica do Descobrimento e Conquista da Guiné (Paris, 1841; Eng. version by Edgar Prestage in 2 vols. issued by the Hakluyt Society, London, 1896-1899: The Chronicle of Discovery and Conquest of Guinea),

Chronica do Conde D. Pedro de Menezes), printed in the Inéditos de Historia Portugueza, vol. ii (Lisbon, 1792)

Chronica do Conde D. Duarte de Menezes, printed in the Inéditos, vol. iii (Lisbon, 1793)

Barros, João de (1552), Primeira Década da Ásia: Dos feitos, que os Portuguezes fizeram no descubrimento, e conquista, dos mares, e terras do Oriente, Vol. 1 (Dec I, Lib.1-5)

Beazley, C.R.; Prestage, E., eds. (1896-1899), The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, 1, London: Hakluyt

--; --, eds. (1896-1899), The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, 2, London: Hakluyt

Góis, Damião de (1905) [1567], Gonçálvez Guimarãis, A.J. (ed.), Chronica do prinçipe Dom Ioam: rei que foi destes regnos segundo do nome, em que summariamente se trattam has cousas sustançiaes que nelles aconteçerão do dia de seu nasçimento atte ho em que el Rei Dom Afonso seu pai faleçeo, Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade

Schmeller, Johann Andreas (1847), Ueber Valentim Fernandez Alemão und seine Sammlung von Nachrichten über die Entdeckungen und Besitzungen der Portugiesen in Afrika und Asien bis zum Jahre 1508, enthalten in einer gleichseitigen portugiesischen Handschrift der köngl. Hof-und Staats-Bibliothek zu München.", Abhandlungen der Philosophisch-Philologischen Classe der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 4.3, Munich

Teixeira da Mota, A. (January 1946), "A Descoberta da Guiné, Pt. 1", Boletim cultural da Guiné Portuguesa, 1 (1): 11-68

Attribution

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Gomes Eanes de Zurara (c. 1410 - c. 1474), sometimes spelled Eannes or Azurara, was a Portuguese chronicler of the Age of Discovery, the most notable after Fernão Lopes. Zurara adopted the career of letters in middle life.

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 al-Hasan Ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi (a/k/a Johannes Leo, Leo Africanus)

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 al-Hasan Ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi (a/k/a Johannes Leo, Leo Africanus)

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Joannes Leo Africanus (; born al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, Arabic: حسن ابن محمد الوزان الفاسي‎; c. 1494 - c. 1554) was a Berber Andalusi diplomat and author who is best known for his book Descrittione dell'Africa ( Description of Africa) centered on the geography of the Maghreb and Nile Valley. The book was regarded among his scholarly peers in Europe as the most authoritative treatise on the subject until the modern exploration of Africa. For this work, Leo became a household name among European geographers.

Most of what is known about his life is gathered from autobiographical notes in his own work. Leo Africanus was born as al-Hasan, son of Muhammad in Granada around the year 1494. The year of birth can be estimated from his self-reported age at the time of various historical events. His family moved to Fez soon after his birth. In Fez he studied at the University of al-Qarawiyyin (also spelled al-Karaouine). As a young man he accompanied an uncle on a diplomatic mission, reaching as far as the city of Timbuktu (c. 1510), then part of the Songhai Empire. In 1517 when returning from a diplomatic mission to Constantinople on behalf of the Sultan of Fez Muhammad II he found himself in the port of Rosetta during the Ottoman conquest of Egypt. He continued with his journey through Cairo and Aswan and across the Red Sea to Arabia, where he probably performed a pilgrimage to Mecca.

On his way back to Tunis in 1518 he was captured by Spanish corsairs either near the island of Djerba or more probably near Crete, and imprisoned on the island of Rhodes, the headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller. The usual fate of unransomed Muslim captives was slavery in Christian galleys, but when his captors realized his intelligence and importance, he was moved to the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome and presented to Pope Leo X. He was soon freed and given a pension to persuade him to stay. He was baptized in the Basilica of Saint Peter's in 1520. He took the Latin name Johannes Leo de Medicis ( Giovanni Leone in Italian). In Arabic, he preferred to translate this name as Yuhanna al-Asad al-Gharnati (literally means John the Lion of Granada). It is likely that Leo Africanus was welcomed to the papal court as the Pope feared that Turkish forces might invade Sicily and southern Italy, and a willing collaborator could provide useful information on North Africa.

Leo Africanus left Rome and spent the next three or four years traveling in Italy. The death of his patron Leo X in 1521, and suspicions from the new Pope Adrian VI against a Muslim in court, was likely the reason for his leaving Rome. While staying in Bologna he wrote an Arabic-Hebrew-Latin medical vocabulary, of which only the Arabic part has survived, and a grammar of Arabic of which only an eight-page fragment has survived. He returned to Rome in 1526 under the protection of the new Pope Clement VII, a cousin of Leo X who replaced Adrian. According to Leo, he completed his manuscript on African geography in the same year. The work was published in Italian with the title Della descrittione dell'Africa et delle cose notabili che iui sono, per Giovan Lioni Africano in 1550 by the Venetian publisher Giovanni Battista Ramusio. The book proved to be extremely popular and was reprinted five times. It was also translated into other languages. French and Latin editions were published in 1556 while an English version was published in 1600 with the title A Geographical Historie of Africa. The Latin edition, which contained many errors and mistranslations, was used as the source for the English translation.

There are several theories of his later life, and none of them are certain. According to one theory, he spent it in Rome until he died around 1550, the year Description of Africa was published. This theory was based on indirect allusion in a later preface to this book. According to another theory, he left shortly before the Sack of Rome by Charles V's troops in 1527. He then returned to North Africa and lived in Tunis until his death, some time after 1550. This was based on records by German orientalist Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter, who arrived in Italy and planned (but ultimately failed) to travel to Tunis to meet Leo who had since reconverted to Islam. Yet another theory said that he left Tunis after it was captured by Charles V in 1535 for Morocco, his second home country after Granada where his relatives were still living. This was based on the assumption that Leo, having left Granada, would not have wanted to live under Christian Spanish rule again, and his wish (recorded in Description of Africa) that he wanted to ultimately return to his home country "by God's assistance".

Veracity of Africa trip

It is unlikely that Leo Africanus visited all the places that he describes and he must therefore have relied on information obtained from other travellers. In particular, it is doubtful whether he ever visited Hausaland and Bornu and it is even possible that he never crossed the Sahara but relied on information from other travellers that he met in Morocco. The historian Pekka Masonen has argued that the belief of his further travels was based on misreadings by modern scholars who interpreted his book as an itinerary.

At the time Leo visited the city of Timbuktu, it was a thriving Islamic city famous for its learning. Home to many scholars and learned men, Timbuktu also possessed a Great Mosque, renowned for its expansive library. The town was to become a byword in Europe as the most inaccessible of cities. At the time of Leo's journey there, it was the centre of a busy trade carried on by traders in African products, gold, printed cottons and slaves, and in Islamic books.

In an autograph in one of his surviving manuscripts, a fragment of an Arabic-Hebrew-Latin medical vocabulary he wrote for the Jewish physician Jacob Mantino, he signed his name in Arabic as Yuhanna al-Asad al-Gharnati (literally means John the Lion of Granada), a translation of his Christian name, John-Leo, or Johannes Leo (Latin), or Giovanni Leone (Italian). He was also given the family name Medici after his patron, Pope Leo X's family. The same manuscript also contained his original name al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi. al-Hasan ibn Muhammad was a patronymic name meaning "al-Hasan, son of Muhammad", and al-Fasi is the Arabic demonym for someone from Fez, Morocco.

Description of Africa, published in 1550 by Giovanni Battista Ramusio, is Leo's most famous work.

Other than this, he wrote an Arabic-Hebrew-Latin medical vocabulary for the Jewish physician Jacob Mantino. He also wrote an Arabic translation of the Epistles of St. Paul, which is dated in January 1521, and the manuscript currently belongs to the Biblioteca Estense in Modena. Another surviving work is a biographical encyclopedia of 25 major Islamic scholars and 5 major Jewish scholars. It was completed in Rome before he left the city in 1527 and published for the first time in Latin by Johann Heinrich Hottinger in 1664. Unlike Description of Africa, this biographical work was hardly noticed in Europe. It also contains various erroneous information, likely due to his lack of access to relevant sources when he was in Italy, forcing him to rely solely on memory.

In Description of Africa, he also referred to plans to write other books. He planned to write two other descriptions of places, one for places in the Middle East and another for places in Europe. He also planned to write an exposition of the Islamic faith and a history of North Africa. However, none of these books survived nor has there been any proof that he actually completed them. This might have been due to his possible return to North Africa.

A fictionalized account of his life, Leo Africanus, by the Lebanese-French author Amin Maalouf, fills in key gaps in the story and places Leo Africanus in prominent events of his time.

The BBC produced a documentary about his life called "Leo Africanus: A Man Between Worlds" in 2011. It was presented by Badr Sayegh and directed by Jeremy Jeffs. The film followed in Leo's footsteps from Granada, through Fez and Timbuktu, all the way to Rome.

It has been suggested that William Shakespeare may have been inspired by Leo Africanus' book to create the character of Othello.

Fisher, Humphrey J. (1978). "Leo Africanus and the Songhay conquest of Hausaland". International Journal of African Historical Studies. Boston University African Studies Center. 11 (1): 86-112. doi:10.2307/217055. JSTOR 217055.

Leo Africanus (1600). A Geographical Historie of Africa, written in Arabicke and Italian. Before which is prefixed a generall description of Africa, and a particular treatise of all the lands undescribed. Translated and collected by John Pory. London: G. Bishop. The first translation into English.

Leo Africanus (1896). The History and Description of Africa (3 Vols). Brown, Robert, editor. London: Hakluyt Society. Internet Archive: Volume 1 (pp. 1-224), Volume 2, (pp. 225-668); Volume 3 (pp. 669-1119); Geographical index. The original text of Pory's 1600 English translation together with an introduction and notes by the editor.

Masonen, Pekka (2001). "Leo Africanus: the man with many names" (PDF). Al-Andalus Magreb. 8-9: 115-143.

Rauchenberger, Dietrich (1999). Johannes Leo der Afrikaner: seine Beschreibung des Raumes zwischen Nil und Niger nach dem Urtext (in German). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 3-447-04172-2.

Whitney, Lois (1922). "Did Shakespeare know Leo Africanus?". Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (PMLA). 37 (3): 470-483. JSTOR 457156.

Black, Crofton (2002). "Leo Africanus's "Descrittione dell'Africa" and its sixteenth-century translations". Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. 65: 262-272. JSTOR 4135111.

Davis, Natalie Zemon (2007). Trickster Travels: a sixteenth-century Muslim between worlds. New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 0-8090-9435-5. pages 186, 260

Jean-Léon l'Africain (1956). Description de l'Afrique: Nouvelle édition traduite de l'italien par Alexis Épaulard et annotée par Alexis Épaulard, Théodore Monod, Henri Lhote et Raymond Mauny (2 Vols). Paris: Maisonneuve. A scholarly translation into French with extensive notes.

Hunwick, John O. (1999). Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sadi's Tarikh al-Sudan down to 1613 and other contemporary documents. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-11207-3. pages 272-291 contain a translation into English of Leo Africanus's descriptions of the Middle Niger, Hausaland and Bornu. Corresponds to Épaulard 1956 Vol II pages 463-481.

Masonen, Pekka (2000). The Negroland revisited: Discovery and invention of the Sudanese middle ages. Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. pp. 167-207. ISBN 951-41-0886-8.

Brinda Charry, Gitanjali Shahani: Emissaries in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Mediation, Transmission, Traffic, 1550-1700. Ashgate, 2009, repr. Routledge, 2016

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Joannes Leo Africanus (; born al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi , Arabic: حسن ابن محمد الوزان الفاسي‎; c. 1494 - c. 1554) was a Berber Andalusi diplomat and author who is best known for his book Descrittione dell'Africa ( Description of Africa) centered on the geography of the Maghreb and Nile Valley.

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In 48 episodes, John Green will teach you the history of the United States of America! This course is based off of the 2013 AP US History curriculum. By the ...

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William Perkins (1558-1602) was an influential English cleric and Cambridge theologian, receiving both a B.A. and M.A. from the university in 1581 and 1584 respectively, and also one of the foremost leaders of the Puritan movement in the Church of England during the Elizabethan era. Although not entirely accepting of the Church of England's ecclesiastical practices, Perkins conformed to many of the policies and procedures imposed by the Elizabethan Settlement. He did remain, however, sympathetic to the non-conformist puritans and even faced disciplinary action for his support.

Perkins was a prolific author who penned over forty works, many of which were published posthumously. In addition to writing, he also served as a fellow at Christ's College and as a lecturer at St Andrew's Church in Cambridge. He was a firm proponent of Reformed theology, particularly the supralapsarian theology of Theodore Beza and John Calvin. In addition, he was a staunch defender of Protestant ideals, specifically the five solae with a particular emphasis on solus Christus and sola Scriptura.

Perkins was born to Thomas and Anna Perkins at Marston Jabbett in the parish of Bulkington, Warwickshire, England in 1558, the year in which the Protestant Elizabeth I succeeded her Catholic sister Mary as Queen of England. Perkins lived his entire life under Elizabeth I, dying one year before the Queen's own death in 1603. Perkins's relationship with Elizabeth was ambiguous: on the one hand, she was Good Queen Bess, the monarch under whom England finally and firmly became a Protestant nation; on the other hand, Perkins and the other members of the Puritan movement were frustrated that the Elizabethan settlement had not gone far enough and pushed for further Reformation.

Little is known of Perkins' childhood and upbringing. Sometime in his early life he was rendered lame which forced him to write with his left hand. His family was evidently of some means, since in June 1577, at age 19, Perkins was enrolled as a pensioner of Christ's College, Cambridge being trained in the tradition of the Reformed scholastic framework. He would receive his BA in 1581 and his MA in 1584.

According to an unverifiable story, Perkins was convicted of the error of his ways after he heard a Cambridge mother say to her child, "Hold your tongue, or I will give you to drunken Perkins yonder." Whether or not the story is true, it is clear that Perkins had a religious awakening sometime between 1581 and 1584 during his time at Cambridge.

Perkins thus began a lifelong association with the "moderate-puritan" wing of the Church of England which held views similar to those of the continental Calvinist theologians Theodore Beza, Girolamo Zanchi, and Zacharias Ursinus. Perkins's circle at Cambridge included Laurence Chaderton and Richard Greenham.

Following his ordination, Perkins also preached his first sermons to the prisoners of the Cambridge jail. On one celebrated occasion, Perkins encountered a young man who was going to be executed for his crimes and who feared he was shortly going to be in hell: Perkins convinced the man that, through Christ, God could forgive his sins, and the formerly distraught youth faced his execution with manly composure as a result.

In 1584, after receiving his MA, Perkins was elected as a fellow of Christ's College, a post he held until 1594. In 1585, he became a Lecturer of St Andrew the Great in Cambridge, a post he held until his death.

Perkins's churchmanship

As a "moderate Puritan", Perkins was firmly opposed to non-conformists and other separatists who refused to conform to the Church of England. On the other hand, he also opposed the Elizabethan regime's program of imposing uniformity on the church. For example, when Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift imprisoned Francis Johnson for Johnson's support of a presbyterian form of church polity, Perkins loudly defended Johnson. This was not an isolated incident, and he appeared before the commission more than once.

On 13 January 1587, Perkins preached a sermon denouncing the practice of kneeling to receive Communion, and was ultimately called before the Vice-Chancellor as a result. During the final set of trials against Puritan ministers in 1590-91, Perkins confirmed that he had discussed the Book of Discipline with Puritan ministers, but claimed that he could not remember whom he had talked to. Perkins married Timothye Cradocke of Grantchester on 2 July 1595. (He had previously resigned his fellowship at Christ's College, since only unmarried men could be fellows.) They became the parents of seven children, three of whom died in youth from various causes, and one of whom was born after Perkins himself had died.

Perkins was a proponent of " double predestination" and was a major player in introducing the thought of Theodore Beza to England. He viewed the Reformed concept of the Covenant of Grace, which is central to Reformed soteriology and double predestination, to be a doctrine of great consoling value. He was responsible for the publication in English of Beza's famous chart about double predestination. In addition to adopting a Reformed soteriology, he also strongly held to the doctrines of solo Christo and sola Scriptura which "serve as the twin foundation stones for what Perkins conceived as biblical preaching." He was also a major proponent of literal interpretation utilizing the regula fidei, or Rule of Faith. This principle advocates that the unclear portions of scripture ought to be interpreted by the clear portions rather than by tradition or speculation. He did, however, leave room for figurative or analogical language when context demands.

Although relatively unknown to modern Christians, Perkins has had an influence that is felt by Christians all around the world. and was highly regarded in the Elizabethan Church. In addition, Perkins's views on double predestination made him a major target of Jacobus Arminius, the Dutch Reformed clergyman who opposed the doctrine of predestination. He also was influential in the theological development of the American puritan philosopher and theologian Jonathan Edwards. In addition, some consider the hermeneutics of Perkins to be a model that ought to be emulated.

In his lifetime, Perkins attained enormous popularity, with sales of his works eventually surpassing even Calvin's. When he died, his writings were selling more copies than those of many of the most famous of the Reformers combined.

From his position at Cambridge, Perkins was able to influence a whole generation of English churchmen. His pupils include:

William Ames, Puritan theologian whose "Marrow of Theology" was the most popular systematic theology of the time became professor of theology at Franeker, Netherlands

John Robinson, the founder of congregationalism in Leiden and pastor of the group which went on to found the Plymouth Colony

Thomas Goodwin, Congregationalist minister and Puritan theologian who was a vital part of the Westminster Assembly

Paul Baynes, Puritan preacher and successor to Perkins as lecturer at the church of St Andrew the Great in Cambridge

Samuel Ward, Puritan preacher and master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

Phineas Fletcher, a poet

Thomas Draxe, English puritan and theologian

Thomas Taylor, Puritan preacher and Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge

James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh

James Montagu, master of Sidney Sussex and later bishop of Winchester

Richard Sibbes, Puritan preacher of Gray's Inn and Master at Catherine's Hall known for his eloquence and comforting sermons

John Cotton, Colonial American Puritan minister and theologian of the Massachusetts Bay Colony

Thomas Hooker, Colonial American Puritan minister and founder of the Connecticut Colony

Thomas Shepard, Colonial American Puritan minister and theologian known for his leadership in the Antinomian Controversy

In 1602, Perkins suffered from " the stone". After several weeks of suffering, he died at age 44.

James Montagu preached his funeral sermon, taking as his text Joshua 1.2, ' Moses my servant is dead'. He was buried in St. Andrew's, the church which he had pastored for eighteen years.

Defensio pro Alexandro Discono (1584)

A Warning against the Idolatrie of the Last Times (1584)

Foure Great Lyers, Striuing Who Shall Win the Siluer Whetstone: Also, A Resolution to the Count (1585)

A Treatise Tending Vnto a Declaration Whether a Man be in the Estate of Damnation or in the Estate of Grace: And If he be in the First, How he may in Time Come out of it: if in the second, how he maie discerne it, and perseuere in the same to the end. The points that are handled are set downe in the page following (1590)

Armilla aurea, id est, Miranda series causarum et salutis & damnationis iuxta verbum Dei: Eius synopsin continet annexa tabula (1590)

A golden chaine, or the description of theologie: containing the order of the causes of saluation and damnation, according to Gods woord. A view of the order wherof, is to be seene in the table annexed (1591)

The foundation of Christian religion : gathered into sixe principles. And it is to bee learned of ignorant people, that they may be fit to hear sermons with profit, and to receiue the Lords Supper with comfort (1591)

Prophetica, sive, De sacra et vnica ratione concionandi tractatus (1592)

A case of conscience : the greatest that euer was; how a man may know whether he be the child of God or no. Resolued by the word of God. Whereunto is added a briefe discourse, taken out of Hier. Zanchius (1592)

An exposition of the Lords prayer : in the way of catechising seruing for ignorant people (1592)

Tvvo treatises·: I. Of the nature and practise of repentance. II. Of the combat of the flesh and spirit (1593)

An exposition of the Lords praier : in the way of catechisme (1593)

A direction for the government of the tongue according to Gods word (1593)

An exposition of the Symbole or Creed of the Apostles : according to the tenour of the Scriptures, and the consent of orthodoxe Fathers of the Church (1595)

A salve for a sicke man, or, A treatise containing the nature, differences, and kindes of death : as also the right manner of dying well. And it may serue for spirituall instruction to 1. Mariners when they goe to sea. 2. Souldiers when they goe to battell. 3. Women when they trauell of child (1595)

A declaration of the true manner of knowing Christ crucified (1596)

A reformed Catholike, or, A declaration shewing how neere we may come to the present Church of Rome in sundrie points of religion, and wherein we must for euer depart from them : with an advertisement to all fauourers of the Romane religion, shewing that the said religion is against the Catholike principles and grounds of the catechisme (1597)

De praedestinationis modo et ordine : et de amplitudine gratiae diuinae Christiana & perspicua disceptatio (1598)

Specimen digesti, sive Harmoniæ bibliorum Veteris et Novi Testamneti (1598)

A warning against the idolatrie of the last times : And an instruction touching religious, or diuine worship (1601)

The true gaine : more in worth then all the goods in the world (1601)

How to liue, and that well: in all estates and times, specially when helps and comforts faile (1601)

Posthumously:

The works of that famous and worthie minister of Christ, in the Universitie of Cambridge, M.W. Perkins : gathered into one volume, and newly corrected according to his owne copies. With distinct chapters, and contents of euery book, and a generall table of the whole (1603)

The reformation of couetousnesse: Written vpon the 6. chapter of Mathew, from the 19. verse to the ende of the said chapter (1603)

A commentarie or exposition, vpon the fiue first chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians: penned by the godly, learned, and iudiciall diuine (1604)

Lectures vpon the three first chapters of the Reuelation: preached in Cambridge anno Dom. 1595 (1604)

Gvilielmi Perkinsi Problema de Romanæ fidei ementito Catholicismo. : Estq[ue] Antidotum contra Thesaurum Catholicum Iodoci Coccij. Et [propaideia] iuventutis in lectione omnium patrum (1604)

The first part of The cases of conscience : Wherein specially, three maine questions concerning man, simply considered in himselfe, are propounded and resolued, according to the word of God (1604)

Satans sophistrie ansuuered by our Sauiour Christ: and in diuers sermons further manifested (1604)

Hepieíkeia: or, a treatise of Christian equitie and moderation (1604)

M. Perkins, his Exhortation to repentance, out of Zephaniah: preached in 2. sermons in Sturbridge Faire. Together with two treatises of the duties and dignitie of the ministrie: deliuered publiquely in the Vniuersitie of Cambridge. With a preface præfixed touching the publishing of all such workes of his as are to be expected: with a catalogue of all the perticulers [sic] of them, diligently perused and published, by a preacher of the word (1605)

Works newly corrected according to his owne copies (1605)

Of the calling of the ministerie two treatises, describing the duties and dignities of that calling (1605)

The combat betweene Christ and the diuell displayed, or A commentarie upon the temptations of Christ (1606)

A godlie and learned exposition vpon the whole epistle of Ivde... (1606)

A C[hristian] and [plain]e treatise of the manner and order of predestination : and of the largenes of Gods grace (1606)

The arte of prophecying, or, A treatise concerning the sacred and onely true manner and methode of preaching (1607)

A cloud of faithfull witnesses, leading to the heauenly Canaan, or, A commentarie vpon the 11 chapter to the Hebrewes (1607)

A treatise of mans imaginations : Shewing his naturall euill thoughts: His want of good thoughts: The way to reforme them (1607)

A discourse of the damned art of witchcraft: so farre forth as it is revealed in the Scriptures and manifest by true experience ... (1608)

The vvhole treatise of the cases of conscience : distinguished into three bookes (1608)

Christian oeconomie: or, A short survey of the right manner of erecting and ordering a familie : according to the scriptures (1609)

A graine of musterd-seede: or, the least measure of grace that is or can be effectuall to saluation (1611)

A resolution to the countryman prooving it utterly unlawfull to buy or use our yeerely prognostications (1618)

Deaths knell: or, The sicke mans passing-bell : summoning all sicke consciences to pr[e]pare themselues for the coming of the grea[t] day of doome, lest mercies gate be shut against them: fit for all those that desire to arriue at the heauenly Ierusalem. Whereunto are added prayers fit for housholders. The ninth edition. (1628)

The works of William Perkins, ed. Ian Breward (1970)

Arminius, Jacobus (1602), Concerning the Order and Mode of Predestination and the Amplitude of Divine Grace by Rev. William Perkins

Beeke, Joel; Pederson, Randall (2006), "William Perkins", Meet the Puritans, Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, ISBN 1601780001

Brook, Benjamin (1994), "William Perkins", The Lives of the Puritans, 2, London: Soli Deo Gloria, ISBN 1877611794

Culianu, Ioan (15 November 1987), Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0-226-12316-5

Ferguson, Sinclair (1996), "Foreword", The Art of Prophesying, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, ISBN 0851516890

Herbert, James (March 1982), "William Perkins's "A Reformed Catholic": A Psycho-Cultural Interpretation", Church History, Cambridge University Press, 51 (1): 7-23, doi:10.2307/3165250, ISSN 0009-6407, JSTOR 2165150

Lea, Thomas D (June 1996), "The Hermeneutics of the Puritans", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 39 (2): 271-284, ISSN 0360-8808

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William Perkins (1558-1602) was an influential English cleric and Cambridge theologian, receiving both a B.A. and M.A. from the university in 1581 and 1584 respectively, and also one of the foremost leaders of the Puritan movement in the Church of England during the Elizabethan era.

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John Cotton (4 December 1585 - 23 December 1652) was a clergyman in England and the American colonies and was considered the preeminent minister and theologian of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He studied for five years at Trinity College, Cambridge, and another nine at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He had already built a reputation as a scholar and outstanding preacher when he accepted the position of minister in 1612 at St. Botolph's Church, Boston in Lincolnshire. As a Puritan, he wanted to do away with the ceremony and vestments associated with the established Church of England and to preach in a simpler manner. He felt that the English church needed significant reforms, but he was adamant about not separating from it; his preference was to change it from within.

Many ministers were removed from their pulpits in England for their Puritan practices, but Cotton thrived at St. Botolph's for nearly 20 years because of supportive aldermen and lenient bishops, as well as his conciliatory and gentle demeanor. By 1632, however, the church authorities had greatly increased pressure on non-conforming clergy, and Cotton was forced into hiding. The following year, he and his wife boarded a ship for New England.

Cotton was highly sought as a minister in Massachusetts and was quickly installed as the second pastor of the Boston church, sharing the ministry with John Wilson. He generated more religious conversions in his first six months than had been made the whole previous year. Early in his Boston tenure, he became involved in the banishment of Roger Williams, who blamed much of his trouble on Cotton. Soon after, Cotton became embroiled in the colony's Antinomian Controversy when several adherents of his "free grace" theology (most notably Anne Hutchinson) began criticizing other ministers in the colony. He tended to support his adherents through much of that controversy; near its conclusion, however, he realized that many of them held theological positions that were well outside the mainstream of Puritan orthodoxy, which he did not condone.

Following the controversy, Cotton was able to mend fences with his fellow ministers, and he continued to preach in the Boston church until his death. A great part of his effort during his later career was devoted to the governance of the New England churches, and he was the one who gave the name Congregationalism to this form of church polity. A new form of polity was being decided for the Church of England in the early 1640s, as the Puritans in England gained power on the eve of the English Civil War, and Cotton wrote numerous letters and books in support of the "New England Way". Ultimately, Presbyterianism was chosen as the form of governance for the Church of England during the Westminster Assembly in 1643, though Cotton continued to engage in a polemic contest with several prominent Presbyterians on this issue.

Cotton became more conservative with age. He battled the separatist attitude of Roger Williams and advocated severe punishment for those whom he deemed heretics, such as Samuel Gorton. He was a scholar, an avid letter writer, and the author of many books, and was considered the "prime mover" among New England's ministers. He died in December 1652 at age 67, following a month-long illness. His grandson Cotton Mather also became a New England minister and historian.

John Cotton was born in Derby, England, on 4 December 1585 and was baptized 11 days later at St. Alkmund's Church there. He was the second of four children of Rowland Cotton, a Derby lawyer, and Mary Hurlbert, who was "a gracious and pious mother" according to Cotton's grandson Cotton Mather. He was educated at Derby School in the buildings which are now called the Old Grammar School, Derby, under the tutelage of Richard Johnson, a priest of the Church of England.

Cotton matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1598 as a sizar, the lowest class of paying student and requiring some financial assistance. He followed a curriculum of rhetoric, logic, and philosophy, and then gave four Latin disputations for an evaluation. He received his B.A. in 1603 and then attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge, "the most Puritan college in the kingdom", earning an M.A. in 1606 following a course of study which included Greek, astronomy, and perspective. He then accepted a fellowship at Emmanuel and continued with his studies for another five years, this time focusing on Hebrew, theology, and disputation; he was also allowed to preach during this time. An understanding of Latin was necessary for all scholars, and his study of Greek and Hebrew gave him greater insight into scripture.

Cotton became recognized for his scholarship and preaching during his time as a graduate student. He also tutored and worked as dean, supervising his juniors. Biographer Larzer Ziff calls his learning "profound" and his knowledge of languages "phenomenal". Cotton became famous at Cambridge when he preached the funeral sermon of Robert Some, the late Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and he developed a large following for both his "manner and matter". He left the university after five years but did not receive his Bachelor of Divinity degree until 1613, following the compulsory seven-year wait after his M.A. He was ordained as both deacon and priest of the Church of England on 13 July 1610. In 1612, he left Emmanuel College to become the vicar of St. Botolph's Church in Boston, Lincolnshire, described as "the most magnificent parochial edifice in the kingdom." He was only 27 years old, but his scholarly, vigorous, and persuasive preaching made him one of the leading Puritans in England.

Cotton's theology

One of the influences on Cotton's thinking while at Emmanuel was the teaching of William Perkins, from whom he learned to be flexible, sensible, and practical, and how to deal with the political realities of being a non-conformist Puritan within a disapproving Church of England. He also learned the art of disagreeing while maintaining the appearance of conformity.

As Cotton steadily became more famous for his preaching, he struggled internally over his own spiritual condition. His state of uncertainty became one of desperation as he spent three years searching for any sign that the "Lord had chosen him as one predestined to live in glory." His prayers were answered around 1611 when he became certain that "he had been called to salvation."

Cotton considered the doctrine and preaching of his spiritual counselor Richard Sibbes to have been the greatest influence on his conversion. Sibbes' "heart religion" was attractive to Cotton; he wrote, "The ambassadors of so gentle a Savior should not be overly masterly." Once converted, his style of pulpit oratory became more simple in expression, though disappointing to those who liked his former polished manner of speaking. Even in his new subdued manner, however, he had a profound impact on those hearing his message; Cotton's preaching was responsible for the conversion of John Preston, the future Master of Emmanuel College and the most influential Puritan minister of his day.

As Cotton's theology changed, he began placing less emphasis on preparation ("works") to obtain God's salvation, and more emphasis on the "transforming character of the moment of religious conversion in which mortal man [is] infused with a divine grace." His theology was molded by a number of individuals, besides influences such as Perkins and Sibbes; his basic tenets stemmed from reformer John Calvin. He wrote: "I have read the fathers, and the schoolmen and Calvin too, but I find that he that has Calvin has them all." Other inspirations to his theology include the Apostle Paul and Bishop Cyprian, and reformation leaders Zacharias Ursinus, Theodore Beza, Franciscus Junius (the elder), Jerome Zanchius, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Johannes Piscator, and Martin Bucer. Additional English role models include Paul Baynes, Thomas Cartwright, Laurence Chaderton, Arthur Hildersham, William Ames, William Whitaker, John Jewel, and John Whitgift.

In the religious theory developed by Cotton, the believer is totally passive in his personal religious experience, while the Holy Spirit provides spiritual regeneration. This model was in contrast to the theology of most other Puritan ministers, particularly those who became Cotton's colleagues in New England; the "preparationist" preachers such as Thomas Hooker, Peter Bulkley, and Thomas Shepard taught that good deeds and morality were necessary to generate the spiritual activity leading to God's salvation.

Cotton's sentiments were strongly anti-Catholic, clearly evident in his writings, and this led him to oppose the established English church which had separated from the Catholic church in name only, according to the Puritan view. The English church had an "officially sanctioned form of worship and an established ecclesiastical structure", and he felt that the Anglican church polity and ceremonies were not authorized by Scripture. Cotton and others wanted to "purify" such practices and were pejoratively labelled "puritans," a term that stuck. He was opposed to the essence of the established church, yet he was just as opposed to separating from it because he viewed the Puritan movement as a way to change the church from within. This view was distinct from the Separatist Puritan view, which held that the only solution to the situation within the English church was to leave it and start something new, unrelated to the official Church of England. This was the view espoused by the Mayflower Pilgrims.

Non-separatist Puritanism is described by author Everett Emerson as "an effort to continue and complete the reformation of the Church of England" which had begun under Henry VIII of England. Following the reformation, Queen Elizabeth chose a middle way for the English Church between the two extremes of Calvinism and Catholicism. The non-separatist Puritans, however, wanted to reform the Church of England so that it would resemble "the best reformed churches" on the Continent. To do this, their intention was to eliminate the observation of Saint's days, do away with making the sign of the cross and kneeling while receiving communion, and eliminate the requirement for ministers to wear the surplice. They also wanted church governance to change, favoring Presbyterianism over Episcopacy.

The Puritans were greatly influenced by Continental reformer Theodore Beza, and they had four primary agendas: seeking moral transformation; urging the practice of piety; urging the return to the Christianity of the Bible, as opposed to prayer books, ceremonies, and vestments; and the strict recognition of the Sabbath. Cotton embraced all four of these practices. He received a small amount of Puritan influence while at Trinity; but at Emmanuel, Puritan practices were more visible under Master Laurence Chaderton, including non- prayer book services, ministers wearing no surplice, and communion being given around a table.

Ministry at St. Botolph's

Puritan John Preston's religious conversion was attributed to Cotton. Preston had become a political force at Queens' College and later the Master of Emmanuel, and he held favor with King James. In his college roles, he sent a steady stream of students to live with and learn from Cotton, giving Cotton the epithet "Dr. Preston's seasoning vessel."

When Cotton arrived at St. Botolph's in 1612, non-conformity had already been practiced for nearly 30 years. Nevertheless, he attempted to conform to the practices of the Church of England during his early tenure there, until his conscience no longer allowed him to do so. He then wrote a defence of his new position which he circulated among his sympathizers.

In time, Cotton's preaching became so celebrated and his lectures so well attended that three lectures were added to his week, in addition to the usual Sunday morning sermon and Thursday afternoon lecture. Puritans throughout the kingdom sought to correspond with him or interview him, including Roger Williams with whom he later had a strained relationship. In 1615, Cotton began holding special services within his church where Puritanism could be practiced in its true sense and the offensive practices of the established church could be totally avoided. Some members were excluded from these alternate services; they became offended and registered their complaints with the bishop's court in Lincoln. Cotton was suspended, but alderman Thomas Leverett was able to negotiate an appeal, after which Cotton was reinstated. This interference maintained by Leverett and other aldermen was successful in protecting Cotton from Anglican church officials, enabling him to maintain his course of Puritanism under four different bishops of Lincoln: William Barlow, Richard Neile, George Montaigne, and John Williams.

Ministers came to Cotton with a wide range of questions and concerns. In the years before his immigration to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, he gave advice to his former Cambridge student Reverend Ralph Levett, serving in 1625 as the private chaplain to Sir William and Lady Frances Wray at Ashby cum Fenby, Lincolnshire. As the family minister, Levett struggled to align his Puritan beliefs with this fun-loving household, which enjoyed dancing and exchanging valentine sentiments. Cotton's advice was that valentines were like a lottery and "a takeinge of Gods name in vaine," though dancing was acceptable, if not done in a lewd way. Levett was satisfied with the guidance.

After Charles I became king in 1625, the situation grew worse for Puritans and more of them moved to the Netherlands. Charles would not compromise with his rivals, and Parliament became dominated by Puritans, followed by civil war in the 1640s. Under Charles, the Church of England reverted to more ceremonial worship, approaching that of Catholicism, and there was increased hostility towards the Calvinism that Cotton followed. Cotton's colleagues were being summoned to the High Court for their Puritan practices, but he continued to thrive because of his supportive aldermen and sympathetic superiors, as well as his conciliatory demeanor. Minister Samuel Ward of Ipswich remarked, "Of all men in the world I envy Mr. Cotton, of Boston, most; for he doth nothing in way of conformity, and yet hath his liberty, and I do everything that way, and cannot enjoy mine."

The options for Puritan ministers who lacked Cotton's success at avoiding the church authorities were to either go underground or to form a separatist church on the Continent. In the late 1620s, however, another option emerged as America began to open for colonization. With this new prospect, a staging area was established at Tattershall, near Boston, which was the seat of Theophilus Clinton, 4th Earl of Lincoln. Cotton and the Earl's chaplain Samuel Skelton conferred extensively, before Skelton left England to be the minister for the company of John Endicott in 1629. Cotton firmly opposed separatism, whereby newly formed churches in New England or continental Europe refused communion with the Church of England or with the continental reformed churches. For this reason, he was upset to learn that Skelton's church at Naumkeag (later Salem, Massachusetts) had opted for such separatism and had refused to offer communion to newly arriving colonists. In particular, he was grieved to learn that William Coddington, his friend and parishioner from Boston (Lincolnshire), was not allowed to have his child baptized "because he was no member of any particular reformed church, though of the catholic" (universal).

In July 1629, Cotton took part in a planning conference for emigration at Sempringham in Lincolnshire. Other future New England colonists who participated in the planning were Thomas Hooker, Roger Williams, John Winthrop, and Emmanuel Downing. Cotton did not emigrate for several more years, though he did travel to Southampton to preach the farewell sermon to Winthrop's party. Of Cotton's thousands of sermons, this was the earliest one to be published. He also offered support to those who had already sailed, and he arranged in a 1630 letter for a hogshead of meal to be sent to Coddington who was at Naumkeag.

Shortly after seeing the New England colonists on their way, both Cotton and his wife became seriously ill from malaria. They stayed at the manor house of the Earl of Lincoln for nearly a year; he eventually recovered, but his wife died. He decided to travel to complete his recovery and, while doing so, he became much more aware of the dangers that Puritans were facing throughout England. Nathaniel Ward wrote of his summons to court in a December 1631 letter to Cotton, mentioning that Thomas Hooker had already fled from Essex and gone to Holland. The letter is representative of the "emotional agony" faced by these ministers, and Ward wrote it as a sort of "good-bye", knowing that he would be removed from his ministry. Cotton and Ward met again in New England.

On 6 April 1632, Cotton married widow Sarah (Hawkred) Story who had a daughter. He received word almost immediately thereafter that he was to be summoned to the High Court for his non-conforming practices. This was less than a year after receiving the letter from Ward. Cotton asked the Earl of Dorset to intercede on his behalf, but the earl wrote back that non-conformity and Puritanism were unpardonable offenses, and told Cotton "you must fly for your safety."

Cotton was to appear before William Laud, the Bishop of London, who was on a campaign to suppress Puritan practices. He now felt that his best option was to disappear into the Puritan underground, and then decide his course of action from there. In October 1632, he wrote his wife a letter from hiding, saying that he was being well cared for but that she would be followed if she attempted to join him. Two prominent Puritans came to visit him in hiding: Thomas Goodwin and John Davenport. Both men came to convince him that it would be acceptable for him to conform to the established church rather than deal with possible imprisonment. Instead, Cotton compelled these two men into further non-conformity; Goodwin went on to be the voice of the independents (Congregationalists) at the Westminster Assembly in 1643, while Davenport became the founder of the Puritan New Haven Colony in America, using Cotton's theocratic model of government. It was Cotton's influence that made him "the most important of the Congregational leaders," and later a prime target for attacks by the Presbyterians.

While in hiding, Cotton moved about in an underground Puritan network, staying at times in Northamptonshire, Surrey, and different places around London. He contemplated going to Holland like many nonconformists, which allowed a quick return to England should the political situation become favorable and appeasing the sense that a "great reformation" was to take place soon. He soon ruled out Holland, however, because of the negative feedback from fellow minister Thomas Hooker who had previously gone there.

Members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony heard about Cotton's flight and sent him letters urging him to come to New England. None of the great Puritan clergymen had gone there, and he felt that it would put him at too great a distance to return should the situation in England warrant. Despite this, he made his decision to emigrate by the spring of 1633 and wrote a letter to Bishop Williams on 7 May, resigning from his benefice at St. Botolph's and thanking the bishop for his flexibility and mildness. By the summer, he had reunited with his wife, and the couple made their way to the coast of Kent. In June or July 1633, the 48 year-old Cotton boarded the ship Griffin with his wife and step-daughter, along with fellow ministers Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone. Also on board was Edward Hutchinson, the oldest son of Anne Hutchinson who was traveling with his uncle Edward. Cotton's wife bore their son during the voyage, and they named him Seaborn. Eighteen months after his departure from England, Cotton wrote that his decision to emigrate was not difficult to make; he found preaching in a new land to be far preferable to "sitting in a loathsome prison."

The Boston meetinghouse of the 1630s was small and windowless, with clay walls and a thatched roof-far different from Cotton's former surroundings in the spacious and comfortable church of St. Botolph's. Once established in his new church, however, his evangelical fervor contributed to a religious revival, and there were more conversions during his first six months in the pastorate than there had been the previous year. He was recognized as the leading intellectual in the colony and is the first minister known to have preached a theme of millennialism in New England. He also became the spokesman for the new church polity known as Congregationalism.

Congregationalists felt very strongly that individual congregations were real churches, while the Church of England had strayed far from the teachings of the Bible. Puritan leader John Winthrop arrived in Salem with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, but minister Samuel Skelton informed him that they would not be welcomed at the celebration of the Lord's supper and their children would not be baptized in Skelton's church because of Winthrop's association with the Church of England. Cotton was initially offended by this action and was concerned that the Puritans in Salem had become separatists, as were the Pilgrims. However, Cotton eventually came to agree with Skelton and concluded that the only real churches were autonomous, individual congregations, and that there was no legitimate higher ecclesiastical power.

Early in his New England tenure, Roger Williams began to be noticed for his activity in the Salem Church. This church was founded in 1629 and had already become a separatist church by 1630, when it denied communion to John Winthrop and his wife upon their arrival in Massachusetts; it also refused to baptize a child born at sea. Williams arrived in Boston in May 1631 and was offered the position of teacher in the Boston church, but he refused the offer because the church was not sufficiently separated from the Church of England. He even refused to become a member of the Boston church, but he had been selected as the teacher at Salem by May 1631 upon the death of Francis Higginson.

Williams had a reputation for both non-conformity and piety, although historian Everett Emerson calls him a "gadfly whose admirable personal qualities were mixed with an uncomfortable iconoclasm". Boston's minister John Wilson returned to England to get his wife in 1632, and Williams again refused an invitation to fill in during his absence. Williams had distinctive theological views, and Cotton differed with him on the issues of separatism and religious toleration. Williams had gone to Plymouth for a short while but returned to Salem, and was called to replace Salem's minister Samuel Skelton upon his death.

During his tenure at Salem, Williams considered those who maintained ties with the Church of England to be "the unregenerate" and pushed for separation from them. He was supported by local magistrate John Endicott, who went so far as to remove the cross from the English flag as being a symbol of idolatry. As a result, Endicott was barred from the magistracy for a year in May 1635, and Salem's petition for additional land was refused by the Massachusetts Court two months later because Williams was the minister there. Williams was soon banished from the Massachusetts colony; Cotton was not consulted on the issue but he nevertheless wrote to Williams, stating that the cause of banishment was "the tendency of Williams' doctrines to disturb the peace of the church and state." Williams was going to be shipped back to England by the Massachusetts magistrates, but instead he slipped away into the wilderness, spending the winter near Seekonk and establishing Providence Plantations near the Narragansett Bay the following spring. He eventually considered Cotton the "chief spokesman" for Massachusetts Bay Colony and "the source of his problems", according to one historian. Cotton went to Salem in 1636 where he delivered a sermon to the congregation. His goal was to make peace with the parishioners, but also to persuade them of what he perceived as the dangers of the separatist doctrine espoused by Williams and many others.

Cotton's theology espoused that a person is helpless to affect his own salvation, and instead is totally dependent on God's free grace. In contrast, most of the other New England ministers were "preparationists", espousing the view that morality and good works were needed to prepare one for God's salvation. Most members of Cotton's Boston church became very attracted to his theology, including Anne Hutchinson. She was a charismatic woman who hosted 60 or more people at her home each week to discuss Cotton's sermons, but also to criticize the colony's other ministers. Another highly important advocate of Cotton's theology was the colony's young governor Henry Vane, who had built an addition onto Cotton's house where he lived during his time in Boston. Hutchinson and Vane followed the teachings of Cotton, but both of them also held some views that were considered unorthodox, and even radical.

John Wheelwright, a brother-in-law of Hutchinson, arrived in New England in 1636; he was the only other divine in the colony who shared Cotton's free grace theology. Thomas Shepard was the minister of Newtown (which became Cambridge, Massachusetts). He began writing letters to Cotton as early as the spring of 1636, in which he expressed concern about Cotton's preaching and about some of the unorthodox opinions found among his Boston parishioners. Shepard also began criticizing this unorthodoxy to his Newtown congregation during his sermons.

Hutchinson and the other free grace advocates continually questioned, criticized, and challenged the orthodox ministers in the colony. Ministers and magistrates began sensing the religious unrest, and John Winthrop gave the first public warning of the ensuing crisis with an entry in his journal around 21 October 1636, blaming the developing situation on Hutchinson.

On 25 October 1636, seven ministers gathered at the home of Cotton to confront the developing discord, holding a private conference which included Hutchinson and other lay leaders from the Boston church. Some agreement was reached concerning the theological differences, and Cotton "gave satisfaction" to the other ministers, "so as he agreed with them all in the point of sanctification, and so did Mr. Wheelwright; so as they all did hold, that sanctification did help to evidence justification." The agreement was short-lived, and Cotton, Hutchinson, and their supporters were accused of a number of heresies, including antinomianism and familism. Antinomianism means "against or opposed to the law" and theologically means that a person considers himself not bound to obey any moral or spiritual law. Familism is named for a 16th-century sect called the Family of Love; it teaches that a person can attain a perfect union with God under the Holy Spirit, coupled with freedom from both sin and the responsibility for it. Hutchinson, Wheelwright, and Vane were antagonists of the orthodox party, but Cotton's theological differences from the colony's other ministers were at the center of the controversy.

By winter, the theological schism had become great enough that the General Court called for a day of fasting on 19 January 1637 to pray for a resolution of the colony's difficulties. Cotton preached a conciliatory sermon at the Boston church on that morning, but Wheelwright preached a sermon in the afternoon which was "censurable and incited mischief" in the view of the Puritan clergy. Cotton considered this sermon to be "ill-advised in manner, although ... valid enough in content."

By March, the political tide began to turn against the free grace advocates. Wheelwright was tried and convicted of contempt and sedition for his fast-day sermon, but he was not yet sentenced. John Winthrop replaced Henry Vane as governor in May 1637, and all of the other Boston magistrates who supported Hutchinson and Wheelwright were voted out of office. Wheelwright was sentenced to banishment at the court which convened on 2 November 1637 and ordered to leave the colony within 14 days.

Anne Hutchinson was brought before the clergy and congregation at the Boston meeting house on 15 March 1638. A list of numerous theological errors was presented, four of which were addressed during a nine-hour session. Then Cotton was put in the uncomfortable position of delivering an admonition to his admirer. He said, "I would speake it to Gods Glory [that] you have bine an Instrument of doing some good amongst us ... he hath given you a sharp apprehension, a ready utterance and abilitie to exprese yourselfe in the Cause of God."

With this said, it was the overwhelming conclusion of the ministers that Hutchinson's unsound beliefs outweighed any good that she might have done and that she endangered the spiritual welfare of the community. Cotton continued:

You cannot Evade the Argument ... that filthie Sinne of the Communitie of Woemen; and all promiscuous and filthie cominge togeather of men and Woemen without Distinction or Relation of Mariage, will necessarily follow ... Though I have not herd, nayther do I thinke you have bine unfaythfull to your Husband in his Marriage Covenant, yet that will follow upon it.

Here Cotton was making a reference to Hutchinson's theological ideas and those of the antinomians and familists, which taught that a Christian is under no obligation to obey moral strictures. He then concluded:

Therefor, I doe Admonish you, and alsoe charge you in the name of Ch[rist] Je[sus], in whose place I stand ... that you would sadly consider the just hand of God agaynst you, the great hurt you have done to the Churches, the great Dishonour you have brought to Je[sus] Ch[rist], and the Evell that you have done to many a poore soule.

Cotton had not yet given up on his parishioner, and Hutchinson was allowed to spend the week at his home, where the recently arrived Reverend John Davenport was also staying. All week the two ministers worked with her, and under their supervision she had written out a formal recantation of her unorthodox opinions. At the next meeting on Thursday, 22 March, she stood and read her recantation to the congregation, admitting that she had been wrong about many of her beliefs. The ministers, however, continued with her examination, during which she began to lie about her theological positions-and her entire defense unraveled. At this point, Cotton signaled that he had given up on her, and his fellow minister John Wilson read the order of excommunication.

Cotton later summarized some of the events in his correspondence. In one letter he asserted that "the radical voices consciously sheltered themselves" behind his reputation. In a March 1638 letter to Samuel Stone at Hartford, he referred to Hutchinson and others as being those who "would have corrupted and destroyed Faith and Religion had not they bene timely discovered." His most complete statement on the subject appeared in a long letter to Wheelwright in April 1640, in which he reviewed the failings which both of them had committed as the controversy developed. He discussed his own failure in not understanding the extent to which members of his congregation knowingly went beyond his religious views, specifically mentioning the heterodox opinions of William Aspinwall and John Coggeshall. He also suggested that Wheelwright should have picked up on the gist of what Hutchinson and Coggeshall were saying.

During the heat of the controversy, Cotton considered moving to New Haven, but he first recognized at the August 1637 synod that some of his parishioners were harboring unorthodox opinions, and that the other ministers may have been correct in their views about his followers. Some of the magistrates and church elders let him know in private that his departure from Boston would be most unwelcome, and he decided to stay in Boston once he saw a way to reconcile with his fellow ministers.

In the aftermath of the controversy, Cotton continued a dialogue with some of those who had gone to Aquidneck Island (called Rhode Island at the time). One of these correspondents was his friend from Lincolnshire William Coddington. Coddington wrote that he and his wife had heard that Cotton's preaching had changed dramatically since the controversy ended: "if we had not knowne what he had holden forth before we knew not how to understand him." Coddington then deflected Cotton's suggestions that he reform some of his own ideas and "errors in judgment". In 1640, the Boston church sent some messengers to Aquidneck, but they were poorly received. Young Francis Hutchinson, a son of Anne, attempted to withdraw his membership from the Boston church, but his request was denied by Cotton.

Cotton continued to be interested in helping Wheelwright get his order of banishment lifted. In the spring of 1640, he wrote to Wheelwright with details about how he should frame a letter to the General Court. Wheelwright was not yet ready to concede the level of fault that Cotton suggested, though, and another four years transpired before he could admit enough wrongdoing for the court to lift his banishment.

Some of Cotton's harshest critics during the controversy were able to reconcile with him following the event. A year after Hutchinson's excommunication, Thomas Dudley requested Cotton's assistance with counseling William Denison, a layman in the Roxbury church. In 1646, Thomas Shepard was working on his book about the Sabbath Theses Sabbaticae and he asked for Cotton's opinion.

Cotton served as teacher and authority on scripture for both his parishioners and his fellow ministers. For example, he maintained a lengthy correspondence with Concord minister Peter Bulkley from 1635 to 1650. In his letters to Cotton, Bulkley requested help for doctrinal difficulties as well as for challenging situations emanating from his congregation. Plymouth minister John Reynes and his ruling elder William Brewster also sought Cotton's professional advice. In addition, Cotton continued an extensive correspondence with ministers and laymen across the Atlantic, viewing this work as supporting Christian unity similar to what the Apostle Paul had done in biblical times.

Cotton's eminence in New England mirrored that which he enjoyed in Lincolnshire, though there were some notable differences between the two worlds. In Lincolnshire, he preached to capacity audiences in a large stone church, while in New England he preached to small groups in a small wood-framed church. Also, he was able to travel extensively in England, and even visited his native town of Derby at least once a year. By contrast, he did little traveling in New England. He occasionally visited the congregations at Concord or Lynn, but more often he was visited by other ministers and laymen who came to his Thursday lectures. He continued to board and mentor young scholars, as he did in England, but there were far fewer in early New England.

One of the major issues that consumed Cotton both before and after the Antinomian Controversy was the government, or polity, of the New England churches. By 1636, he had settled on the form of ecclesiastical organization that became "the way of the New England churches"; six years later, he gave it the name Congregationalism. Cotton's plan involved independent churches governed from within, as opposed to Presbyterianism with a more hierarchical polity, which had many supporters in England. Both systems were an effort to reform the Episcopal polity of the established Church of England.

Congregationalism became known as the "New England Way", based on a membership limited to saved believers and a separation from all other churches in matters of government. Congregationalists wanted each church to have its own governance, but they generally opposed separation from the Church of England. The Puritans continued to view the Church of England as being the true church but needing reform from within. Cotton became the "chief helmsman" for the Massachusetts Puritans in establishing congregationalism in New England, with his qualities of piety, learning, and mildness of temper. Several of his books and much of his correspondence dealt with church polity, and one of his key sermons on the subject was his Sermon Deliver'd at Salem in 1636, given in the church that was forced to expel Roger Williams. Cotton disagreed with Williams' separatist views, and he had hoped to convince him of his errors before his banishment. His sermon in Salem was designed to keep the Salem church from moving further towards separation from the English church. He felt that the church and the state should be separate to a degree but that they should be intimately related. He considered the best organization for the state to be a Biblical model from the Old Testament. He did not see democracy as being an option for the Massachusetts government, but instead felt that a theocracy would be the best model. It was in these matters that Roger Williams strongly disagreed with Cotton.

Puritans gained control of the English Parliament in the early 1640s, and the issue of polity for the English church was of major importance to congregations throughout England and its colonies. To address this issue, the Westminster Assembly was convened in 1643. Viscount Saye and Sele had scrapped his plans to immigrate to New England, along with other members of Parliament. He wrote to Cotton, Hooker, and Davenport in New England, "urging them to return to England where they were needed as members of the Westminster Assembly". None of the three attended the meeting, where an overwhelming majority of members were Presbyterian and only a handful represented independent (congregational) interests. Despite the lopsided numbers, Cotton was interested in attending, though John Winthrop quoted Hooker as saying that he could not see the point of "travelling 3,000 miles to agree with three men." Cotton changed his mind about attending as events began to unfold leading to the First English Civil War, and he decided that he could have a greater effect on the Assembly through his writings.

The New England response to the assembly was Cotton's book The Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven published in 1644. It was Cotton's attempt to persuade the assembly to adopt the Congregational way of church polity in England, endorsed by English ministers Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye. In it, Cotton reveals some of his thoughts on state governance. "Democracy I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government either for church or commonwealth." Despite these views against democracy, congregationalism later became important in the democratization of the English colonies in North America. This work on church polity had no effect on the view of most Presbyterians, but it did change the stance of Presbyterian John Owen who later became a leader of the independent party at the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660. Owen had earlier been selected by Oliver Cromwell to be the vice-chancellor of Oxford.

Congregationalism was New England's established church polity, but it did have its detractors among the Puritans, including Baptists, Seekers, Familists, and other sectaries. John Winthrop's Short Story about the Antinomian Controversy was published in 1644, and it prompted Presbyterian spokesman Robert Baillie to publish A Dissuasive against the Errours of the Time in 1645. As a Presbyterian minister, Baillie was critical of Congregationalism and targeted Cotton in his writings. He considered congregationalism to be "unscriptural and unworkable," and thought Cotton's opinions and conduct to be "shaky."

Cotton's response to Baillie was The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared published in 1648. This work brings out more personal views of Cotton, particularly in regards to the Antinomian Controversy. He concedes that neither Congregationalism nor Presbyterianism would become dominant in the domain of the other, but he looks at both forms of church polity as being important in countering the heretics. The brief second part of this work was an answer to criticism by Presbyterian ministers Samuel Rutherford and Daniel Cowdrey. Baillie made a further response to this work in conjunction with Rutherford, and to this Cotton made his final refutation in 1650 in his work Of the Holinesse of Church-members.

Following the Westminster Assembly in England, the New England ministers held a meeting of their own at Harvard College in Cambridge, addressing the issue of Presbyterianism in the New England colonies. Cotton and Hooker acted as moderators. A synod was held in Cambridge three years later in September 1646 to prepare "a model of church government". The three ministers appointed to conduct the business were Cotton, Richard Mather, and Ralph Partridge. This resulted in a statement called the Cambridge Platform which drew heavily from the writings of Cotton and Mather. This platform was adopted by most of the churches in New England and endorsed by the Massachusetts General Court in 1648; it also provided an official statement of the Congregationalist method of church polity known as the "New England Way".

Cotton had written a letter to Roger Williams immediately following his banishment in 1635 which appeared in print in London in 1643. Williams denied any connection with its publication, although he happened to be in England at the time getting a patent for the Colony of Rhode Island. The letter was published in 1644 as Mr. Cottons Letters Lately Printed, Examined and Answered. The same year, Williams also published The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution. In these works, he discussed the purity of New England churches, the justice of his banishment, and "the propriety of the Massachusetts policy of religious intolerance." Williams felt that the root cause of conflict was the colony's relationship of church and state.

With this, Cotton became embattled with two different extremes. At one end were the Presbyterians who wanted more openness to church membership, while Williams thought that the church should completely separate from any church hierarchy and only allow membership to those who separated from the Anglican church. Cotton chose a middle ground between the two extremes. He felt that church members should "hate what separates them from Christ, [and] not denounce those Christians who have not yet rejected all impure practices." Cotton further felt that the policies of Williams were "too demanding upon the Christian". In this regard, historian Everett Emerson suggests that "Cotton's God is far more generous and forgiving than Williams's".

Cotton and Williams both accepted the Bible as the basis for their theological understandings, although Williams saw a marked distinction between the Old Testament and New Testament, in contrast to Cotton's perception that the two books formed a continuum. Cotton viewed the Old Testament as providing a model for Christian governance, and envisioned a society where church and state worked together cooperatively. Williams, in contrast, believed that God had dissolved the union between the Old and New Testaments with the arrival of Christ; in fact, this dissolution was "one of His purposes in sending Christ into the world." The debate between the two men continued in 1647 when Cotton replied to Williams's book with The Bloudy Tenant, Washed and Made White in the Bloud of the Lambe, after which Williams responded with yet another pamphlet.

A variety of religious sects emerged during the first few decades of American colonization, some of which were considered radical by many orthodox Puritans. Some of these groups included the Radical Spiritists ( Antinomians and Familists), Anabaptists (General and Particular Baptists), and Quakers. Many of these had been expelled from Massachusetts and found a haven in Portsmouth, Newport, or Providence Plantation.

One of the most notorious of these sectaries was the zealous Samuel Gorton who had been expelled from both Plymouth Colony and the settlement at Portsmouth, and then was refused freemanship in Providence Plantation. In 1642, he settled in what became Warwick, but the following year he was arrested with some followers and brought to Boston for dubious legal reasons. Here he was forced to attend a Cotton sermon in October 1643 which he confuted. Further attempts at correcting his religious opinions were in vain. Cotton was willing to have Gorton put to death in order to "preserve New England's good name in England," where he felt that such theological views were greatly detrimental to Congregationalism. In the Massachusetts General Court, the magistrates sought the death penalty, but the deputies were more sympathetic to free expression; they refused to agree, and the men were eventually released.

In July 1651, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was visited by three Rhode Islanders who had become Baptists: John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes, and John Crandall. Massachusetts reacted harshly against the visit, imprisoning the three men, while Cotton preached "against the heinousness" of the Anabaptist opinions of these men. The three men were given exorbitant fines, despite public opinion against punishment. Friends paid the fines for Clarke and Crandall, but Holmes refused to allow anyone to pay his fine. As a result, he was publicly whipped in such a cruel manner that he could only sleep on his elbows and knees for weeks afterwards. News of the persecutions reached England and met with a negative reaction. Sir Richard Saltonstall, a friend of Cotton's from Lincolnshire, wrote to Cotton and Wilson in 1652 rebuking them for the practices of the colony. He wrote, "It doth not a little grieve my spirit to heare what sadd things are reported dayly of your tyranny and persecutions in New-England as that you fyne, whip and imprison men for their consciences." He continued, "these rigid wayes have layed you very lowe in the hearts of the saynts." Roger Williams also wrote a treatise on these persecutions which was published after Cotton's death.

Later life, death, and legacy

During the final decade of his life, Cotton continued his extensive correspondence with people ranging from obscure figures to those who were highly prominent, such as Oliver Cromwell. His counsel was constantly requested, and Winthrop asked for his help in 1648 to rewrite the preface to the laws of New England. William Pynchon published a book that was considered unsound by the Massachusetts General Court, and copies were collected and burned on the Boston common. A letter from Cotton and four other elders attempted to moderate the harsh reaction of the court.

Religious fervor had been waning in the Massachusetts Bay Colony since the time of the first settlements, and church membership was dropping off. To counter this, minister Richard Mather suggested a means of allowing membership in the church without requiring a religious testimonial. Traditionally, parishioners had to make a confession of faith in order to have their children baptized and in order to participate in the sacrament of Holy Communion (Last Supper). In the face of declining church membership, Mather proposed the Half-way covenant, which was adopted. This policy allowed people to have their children baptized, even though they themselves did not offer a confession.

Cotton was concerned with church polity until the end of his life and continued to write about the subject in his books and correspondence. His final published work concerning Congregationalism was Certain Queries Tending to Accommodation, and Communion of Presbyterian & Congregational Churches completed in 1652. It is evident in this work that he had become more liberal towards Presbyterian church polity. He was, nevertheless, unhappy with the direction taken in England. Author Everett Emerson writes that "the course of English history was a disappointment to him, for not only did the English reject his Congregational practices developed in America, but the advocates of Congregationalism in England adopted a policy of toleration, which Cotton abhorred."

Some time in the autumn of 1652, Cotton crossed the Charles River to preach to students at Harvard. He became ill from the exposure, and in November he and others realized that he was dying. He was at the time running a sermon series on First Timothy for his Boston congregation which he was able to finish, despite becoming bed-ridden in December. On 2 December 1652, Amos Richardson wrote to John Winthrop, Jr.: "Mr. Cotton is very ill and it is much feared will not escape this sickness to live. He hath great swellings in his legs and body". The Boston Vital Record gives his death date as 15 December; a multitude of other sources, likely correct, give the date as 23 December 1652. He was buried in the King's Chapel Burying Ground in Boston and is named on a stone which also names early First Church ministers John Davenport (d. 1670), John Oxenbridge (d. 1674), and Thomas Bridge (d. 1713). Exact burial sites and markers for many first-generation settlers in that ground were lost when Boston's first Anglican church, King's Chapel I (1686), was placed on top of them. The present stone marker was placed by the church, but is likely a cenotaph.

Many scholars, early and contemporary, consider Cotton to be the "preeminent minister and theologian of the Massachusetts Bay Colony." Fellow Boston Church minister John Wilson wrote: "Mr. Cotton preaches with such authority, demonstration, and life that, methinks, when he preaches out of any prophet or apostle I hear not him; I hear that very prophet and apostle. Yea, I hear the Lord Jesus Christ speaking in my heart." Wilson also called Cotton deliberate, careful, and in touch with the wisdom of God. Cotton's contemporary John Davenport founded the New Haven Colony and he considered Cotton's opinion to be law.

Cotton was highly regarded in England, as well. Biographer Larzer Ziff writes:

John Cotton, the majority of the English Puritans knew, was the American with the widest reputation for scholarship and pulpit ability; of all the American ministers, he had been consulted most frequently by the prominent Englishmen interested in Massachusetts; of all of the American ministers, he had been the one to supply England not only with descriptions of his practice, but with the theoretical base for it. John Cotton, the majority of the English Puritans concluded, was the prime mover in New England's ecclesiastical polity.

Even Thomas Edwards, an opponent of Cotton's in England, called him "the greatest divine" and the "prime man of them all in New England".

Modern scholars agree that Cotton was the most eminent of New England's early ministers. Robert Charles Anderson comments in the Great Migration series: "John Cotton's reputation and influence were unequaled among New England ministers, with the possible exception of Thomas Hooker." Larzer Ziff writes that Cotton "was undeniably the greatest preacher in the first decades of New England history, and he was, for his contemporaries, a greater theologian than he was a polemicist." Ziff also considers him the greatest Biblical scholar and ecclesiastical theorist in New England. Historian Sargeant Bush notes that Cotton provided leadership both in England and America through his preaching, books, and his life as a nonconformist preacher, and that he became a leader in congregational autonomy, responsible for giving congregationalism its name. Literary scholar Everett Emerson calls Cotton a man of "mildness and profound piety" whose eminence was derived partly from his great learning.

Despite his position as a great New England minister, Cotton's place in American history has been eclipsed by his theological adversary Roger Williams. Emerson claims that "Cotton is probably best known in American intellectual history for his debate with Roger Williams over religious toleration," where Cotton is portrayed as "medieval" and Williams as "enlightened". Putting Cotton into the context of colonial America and its impact on modern society, Ziff writes, "An America in search of a past has gone to Roger Williams as a true parent and has remembered John Cotton chiefly as a monolithic foe of enlightenment."

Cotton was married in Balsham, Cambridgeshire, on 3 July 1613 to Elizabeth Horrocks, but this marriage produced no children. Elizabeth died about 1630. Cotton married Sarah, the daughter of Anthony Hawkred and widow of Roland Story, in Boston, Lincolnshire, on 25 April 1632, and they had six children. His oldest child Seaborn was born during the crossing of the Atlantic on 12 August 1633, and he married Dorothy, the daughter of Simon and Anne Bradstreet. Daughter Sariah was born in Boston (Massachusetts) on 12 September 1635 and died there in January 1650. Elizabeth was born 9 December 1637, and she married Jeremiah Eggington. John was born 15 March 1640; he attended Harvard and married Joanna Rossiter. Maria was born 16 February 1642 and married Increase Mather, the son of Richard Mather. The youngest child was Rowland, who was baptized in Boston on 24 December 1643 and died in January 1650 during a smallpox epidemic, like his older sister Sariah.

Following Cotton's death, his widow married the Reverend Richard Mather. Cotton's grandson, Cotton Mather who was named for him, became a noted minister and historian. Among Cotton's descendants are U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Attorney General Elliot Richardson, actor John Lithgow, and clergyman Phillips Brooks.

Cotton's written legacy includes a large body of correspondence, numerous sermons, a catechism, and a shorter catechism for children titled Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes. The last is considered the first children's book by an American; it was incorporated into The New England Primer around 1701 and remained a component of that work for over 150 years. This catechism was published in 1646 and went through nine printings in the 17th century. It is composed of a list of questions with answers. Cotton's grandson Cotton Mather wrote, "the children of New England are to this day most usually fed with [t]his excellent catechism". Among Cotton's most famous sermons is God's Promise to His Plantation (1630), preached to the colonists preparing to depart from England with John Winthrop's fleet.

In May 1636, Cotton was appointed to a committee to make a draft of laws that agreed with the Word of God and would serve as a constitution. The resulting legal code was titled An Abstract of the laws of New England as they are now established. This was only modestly used in Massachusetts, but the code became the basis for John Davenport's legal system in the New Haven Colony and also provided a model for the new settlement at Southampton, Long Island.

Cotton's most influential writings on church government were The Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven and The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, where he argues for Congregational polity instead of Presbyterian governance. He also carried on a pamphlet war with Roger Williams concerning separatism and liberty of conscience. Williams's The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644) brought forth Cotton's reply The Bloudy Tenent washed and made white in the bloud of the Lamb, to which Williams responded with Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy by Mr. Cotton's Endeavour to Wash it White in the Blood of the Lamb.

Cotton's Treatise of the Covenant of Grace was prepared posthumously from his sermons by Thomas Allen, formerly Teacher of Charlestown, and published in 1659. It was cited at length by Jonathan Mitchell in his 'Preface to the Christian Reader' in the Report of the Boston Synod of 1662. A general list of Cotton's works is given in the Bibliotheca Britannica.

Anderson, Robert Charles (1995). The Great Migration Begins, Immigrants to New England 1620-1633. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. ISBN 0-88082-044-6.

Anderson, Robert Charles (2003). The Great Migration, Immigrants to New England 1634-1635. Vol. III G-H. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. ISBN 0-88082-158-2.

Austin, John Osborne (1887). Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island. Albany, New York: J. Munsell's Sons. ISBN 978-0-8063-0006-1.

Battis, Emery (1962). Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-0863-4.

Bell, Charles H. (1876). John Wheelwright. Boston: printed for the Prince Society.

Bremer, Francis J. (1981). Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion. Huntington, New York: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company. pp. 1-8.

(Subscription or Bremer, Francis J. "Cotton, John (1585-1652)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/6416. UK public library membership required.)

Bush, Sargent (ed.) (2001). The Correspondence of John Cotton. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-2635-9.

Champlin, John Denison (1913). "The Tragedy of Anne Hutchinson". Journal of American History. Twin Falls, Idaho. 5 (3): 1-11.

Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cotton, John" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Emerson, Everett H. (1990). John Cotton (2 ed.). New York: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-7615-X.

Gura, Philip F. (1984). A Glimpse of Sion's Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620-1660. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-5095-7.

Hall, David D. (1990). The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638, A Documentary History. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-1091-4.

Holmes, James T. (1915). The American Family of Rev. Obadiah Holmes. Columbus, Ohio: private.

LaPlante, Eve (2004). American Jezebel, the Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman who Defied the Puritans. San Francisco: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-056233-1.

Lawrence, William (1911). "Brooks, Phillips" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Morris, Richard B (1981). "Jezebel Before the Judges". In Bremer, Francis J (ed.). Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion. Huntington, New York: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company. pp. 58-64.

Thornton, John Wingate (April 1847). "The Cotton Family". New England Historical and Genealogical Register. New England Historic Genealogical Society. 1: 164-166. ISBN 0-7884-0293-5.

Williams, Roger (2001). Groves, Richard (ed.). The Bloudy Tenent. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. ISBN 9780865547667.

Winship, Michael Paul (2002). Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08943-4.

Winship, Michael Paul (2005). The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson: Puritans Divided. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-1380-3.

Winthrop, John (1908). Hosmer, James Kendall (ed.). Winthrop's Journal "History of New England" 1630-1649. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 276. Winthrop's Journal a daughter of Mrs. Hutchinson.

Ziff, Larzer (1962). The Career of John Cotton: Puritanism and the American Experience. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Ziff, Larzer (ed.) (1968). John Cotton on the Churches of New England. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press.; contains Cotton's works "A Sermon at Salem," "The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven" and "The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared"

Cotton, John (1958). Emerson, Everett H. (ed.). Gods Mercie Mixed with His Justice; or, His Peoples Deliverance in Times of Danger. Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints. ISBN 978-0-8201-1242-8.; original London, 1641.

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John Cotton (4 December 1585 - 23 December 1652) was a clergyman in England and the American colonies and was considered the preeminent minister and theologian of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He studied for five years at Trinity College, Cambridge, and another nine at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

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The Reverend Richard Mather (1596 - 22 April 1669) was a Puritan minister in colonial Boston, Massachusetts. He was father to Increase Mather and grandfather to Cotton Mather, both celebrated Boston theologians.

Mather was born in Lowton in the parish of Winwick, Lancashire, England, of a family which was in reduced circumstances but entitled to bear a coat of arms.

He studied at Winwick grammar school, of which he was appointed a master in his fifteenth year, and left it in 1612 to become master of a newly established school at Toxteth Park, Liverpool. After a few months at Brasenose College, Oxford, he began in November 1618 to preach at Toxteth, and was ordained there, possibly only as deacon, early in 1619.

Between August and November 1633 he was suspended for nonconformity in matters of ceremony; and in 1634 was again suspended by the visitors of Richard Neile, archbishop of York, who, hearing that he had never worn a surplice during the fifteen years of his ministry, refused to reinstate him and said that "it had been better for him that he had begotten seven bastards".

He had a great reputation as a preacher in and about Liverpool; but, advised by letters of John Cotton and Thomas Hooker, he was persuaded to join the company of pilgrims in May 1635 and embarked at Bristol for New England.

On 4 June 1635, Richard, wife Katherine, and children Samuel, Timothy, Nathaniel, and Joseph, all set sail for the New World aboard the ship James.As they approached New England, a hurricane struck and they were forced to ride it out just off the coast of modern-day Hampton, New Hampshire. According to the ship's log and the journal of Increase Mather, the following was recorded;

At this moment,... their lives were given up for lost; but then, in an instant of time, God turned the wind about, which carried them from the rocks of death before their eyes. ...her sails rent in sunder, and split in pieces, as if they had been rotten ragges... (ibid, p.29.)

They tried to stand down during the storm just outside the Isles of Shoals, but lost all three anchors, as no canvas or rope would hold, but on 17 August 1635, torn to pieces, and with not one death, all one hundred plus passengers of the James managed to make it to Boston Harbor. (ibid, p.34.)

He arrived at Boston on 17 August 1635, after weathering the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635.

As a famous preacher "he was desired at Plimouth, Dorchester, and Roxbury". He went to Dorchester, where the Church had been greatly depleted by migrations to Windsor, Connecticut; and where, after a delay of several months, in August 1636 there was constituted by the consent of magistrates and clergy a church of which he was "teacher" until his death in Dorchester on 22 April 1669. As pastor, he oversaw the baptism of Dorcas Ye Blackmore, one of the first African American Christians in New England, and Mather worked to help free her. Mather was buried in the Dorchester North Burying Ground.

He was a leader of New England Congregationalism, whose policy he defended and described in the tract Church Government and Church Covenant Discussed, in an Answer of the Elders of the Severall Churches of New England to Two and Thirty Questions (written 1639; printed 1643), an answer for the ministers of the colony to 32 questions relating to church government that were propounded by the general court in 1639. He drew up the Cambridge Platform of Discipline, an ecclesiastical constitution in seventeen chapters, adopted (with the omission of Mather's paragraph favouring the " Half-Way Covenant", of which he strongly approved) by the general synod in August 1646. His Reply to Mr Rutherford (1647) is a polemic against the Presbyterianism to which the English Congregationalists were then tending.

With Thomas Welde, Thomas Mayhew and John Eliot he wrote the " Bay Psalm Book", or, more accurately, The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre (1640), probably the first book printed in the English colonies. He was the author of Treatise on Justification (1652).

Mather married in 1624 Katherine Hoult or Holt (died 1655), and secondly in 1656 Sarah Hankredge (died 1676), the widow of the Rev. John Cotton (minister). Of six sons, all by his first wife, four were ministers:

Samuel (1626-1671), the first fellow of Harvard College who was a graduate, chaplain of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1650-1653, and pastor (1656-1671, excepting suspension in 1660-1662) of Church of St. Nicholas Within Dublin;

Timothy Mather 1628-1684. Also known as "The Farmer Mather" as he was the only son who was not a minister. He was made Selectmen of Dorchester, Massachusetts during the years 1667-69 and 1675 and 1676. He died in 1684 after a fall in his barn. Timothy married Elizabeth Atherton and had a son also named Richard Mather (after his grandfather) Dec 22, 1653. Richard Mather then went on to marry Cathrine Wise and gave birth to a son named Timothy Mather (after his grandfather) on Mar 20, 1681. Timothy Mather then went on to marry Sarah Noyes and had a son named Tomothy Mather, Jr (after his father) on Oct 09, 1711. Timothy Mather Jr. then married Sarah Lay and had a son named Timothy Mather (after his grandfather) on Apr 13, 1737. Timothy Mather then married Elizabeth Matson and had a son named Timothy Mather (after his father) on Jan 04, 1765. Timothy Mather then married Sarah Clark and had a son named Gurdon Clark Mather on May 05, 1797. Gurdon Clark Mather then married Eunice Miner and had a son named Horatio Nelson Mather on Jul 19, 1827. Horatio Nelson Mather's first three wives died, his fourth wife was Helen Marie Hayward, wed Oct 14, 1883. Together Horatio and Helen Marie gave birth to Gurdon Clark Mather (after his grandfather) the 11th of Horatio's 13 children on Mar 13, 1887. In 1896, at the age of 69, Horatio Nelson Mather became the father of his 13th child - Charles Mather. Gurdon Clark Mather then married Clara Emily Wilson and became the parents of Joy Esther Mather, the 3rd of 5 children; Amy, Ruth, Joy, David and Doris, on Dec 31, 1917. Joy Esther Mather married and divorced Audley Blain Fox but had one child, Norman James Fox (later adopted and name changed to Norman James Widdis) born Jun 12, 1938. Joy Esther Mather then went on to marry Donald G. Widdis and the couple had a son named Kirk A. Widdis born Jan 09, 1955. Norman James Widdis married RuthAnn McKinney on Nov 8, 1959 and had two children; Daniel Barry Widdis born Oct 06, 1960, and Walter Even Widdis born Sep 22, 1962 - RuthAnn also had a daughter, Susan Kay Duran, from a previous marriage, born Aug 08, 1956. Daniel Barry Widdis then married Sandra Louise Pallas on Nov 04, 1978. The couple had 8 children; Daniel Barry Widdis II, Brant Cedric Widdis, Lydia Beth Widdis, Micah Elisabeth Widdis, Elise Louanne Widdis, Jonathan David Widdis, Abram James Widdis and Nocolas Evan Widdis.

Nathaniel (1630-1697), who graduated at Harvard in 1647, was vicar of Barnstaple, Devon, in 1656-1662, pastor of the English Church in Rotterdam, his brother's successor in Dublin in 1671-1688, and then until his death pastor of a church in London;

Eleazar (1637-1669), who graduated at Harvard in 1656 and after preaching in Northampton, Massachusetts, for three years, became in 1661 pastor of the church there; father-in-law to the Rev. John Williams (minister) 1664-1729 {Harvard Class of 1683} of Deerfield Massachusetts

Increase who graduated at Harvard Class of 1656 (1639-1723) was a Puritan minister and a major figure in the early history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay (now the Commonwealth of Massachusetts). Son-in-law to the Rev. John Cotton (minister); Father of the Rev. Cotton Mather {1663-1728} Harvard Class of 1678.

Horace E. Mather, in his "Lineage of Richard Mather", (Hartford, Connecticut, 1890), gives a list of 80 clergymen descended from Richard Mather, of whom 29 bore the name Mather and 51 other names, the most common being Storrs and Schauffler.

Greaves, Richard L (1998), Dublin's Merchant-Quaker: Anthony Sharp and the Community of Friends, 1643 - 1707, Stanford University Press, p. 4, ISBN 9780804734523

Attribution

Clapp, Ebenezer (1859), History of the Town of Dorchester, Massachusetts, Boston

Gordon, Alexander (1894). "Mather, Richard" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. 37. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 29-30.

Mather, Richard (1850), Journal of Richard Mather 1635 His Life and Death 1670.

Middlekauff, Robert (1973), The Mathers - Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals 1596-1728

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The Reverend Richard Mather (1596 - 22 April 1669) was a Puritan minister in colonial Boston, Massachusetts. He was father to Increase Mather and grandfather to Cotton Mather, both celebrated Boston theologians.

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The Origin of … European Enslavement of Africans

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The Origin of … European Enslavement of Africans

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American slavery began 400 years ago this month. This is referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country’s true origin.

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This is by no means a complete guide to introducing the topics covered by Stamped, but it is intended to provide you with ideas for supplemental materials to make connections to key characters with whom students may not be familiar and to extend learning.

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Richard Baxter (12 November 1615 - 8 December 1691) was an English Puritan church leader, poet, hymnodist, theologian, and controversialist. Dean Stanley called him "the chief of English Protestant Schoolmen". After some false starts, he made his reputation by his ministry at Kidderminster, and at around the same time began a long and prolific career as theological writer. After the Restoration he refused preferment, while retaining a non-separatist Presbyterian approach, and became one of the most influential leaders of the Nonconformists, spending time in prison. His views on justification and sanctification are somewhat controversial and unconventional within the Calvinist tradition because his teachings seem, to some, to undermine salvation by faith, in that he emphasizes the necessity of repentance and faithfulness.

Baxter was born at Rowton, Shropshire, at the house of his maternal grandfather (probably on 12 November 1615), and baptised at its then parish church at High Ercall. In February 1626 he was removed to his parents' home (now called Baxter's House) in Eaton Constantine. Richard's early education was poor, being mainly in the hands of the local clergy, themselves virtually illiterate. He was helped by John Owen, master of the free school at Wroxeter, where he studied from about 1629 to 1632, and made fair progress in Latin. On Owen's advice he did not proceed to Oxford (a step which he afterwards regretted), but went to Ludlow Castle to read with Richard Wickstead, chaplain to the Council of Wales and the Marches.

He was reluctantly persuaded to go to court, and he went to London under the patronage of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, with the intention of doing so, but soon returned home, resolved to study divinity. He was confirmed in the decision by the death of his mother.

After three months spent working for the dying Owen as a teacher at Wroxeter, Baxter read theology with Francis Garbet, the local clergyman, adding to his reading (initially in devotional writings, of Richard Sibbes, William Perkins and Ezekiel Culverwell, as well as the Calvinist Edmund Bunny at age 14, and then in the scholastic philosophers) orthodox Church of England theology in Richard Hooker and George Downham, and arguments from conforming puritans in John Sprint and John Burges. In about 1634, he met Joseph Symonds (assistant to Thomas Gataker) and Walter Cradock, two Nonconformists.

Early ministry, 1638-1660

In 1638, Baxter became master of the free grammar school at Dudley, where he commenced his ministry, having been ordained and licensed by John Thornborough, Bishop of Worcester. His success as a preacher was at first small; but he was soon transferred to Bridgnorth, in Shropshire, where, as assistant to a Mr Madstard, he established a reputation for vigorously discharging the duties of his office.

Baxter remained at Bridgnorth for nearly two years, during which time he took a special interest in the controversy relating to Nonconformity and the Church of England. He soon became alienated from the Church on several matters; and after the requirement of the " et cetera oath", he rejected episcopacy in its English form. He became a moderate Nonconformist; and continued as such throughout his life. Though regarded as a Presbyterian, he was not exclusively tied to Presbyterianism, and often seemed prepared to accept a modified Episcopalianism. He regarded all forms of church government as subservient to the true purposes of religion.

One of the first measures of the Long Parliament was to reform the clergy; with this view, a committee was appointed to receive complaints against them. Among the complainants were the inhabitants of Kidderminster. The vicar George Dance agreed that he would give £60 a year, out of his income of £200, to a preacher who should be chosen by certain trustees. Baxter was invited to deliver a sermon before the people, and was unanimously elected as the minister of St Mary and All Saints' Church, Kidderminster. This happened in April 1641, when he was twenty-six.

His ministry continued, with many interruptions, for about 19 years; and during that time he accomplished many reforms in Kidderminster and the neighbourhood. He formed the ministers in the country around him into an association, uniting them irrespective of their differences as Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Independents. The Reformed Pastor was a book which Baxter published in relation to the general ministerial efforts he promoted.

On the outbreak of the First English Civil War, Baxter blamed both parties and recommended the Protestation; but Worcestershire was a Royalist stronghold, and he was exposed to annoyance and danger in Kidderminster. He temporarily retired to Gloucester. On 23 October 1642, he was preaching at Alcester, during the Battle of Edgehill. He returned, only to be driven out again. He then moved to Coventry (a Parliamentary stronghold). There he found himself with no fewer than 30 fugitive ministers, among whom were Richard Vines, Anthony Burges, John Bryan and Obadiah Grew. He officiated each Sunday as chaplain to the garrison, preaching a sermon each to the soldiery, and the townspeople and strangers. Included among the congregants were Sir Richard Skeffington, Colonel Godfrey Bosvile, George Abbot the layman scholar, and others. After the Battle of Naseby he took the situation of chaplain to Colonel Edward Whalley's regiment, and continued to hold it till February 1647. During these stormy years he wrote his Aphorisms of Justification, which on its appearance in 1649, excited great controversy. Of numerous critics the one with whom Baxter engaged most closely was Christopher Cartwright.

Baxter's connexion with the Parliamentary army was a very characteristic one. He joined it that he might, if possible, contract the growth of sectaries in that field, and maintain the cause of constitutional government in opposition to republican tendencies of the time. He regretted that he had not previously accepted Oliver Cromwell's offer to become chaplain to the Ironsides. Cromwell avoided him; but Baxter, having to preach before him after he had assumed the Protectorship, chose for his subject the old topic of the divisions of the church, and in subsequent interviews argued with him about liberty of conscience, and even defended the monarchy he had subverted. This contact with Cromwell occurred when Baxter was summoned to London to assist in settling "the fundamentals of religion".

In 1647, Baxter was staying at the home of Lady Rouse, wife of Sir Thomas Rouse, 1st Baronet, of Rous Lench, Worcestershire. There, though debilitated by illness, he wrote the most of a major work, The Saints' Everlasting Rest (1650). During this period he was also an energetic campaigner for the establishment of a new University in Shrewsbury but lack of funding prevented success.

On his recovery he returned to Kidderminster, where he also became a prominent political leader. His sensitive conscience led him into conflict with almost all the contending parties in state and church. An all-day debate on 1 January 1650, with John Tombes at Bewdley was attended by about 1500 people on each side and ended in confused disorder.

Ministry following the Restoration, 1660-1691

After the Restoration in 1660, Baxter, who had helped to bring about that event, settled in London. He preached there until the Act of Uniformity 1662 took effect, and looked for such terms of comprehension as would have permitted the moderate dissenters with whom he acted to have remained in the Church of England. In this hope he was sadly disappointed. The goal of comprehension was obstructed by forces on both sides: by conforming churchmen and dissenters alike. The Savoy Conference resulted in Baxter's Reformed Liturgy, though it was cast aside without consideration. Baxter continued to advocate for a comprehensive "national church", off and on, until his death.

The same reputation which Baxter had obtained in the country he secured in London. The power of his preaching was universally felt, and his capacity for business placed him at the head of his party. He had been made a king's chaplain, and was offered the Bishopric of Hereford, but he could not accept the offer without assenting to things as they were. After his refusal, he was not allowed, even before the passing of the Act of Uniformity, to be a curate in Kidderminster, and Bishop George Morley prohibited him from preaching in the Diocese of Worcester.

On 10 September 1662, Baxter married Margaret Charlton, a woman like-minded with himself. She died in 1681 and Baxter wrote the words for the hymn Ye Holy Angels Bright in that year.

From 1662 until the indulgence of 1687, Baxter's life was constantly disturbed by persecution of one kind or another. He retired to Acton in Middlesex, for the purpose of quiet study, but was placed in prison for keeping a conventicle. Baxter procured a habeas corpus in the court of common pleas.

He was taken up for preaching in London after the licences granted in 1672 were recalled by the King. The meeting house which he had built for himself in Oxendon Street was closed to him after he had preached there only once.

In 1680, he was taken from his house; and though he was released that he might die at home, his books and goods were seized. In 1684, he was carried three times to the sessions house, being scarcely able to stand, and without any apparent cause was made to enter into a bond for £400 in security for his good behaviour.

But his worst encounter was with the Chief Justice, Sir George Jeffreys, in May 1685. He had been committed to the King's Bench Prison on the charge of libelling the Church in his Paraphrase on the New Testament, and was tried before Jeffreys on this accusation. No authoritative report of the trial exists; if the partisan account on which tradition is based is accepted, Jeffreys was infuriated. Baxter was sentenced to pay 500 marks, to lie in prison till the money was paid, and to be bound to his good behaviour for seven years. Jeffreys is even said to have proposed he should be whipped behind a cart. Baxter was now approaching 70 years old, and remained in prison for 18 months, until the government, hoping to win his influence, remitted the fine and released him.

Baxter's health had grown even worse, yet this was the period of his greatest activity as a writer. He wrote 168 or so separate works, including major treatises such as the Christian Directory, the Methodus Theologiae Christianae, and the Catholic Theology. His Breviate of the Life of Mrs Margaret Baxter records the virtues of his wife and tenderness which otherwise might not have been known. A slim devotional work published in 1658 under the title Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live formed one of the core extra-biblical texts of evangelicalism until at least the middle of the 19th century.

The remainder of his life, from 1687 onwards, was passed peacefully. He died in London and his funeral was attended by churchmen as well as dissenters.

Richard Baxter rejected the idea of a limited atonement in favour of a universal atonement, which drew him into a long debate with Calvinist theologian John Owen. Interpreting the kingdom of God in terms of Christ as Christus Victor and Rector of all men, Baxter explained Christ's death as an act of universal redemption (penal and vicarious, though substitutionary in explication), in virtue of which God has made a new covenant offering pardon and amnesty to the penitent. Repentance and faith, being obedient to this covenant, are the conditions of salvation.

Baxter insisted that the Calvinists of his day ran the danger of ignoring the conditions that came with God's new covenant. Justification, Baxter insisted, required at least some degree of faith as the human response to the love of God.

Baxter's theology was set forth most elaborately in his Latin Methodus Theologiæ Christianæ (London, 1681); the Christian Directory (1673) contains the practical part of his system; and Catholic Theology (1675) is an English exposition. His theology made Baxter very unpopular among his contemporaries and even into the next century caused a split among the Dissenters. As summarised by Thomas W. Jenkyn, it differed from the Calvinism on four points:

1. The atonement of Christ did not consist in his suffering the identical but the equivalent punishment (i.e., one which would have the same effect in moral government) as that deserved by mankind because of offended law. Christ died for sins, not persons. The benefits of substitutionary atonement are accessible and available to all men for their salvation.

2. The atonement is not limited to a select few, but is available to all who will believe in Christ.

3. The righteousness that is imputed to the believer in the work of justification is not the righteousness of Christ, but is by virtue of the faith of the believer himself in Christ.

4. Every sinner has a distinct agency of his own to exert in the process of his conversion, which is to believe in Christ.

Richard Baxter is commemorated in the Calendar of saints of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America with a feast day on 8 December, but his feast day in the Church of England's Calendar of Saints is 14 June.

AG Matthews, in an article "The Works of Richard Baxter: an Annotated List" (Congregational Historical Society Transactions, XI (1932)) lists 141 books written by Baxter. Geoffrey Nuttall, in his biography of Baxter, published in 1965, reproduces this list, noting that one of the listed works, Fasciculus literarum (1680), was, in fact, written by John Hinckley.

In 1674, Baxter cast in a new form the substance of Arthur Dent's book The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven under the title, The Poor Man's Family Book. In this way, Arthur Dent of South Shoebury was a link between Baxter and another great Puritan John Bunyan.

In 1679 Baxter made one of the very few known allusions to Sir Thomas Browne's discourse The Garden of Cyrus, critically declaring to newly ordained priests, You shall have more.. solid truth than those in their learned Network treatises.

Baxter's influence in New England is referenced in the first chapter of the 19th century devotional work "I Will Be A Lady - a book for girls" by Mrs. Tuthill.

In George Eliot's Mill on the Floss Richard Baxter's "Saints Everlasting Rest" is listed as one of aunt Glegg's books.

Max Weber (1864-1920), the German sociologist, made significant use of Baxter's works in developing his thesis for " The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1904, 1920). Robert K. Merton (1910-2003), founder of the sociology of science and well known for the so-called Merton Thesis, also followed Weber in making use of Baxter's Christian Directory as "a typical presentation of the leading elements in the Puritan ethos."

Baxter's House in Bridgnorth is still standing near the High Street with a name plaque on the front.

The Richard Baxter Monument in the civic parish of Wolverley and Cookley (neighbouring Kidderminster) was built around 1850 in memory of Baxter. It is a Grade II listed structure and resides on a hilltop on Blakeshall Common.

The Baxter Monument is a Grade II listed structure in Kidderminster. This tribute of general esteem was erected nearly two centuries after Baxter's death, sculpted by Sir Thomas Brock and unveiled 28 July 1875. Originally in the Bull Ring, it was moved to its present site outside St Mary's parish church in March 1967.

The Baxter Monument in Rowton, Shropshire (the village of his birth) is a squat stone obelisk with a bronze plaque on which is written "Richard Baxter great divine author and eminent citizen of the 17th century. Son of Richard Baxter and Beatrice née Adney born here in Rowton AD 1615. Died in London 1691". It resides on a triangle of grass at the centre of the village and is probably of late 19th century construction. It was designated a Grade II listed structure in 1983. There is a portrait of Baxter in Dr Williams's Library, Gordon Square, London.

Baxter House, a boarding house at Old Swinford Hospital school in Stourbridge, is named after him. In Kidderminster, Baxter College (formerly Harry Cheshire High School), and a public park, Baxter Gardens, are both named after him. Until July 2011, Baxter's name was given to one of the six houses (the others Acton, Clive, Darwin, Houseman and Webb) at The Priory School, Shrewsbury. The houses were initially named after historical persons, but subsequently changed to tree names.

Attribution

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jackson, Samuel Macauley, ed. (1908). "Baxter, Richard". New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. 2 (third ed.). London and New York: Funk and Wagnalls. pp. 15, 16.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Baxter, Richard". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 551-553. Endnote:
Encyclopædia Britannica's most useful source was Baxter's autobiography, called Reliquiae Baxterianae or Mr Richard Baxter's Narrative of the most memorable Passages of his Life and Times (published by Matthew Sylvester in 1696). Edmund Calamy the Younger abridged this work (1702). The abridgment forms the first volume of the account of the ejected ministers; the reply to the accusations which had been brought against Baxter is found in the second volume of Calamy's Continuation. William Orme's Life and Times of Richard Baxter appeared in 2 vols. in 1830; it also forms the first volume of "Practical Works" (1830, reprinted 1868). Sir James Stephen's paper on Baxter, contributed originally to the Edinburgh Review, is reprinted in the second volume of his Essays. Estimates of Baxter were given by John Tulloch in his English Puritanism and Its Leaders, and by Dean Stanley in his address at the inauguration of the statue to Baxter at Kidderminster (see Macmillan's Magazine, xxxii. 385).

For more on Baxter's autobiography and its historical usefulness, see Gatiss, Lee, The Autobiography of a "Meer Christian": Richard Baxter's Account of the Restoration, UK: Theologian.

For Baxter's involvement in the Great Ejection and the persecution of puritans, see Gatiss, Lee, The Tragedy of 1662: The Ejection and Persecution of the Puritans, Latimer trust, archived from the original on 11 September 2007.

For a small selection of Baxter's hymns, see his Cyberhymnal page.

Grosart, Alexander Balloch (1885). "Baxter, Richard" . In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

(Subscription or Keeble, N. H. "Baxter, Richard (1615-1691)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/1734. UK public library membership required.)

For an exploration of some of Baxter's unpublished manuscripts and implications for his legacy see Manuscript and Print in the Late Seventeenth Century: The Case of Morgan Library, MS MA 4431, British Library, MS Egerton 2570, and Richard Baxter's An end of doctrinal controversies (1691)

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Richard Baxter (12 November 1615 - 8 December 1691) was an English Puritan church leader, poet, hymnodist, theologian, and controversialist. Dean Stanley called him "the chief of English Protestant Schoolmen". After some false starts, he made his reputation by his ministry at Kidderminster, and at around the same time began a long and prolific career as theological writer.

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Lucilio Vanini (1585 - 9 February 1619), who, in his works, styled himself Giulio Cesare Vanini, was an Italian philosopher, physician and free-thinker, who was one of the first significant representatives of intellectual libertinism. He was among the first modern thinkers who viewed the universe as an entity governed by natural laws ( nomological determinism). He was also an early literate proponent of biological evolution, maintaining that humans and other apes have common ancestors. He was executed in Toulouse.

Vanini was born at Taurisano near Lecce, and studied philosophy and theology at Naples. Afterwards, he applied himself to the physical studies, chiefly medicine and astronomy, which had come into vogue with the Renaissance. Like Giordano Bruno, he attacked scholasticism.

From Naples he went to Padua, where he came under the influence of the Alexandrist Pietro Pomponazzi, whom he styled his divine master. Subsequently, he led a roving life in France, Switzerland and the Low Countries, supporting himself by giving lessons and disseminating radical ideas. He was obliged to flee to England in 1612 but was imprisoned in London for 49 days.

Returning to Italy, he made an attempt to teach in Genoa but was driven again to France, where he tried to clear himself of suspicion by publishing a book against atheism: Amphitheatrum Aeternae Providentiae Divino-Magicum (1615). Though the definitions of God are somewhat pantheistic, the book served its immediate purpose. Although Vanini did not expound his true views in his first book, he did in his second: De Admirandis Naturae Reginae Deaeque Mortalium Arcanis (Paris, 1616). This was originally certified by two doctors of the Sorbonne, but was later re-examined and condemned.

Vanini then left Paris, where he had been staying as chaplain to the Marechal de Bassompierre, and began to teach in Toulouse. In November 1618, he was arrested and, after a prolonged trial, was condemned to have his tongue cut out, to be strangled at the stake and to have his body burned to ashes. The sentence was executed on 9 February 1619.

Lucilio Vanini was born in 1585 in Taurisano, Terra d'Otranto, Italy. His father was Giovan Battista Vanini, a businessman from Tresana in Tuscany, while his mother was the daughter of a man named Lopez de Noguera, a customs contractor of the Spanish royal family's lands in Bari, Terra d'Otranto, Capitanata, and Basilicata. A document dated August 1612, discovered in the Vatican Secret Archives, describes Vanini as of Apulia, which is consistent with the native land he mentions in his own works.

The government census of the population of the hamlet of Taurisano, in 1596, includes the names of Giovan Battista Vanini, his lawful son Alexander, born in 1582, and his natural son Giovan Francesco, while there is no mention of Vanini's wife or of another lawful son called Lucilio (or Giulio Cesare). In 1603 Giovan Battista Vanini is reported for the last time in Taurisano.

Lucilio Vanini entered the University of Naples in 1599. In 1603 he entered the Carmelite order, taking the name of Fra Gabriele. He earned a doctorate in canon and civil law from the University of Naples on 6 June 1606.

Afterwards, he remained in the Naples area for two years, apparently living as a friar, or alternatively he returned to Lecce and studied the new Renaissance sciences, chiefly medicine and astronomy. By now, he had assimilated much knowledge and "speaks very good Latin and with great ease, is tall and a bit thin, has brown hair, an aquiline nose, lively eyes and a pleasant and ingenious physiognomy".

In (probably) 1606, Vanini's father died in Naples. Vanini, now come of age, was recognised by a court in the capital as heir of Giovan Battista and guardian of his brother Alexander. With a series of deeds and power of attorney drawn up in Naples, Vanini began to settle the financial consequences of the death of his father: selling a house he owned in Ugento, a few miles from his home country; in 1607 mandating a maternal uncle to fulfil assignments of the same type; in 1608 instructing friend Scarciglia to recover a sum and sell some goods remaining in Taurisano and held in custody by the two brothers.

In 1608, Vanini moved to Padua, a town under the rule of Venice, to study theology at that university (although there is no record of him subsequently obtaining a degree). While there he came into contact with the group led by Paolo Sarpi that, with the support of the English embassy in Venice, fueled anti-papal polemics. In 1611 he participated in the Lenten sermons, attracting the suspicions of the religious authorities. During that period, the controversy over the 1606 interdict placed on the Republic of Venice by Pope Paul V was still raging, and Vanini showed himself unambiguously in favour of the Republic. Consequently, the Prior General of his order, Enrico Silvio, commanded him to return to Naples, where he would have been disciplined, probably severely, but instead Vanini sought refuge with the English ambassador to Venice in 1612.

Vanini then fled to England, along with his Genoese companion Bonaventure Genocchi. They passed through Bologna, Milan, the Swiss canton of Graubünden, and descended via the Rhine, through Germany and the Netherlands, to the North Sea coast and the English Channel, finally reaching London and the Lambeth residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Here the two remained for nearly two years, hiding their true identity from their English guests. In July 1612, they both renounced their Catholic faith and embraced Anglicanism.

By 1613, however, Vanini was having doubts, so he appealed to the Pope to be allowed back into the Catholic fold, but as a secular priest rather than as a friar; the request was granted by the Pope himself. Around the start of 1614, Vanini visited the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and confided to some acquaintances his imminent flight from England, so in January, he and Genocchi were arrested on the orders of the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot. They managed to escape however, Genocchi in February 1614 and Vanini in March. The Spanish ambassador in London and the chaplain of the embassy of the Venetian Republic were thought to have engineered their escapes. The two passed through the hands of the papal nuncio in Flanders, Guido Bentivoglio, to the papal nuncio in Paris, Roberto Ubaldini.

In Paris, in the summer of 1614, Vanini subscribed to the principles of the Council of Trent, to prove the sincerity of his return to the Catholic faith. He then journeyed to Italy, going first to Rome, where he had to face the difficult final stages of the process in the court of the Inquisition, then to Genoa for a few months, where he found his friend Genocchi and taught philosophy to children of Scipio Doria for a time.

Despite assurances, the return of Vanini and Genocchi was not entirely peaceful; in January 1615 Genocchi was arrested by the Inquisitor of Genoa. Vanini therefore, fearing the same fate, ran away again to France and headed to Lyon. There, in June 1615, he published Amphitheatrum, a book against atheism, which he hoped would clear his name with the Roman authorities.

A short time later Vanini returned to Paris, where he asked Nuncio Ubaldini to intervene on his behalf with the authorities in Rome. Insufficiently assured, Vanini decided not to return to Italy, and instead cultivated connections with prestigious elements of the French nobility.

In 1616, Vanini completed the second of his two works, De Admirandis, and got it approved by two theologians at the Sorbonne. The work was published in September in Paris. It was dedicated to François de Bassompierre, a powerful man at the court of Marie de' Medici, and was printed by Adrien Périer, a Protestant. The work was immediately successful among those aristocratic circles populated by young spirits who looked with interest to the cultural and scientific innovations that came from Italy. The De Admirandis was a summa, lively and brilliant, of the new knowledge, and became a kind of "manifesto" for these cultural free spirits, giving Vanini a chance to stay safe in circles close to the French court. However, a few days after the publication of the work, the two theologians at the Sorbonne who had expressed their approval were presented to the Faculty of Theology in formal session and the outcome was a de facto ban on the movement of the text.

Now, unwelcome in England, unable to return to Italy and threatened by some circles of French Catholics, Vanini saw his room for manoeuvre shrinking and his chances of finding a stable place in French society failing. Fearing that a court case would be started against him in Paris, he fled and went into hiding at Redon Abbey in Brittany, where Abbott Arthur d'Épinay de Saint-Luc acted as his protector. But other factors gave cause for concern: in April 1617 Concino Concini, favorite of Marie de' Medici, was killed in Paris, giving rise to a wave of hostility to Italian residents at court.

In the following months, a mysterious Italian, with a strange name (Pompeo Uciglio) and in possession of great knowledge but an uncertain past, appeared in some cities of Guyenne, then the Languedoc and finally Toulouse. Duke Henri II de Montmorency, protector of esprits forts of the time, was the governor of this region and seemed to grant protection to the fugitive, who still continued to keep carefully hidden.

The presence of this mysterious character in Toulouse did not however pass unnoticed and attracted the suspicions of the authorities. In August 1618 he was apprehended and interrogated. In February 1619, the Parlement of Toulouse found him guilty of atheism and blasphemy and, in accordance with the regulations of the time, his tongue was cut out, he was strangled and his body was burned. After the execution it emerged that the stranger was in fact Vanini.

Amphitheatrum Aeternae Providentiae divino-magicum, christiano-physicum, necnon astrologo-catholicum adversus veteres philosophos, atheos, epicureos, peripateticos et stoicos (possible translation: "Amphitheatre of Eternal Providence - Religio-magical, Christian-physical and Astrologico-Catholic - against the Ancient Philosophers, Atheists, Epicureans, Peripatetics and Stoics"), published in Lyon in 1615, consists of 50 exercises, which aim to demonstrate the existence of God, to define His essence, to describe His providence and to examine or refute the opinions of Pythagoras, Protagoras, Cicero, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, the Epicureans, Aristotle, Averroes, Gerolamo Cardano, the Peripatetics, the Stoics, etc. on this subject.

De Admirandis Naturae Reginae Deaeque Mortalium Arcanis (possible translation: "On the Marvelous Secrets of Nature, the Queen and Goddess of Mortals"), printed in Paris in 1616 by publisher Adrien Périer, is divided into four books:

1. On Sky and Air

2. On Water and Land

3. On Animals and Passions

4. On Non-Christian Religions

These contain a total of 60 dialogues (but really only 59, as dialogue XXXV is absent), which take place between the author, in the role of disseminator of knowledge, and an imaginary Alessandro, who urges his interlocutor to list and explain the mysteries of nature found around and within man.

In a mixture of reinterpretation of ancient knowledge and the dissemination of new scientific and religious theories, the protagonist discusses: the material, figure, colour, form, energy and eternity of heaven; the motion and the central pole of the heavens; the sun, the moon, the stars; fire; comets and rainbows; lightning, snow and rain; the motion and rest of projectiles in the air; the impulsion of mortars and crossbows; winds and breezes; corrupt airs; the element of water; the birth of the rivers; the rising of the Nile; the extent and saltiness of the sea; the roar and the motion of the water; the motion of projectiles; the creation of islands and mountains, as well as the cause of earthquakes; the genesis, root and colour of the gems, as well as spots of stones; life, food, and the death of the stones; the strength of the magnet to attract iron and its direction toward the Earth's poles; plants; the explanation to be given to certain phenomena of everyday life; semen; the reproduction, nature, respiration and nutrition of fish; the reproduction of birds; the reproduction of bees; the first generation of man; stains contracted by children in the womb; the generation of male and female; parts of monsters; the faces of children covered by larvae; the growth of man; the length of human life; sight; hearing; smell; taste; touch and tickle; the affections of man; God; appearances in the air; oracles; the Sibyls; the possessed; sacred images of the pagans; augurs; the miraculous healing of diseases reported in pagan times; the resurrection of the dead; witchcraft; dreams.

The naturalistic interpretation of supernatural phenomena that Pietro Pomponazzi - called by Vanini magister meus, divinus praeceptor meus, nostri seculi Philosophorum princeps - had given in the early 16th century in his treatise De Incantationibus was summarised in De Admirandis Naturae, where, in simple and elegant prose, Vanini also referred to Cardano, Julius Caesar Scaliger and other 16th century thinkers.

"God acts on sublunary beings [humans] using the sky as a tool": hence the natural and rational explanation of the allegedly supernatural phenomena, since even astrology was considered a science. God may use such phenomena to warn the people, and especially rulers, of danger. But the real origin of supernatural phenomena is, for Vanini, the human imagination, which can sometimes change the appearance of external reality. For the ecclesiastical "impostors" that promulgate false beliefs to gain wealth and power, and rulers interested in dominating the people, according to Vanini, "all religious things are false and fake principles to teach the naive populace that, when reason cannot be reached, at least practice religion".

Following Pietro Pomponazzi and Simone Porzio in their interpretation of the Aristotelian texts and the commentary thereon by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Vanini denied the immortality of the soul and attacked the Aristotelian cosmos-view. Like Bruno, he denied the difference between the everyday world and the celestial world, saying that both are composed of the same corruptible material. He disputed, in the physical and biological world, finality and the hylomorphic Aristotelian doctrine, and, reconnecting Epicureanism with Lucretius, prepared a new mechanistic-materialistic description of the universe where bodies are likened to a watch, and conceived a first form of universal transformation of living species. He agreed with the Aristotelian eternity of the world, especially considering the temporal aspect, but affirmed the rotation of the earth and appeared to reject the Ptolemaic system in favour of the heliocentric/Copernican system.

If the first editor of his works, Luigi Corvaglia, and historian Guido De Ruggiero, unjustly, considered his writings simply "a centone devoid of originality and scientific seriousness", the Jesuit priest François Garasse, far more worried about the consequences of the spread of his writings, judged them "a work of such most pernicious atheism as was never released in the last hundred years". The works of Vanini have been extensively reviewed and revalued by contemporary critics, revealing originality and insights (metaphysical, physical, biological) sometimes well ahead of their time.

Since Vanini in his works obscured his ideas, a typical ploy at the time to avoid serious conflicts with the religious and political authorities, the interpretation of his thought is difficult. However, in the history of philosophy, he has the image of an unbeliever or even an atheist. Considered as one of the fathers of libertinism, he was regarded as a lost soul by conventional Christians, despite having written a defense of the Council of Trent.

To understand the origins of Vanini's thought one has to look to his cultural background, which was fairly typical of the Renaissance, with a prevalence of elements of Averroistic Aristotelianism but with strong elements of mysticism and Neo-Platonism. On the other hand, he drew from Nicholas of Cusa typical pantheistic elements, similar to those which are also found in Giordano Bruno, but more materialistic. His world view was based on the eternity of matter, and of a God in nature as a "force" that shapes, orders and directs. All forms of life, he thought, had originated spontaneously from the earth itself as their creator.

Vanini was considered an atheist, but his first work, published in Lyon in 1615, Amphitheatrum, indicates otherwise. As a precursor of libertinism there are many elements that make his teaching close to the thought of the unknown author of the Treatise of the Three Impostors, also a pantheist. Vanini thought in fact that the creators of the three monotheistic religions, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, were nothing but impostors.

In De Admirandis are found themes from Amphitheatrum, with refinements and developments that make it his masterpiece and the summary of his philosophy. Denying creation from nothing and the immortality of the soul, he saw God in Nature as its driving force and vital force, both eternal. The stars of heaven he considered a kind of intermediary between God and Nature. The true religion is therefore a "religion of Nature" that does not deny God but considers Him a spirit-force.

The thought of Vanini is quite fragmented and also reflects the complexity of its origins, as he was a religious figure, a naturalist, but also a doctor and in part a magician. What characterizes the prose is the vehemently anti-clerical sentiment. Among the original aspects of his thinking there is a kind of anticipation of Darwinism, because, after a first half in which he argues that the animal species arise by spontaneous generation from the earth, in the second part he seems convinced that they can be transformed into each other and that man comes from "animals related to man, such as the Barbary apes, the monkeys and apes in general".

In 1623 two works appeared that started the myth of Vanini the atheist: La doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps ... of Jesuit François Garasse, and Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim cum accurata explicatione ..., of Father Marin Mersenne. The two works, though, instead of turning off the voice of the philosopher, boosted it in an environment that was obviously ready to receive, discuss and recognise the validity of his claims.

In that same year the name of Vanini was again brought to the attention of French culture during the sensational trial of the poet Théophile de Viau, whose outlook had striking similarities with Vaninian thought.

In 1624, the monk Marin Mersenne returned to attacking the philosophy of Vanini, analyzing some statements in chapter X of his L'Impiétè des Déistes, Athées et Libertins de ce temps, combatuë, et renversee de point en point par raisons tirées de la Philosophie, et de la Theologie, in which the theologian expresses his judgment of the works of Girolamo Cardano and Giordano Bruno.

Even Leibniz, another opponent of libertinism, was strongly opposed to Vanini, considering him evil, a fool and a charlatan.

English intellectuals showed interest in the ideas of Vanini, and it was especially with the work of Charles Blount that Vanini's ideas entered English culture, becoming a cornerstone of libertinism and deism in seventeenth century England.

An unpublished manuscript in the municipal library of Avignon preserves Observations sur Lucilio Vanini written by Joseph Louis Dominique de Cambis, Marquis de Velleron, but provides only uncertain information on the philosopher, largely rectified by recent studies. In this same period a manuscript copy of the Amphitheatrum, was made or commissioned by Joseph Uriot, which later came to the library of the Duke of Württemberg; currently it is in the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart. Another manuscript copy of the same work is in the Staats und Universitätbibliothek in Hamburg, reflecting the continued interest in the thought of Vanini in German culture.

In 1730, the press in London was given a biography of Vanini with an extract of his works, entitled The life of Lucilio (alias Julius Caesar) Vanini, burnt for atheism at Toulouse. With an abstract of his writings. The work debates Vanini's ideas, recognising much merit.

1. ^ Giulio Cesare is the Italian equivalent of Julius Caesar in English.

2. ^ One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Vanini, Lucilio". Encyclopædia Britannica. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 895.

3. ^ Westfall, Richard S. "Vanini, Giulio Cesare". The Galileo Project. Rice University, USA. (based on works by Emile Namer and Andrzej Nowicki)

4. ^ A letter from the English ambassador to Venice, Dudley Carleton, dated 7 [but 17] February 1611 [but 1612]; the episode refers to nine years before, or 1603.

La Vie et L'Oeuvre de J.C Vanini, Princes des Libertins mort a Toulouse sur le bucher en 1619, Emile Namer, 1980.

(2011) Eight Philosophical Dialogues of Giulio Cesare Vanini,(translated), The Philosophical Forum, 42: 370-418. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9191.2011.00397.x

Francesco De Paola, Vanini e il primo '600 anglo-veneto, Cutrofiano, Lecce (1980).

Francesco De Paola, Giulio Cesare Vanini da Taurisano filosofo Europeo, Schena Editore, Fasano, Brindisi (1998).

Giovanni Papuli, Studi Vaniniani, Galatina, Congedo (2006).

Giovanni Papuli, Francesco Paolo Raimondi (ed.), Giulio Cesare Vanini - Opere, Galatina, Congedo (1990).

Francesco Paolo Raimondi, Giulio Cesare Vanini nell'Europa del Seicento, Roma-Pisa, Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, Roma (2005).

Plumtre, Constance (1877). "V Vanini". General Sketch of the History of Pantheism. London: Spottiswoode & Co.

C. Teofilato, Giulio Cesare Vanini, in The Connecticut Magazine, articles in English and Italian, New Britain, Connecticut, May 1923, p. 13 (I, 7).

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Lucilio Vanini (1585 - 9 February 1619), who, in his works, styled himself Giulio Cesare Vanini, was an Italian philosopher, physician and free-thinker, who was one of the first significant representatives of intellectual libertinism. He was among the first modern thinkers who viewed the universe as an entity governed by natural laws ( nomological determinism).

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Early Years

Bacon was born on January 2, 1647, at Friston Hall in Suffolk County, England, the seat of his father. He was the only son and one of several children of Thomas Bacon and Elizabeth Brooke Bacon; his mother died shortly after his birth. Bacon matriculated at Saint Catherine's College, Cambridge University, on May 5, 1661, but two years later his father withdrew him from school, probably due to his inattention to his studies, and hired a tutor to teach him. He made a tour of the Continent in the company of his tutor, was admitted to Gray's Inn on November 22, 1664, and returned to Cambridge, where he received his M.B. in 1667.

In May 1670 he married Elizabeth Duke, daughter of Sir Edward Duke, who so disapproved of the match that he disinherited her. Although the couple nonetheless had sufficient property for a comfortable living, Bacon became involved in a fraudulent scheme to sell a parcel of land, which resulted in a lawsuit that persisted for several years after his death. Probably as a consequence, he moved to Virginia in the summer of 1674 with his wife and possibly their two daughters, whose birth dates are unknown. His father sent him off with £1,800 to start his life anew.

In August 1674 Bacon purchased 820 acres of land at Curles Neck in Henrico County from Thomas Ballard (d. 1690) and probably moved into an existing house on the site soon thereafter. He also acquired from Ballard a smaller tract of land near the falls of the James River that became known as Bacon's Quarter. Bacon was related by blood or marriage to several of the most influential people in Virginia, including his cousin Nathaniel Bacon (1620-1692), a member of the governor's Council; Governor Sir William Berkeley; and Frances Culpeper Stephens Berkeley, the governor's wife. Bacon was well connected, well educated, intelligent, tall, and handsome, although somewhat melancholy and, in the view of some Virginians, unpleasantly arrogant. On March 3, 1675, in spite of the brevity of Bacon's residence in Virginia, the governor appointed him one of several new members of the Council.

Bacon's Assembly

The rebellion Bacon led against the governor erupted suddenly the next year following a long period of unsettled politics, economic hardship, and, more proximately, a series of genuinely frightening incidents. Skirmishes in 1675 between frontier settlers and Doeg and Susquehannock Indians in the Potomac River valley stimulated a widespread fear of organized Indian raids, fears that were heightened after Virginians learned of the outbreak in New England of what came to be called King Philip's War. By then Bacon had begun participating with William Byrd (1652-1704) in trade with some of the Indians on the southwestern border of the settled parts of Virginia and, as some writers later charged, one result may have been his growing antipathy toward the governor, who was also a significant participant in the Indian trade and therefore a competitor. Bacon's animosity toward the Indians, however, appears to have been the mainspring of his conduct. In September 1675 he seized some friendly Appamattuck Indians whom he accused of stealing corn, for which "rash heady action" the governor rebuked him.

In March 1676 the General Assembly met to prepare for defending the colony and enacted laws to erect forts along the fall line, to try to keep friendly Indians at peace with the colonists, and to cut off the Indian trade temporarily to reduce contacts that might flare into conflicts. By then Indian raids had reached the falls of the James River, and Bacon's own overseer at Bacon's Quarter had been killed in a raid that triggered new alarms. The causes of the rebellion later adduced by royal commissioners included public resentment of the requisite high taxes, which the people believed had bought no real protection. In this charged atmosphere Bacon became the leader of the angry and frightened militiamen in the upper reaches of the James River valley, and he requested permission from the governor to lead an expedition against the hostile Indians. Berkeley's denial of the request increased the resentment of the frontier settlers, augmented Bacon's local popularity, and produced a breach between the governor and the councillor after Bacon went ahead with preparations to attack local, friendly Indians. In May, Berkeley expelled Bacon from the Council and branded him a rebel, at the same time offering to pardon Bacon's followers if they would return to their homes.

Berkeley also called for the election of a new House of Burgesses and convened the new assembly as soon as possible in order to take necessary additional steps to secure the safety of the colony. Bacon, meanwhile, led his men southwest to one of the main Occaneechi villages. He persuaded the Occaneechi to attack a nearby party of hostile Susquehannocks, but the allies soon quarreled and, after a pitched battle, Bacon and his men devastated the Occaneechi village. Berkeley condemned Bacon's actions, but Bacon's men now controlled much of the colony and actually prevented the sheriff of Henrico County from reading the governor's proclamation of condemnation there. Moreover, the Henrico voters elected Bacon and one of his principal lieutenants, James Crewes, to the House of Burgesses for the assembly that gathered on June 5 and has historically been referred to as Bacon's Assembly.

Arrest of Nathaniel Bacon

On June 6, 1676, Bacon and a company of armed men arrived in Jamestown. Berkeley's agents seized Bacon and carried him before the governor and the assembly, where he apologized on bended knee for his misdeeds and presented a written petition for a pardon. The governor then announced that he was pardoning Bacon and restoring him to his seat on the Council. At this point an assembly member urged that Bacon be made a general to command the campaign against the Indians, and the large crowd of angry men who had descended on Jamestown took up the cry. The governor vacillated, first agreeing to the appointment but then changing his mind, revoking his pardon of Bacon, and again expelling him from the Council.

Bacon left Jamestown, but on June 23 he stormed back into the capital with about 500 men and demanded that the governor commission him as a general to lead the colony against the Indians. A dramatic and dangerous scene ensued, with Bacon's men drawing their arms against the assembled burgesses and the governor literally baring his chest and daring Bacon's men to shoot him. Berkeley nevertheless yielded to the demands of Bacon and his supporters, and the assembly rapidly completed work on the laws of the session. Although later writers referred to these statutes as "Bacon's laws," the extant evidence indicates that he took little or no interest in the proceedings of the assembly.

Suppression of Bacon's Rebellion

Bacon withdrew upriver in search of Indians to attack, but late in July the governor again reversed course, once again declared Bacon a rebel, and went to Gloucester County to recruit men to fight him. Bacon and his army marched to Middle Plantation, the site of present-day Williamsburg, while Berkeley retreated to the Eastern Shore. About July 30 Bacon issued the first of a series of declarations of grievance and complaint against Berkeley, together with justifications of his own actions, which he signed as "General, by the consent of the people." Bacon compelled or cajoled many people to subscribe to his declarations accusing the governor of fomenting a civil war and endangering the safety of the colony, and he sent riders into various parts of Virginia to gather signatures to an oath of loyalty to the rebellion and to summon leading men to meet him at Middle Plantation. On August 3, 1676, Bacon obtained the endorsement of seventy of them to his leadership against the Indians, and the next day thirty signatories assented to a more radical declaration that a new assembly was to be chosen under his authority rather than recalling the one that had met in June. Bacon then marched his men into the Dragon Swamp on the lower reaches of the Rappahannock River, where they attacked the friendly Pamunkey Indians.

Early in September the governor returned to Jamestown with a small force and issued another proclamation against Bacon, whereupon Bacon marched there and laid siege to the capital. On the evening of September 18, 1676, Berkeley abandoned Jamestown, and Bacon's men occupied and burned it the next morning. Bacon's forces in and out of Jamestown were by then beyond control. Many of them apparently spent much of their time ransacking the estates of men identified as loyal to the governor.

By autumn letters from Virginia had arrived in London apprising royal officials of the rebellion. King Charles II formed a three-member commission to assist the governor in suppressing the revolt and to inquire into its causes. On October 27 the king signed a proclamation for putting down the rebellion led by "Nathaniel Bacon the Younger." The king offered to pardon Bacon's lieutenants, whom he characterized as "Persons of mean and desperate Fortunes," if they speedily surrendered. With respect to Nathaniel Bacon, the proclamation was already a dead letter. On October 26, 1676, the day before the king signed the proclamation, Bacon and the bulk of his following were in Gloucester County where, at the house of Thomas Pate, Nathaniel Bacon died of the "Bloody Flux" (dysentery) and a "Lousey Disease." The place of his burial is not known. Without his impetuous leadership the rebellion soon collapsed, and Berkeley later hanged several of Bacon's most active followers.

Bacon's Rebellion has inspired much writing, including more than a dozen works of fiction, and scholarly interpretations of Nathaniel Bacon's motivations and his significance vary widely. Early in the nineteenth century the Virginia historian John Daly Burk presented Bacon as a patriotic precursor to the American revolutionaries of 1776, an influential interpretation repeated by other writers, most notably Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker in his Torchbearer of the Revolution: The Story of Bacon's Rebellion and Its Leader (1940). Governor Berkeley has had his defenders, too. In The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia (1957), Wilcomb E. Washburn presented Bacon as the ambitious and impetuous leader of a mob of Indian-hating frontiersmen. However one may interpret him, the rebellion itself preceded significant changes for Virginia. The colonists came under much closer English supervision than before 1676 and, by century's end, they had embraced an economy based on enslaved labor. Bacon's Rebellion is one of the most important and controversial events of Virginia's history, and scholars continue to debate its causes and its significance.

Further Reading

Billings, Warren M. and John E. Selby and Thad W. Tate. Colonial Virginia: A History. White Plains, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1986.

Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: Norton, 1975.

Rice, James D. Tales from a Revolution: Bacon's Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Shea, William L. The Virginia Militia in the Seventeenth Century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983.

Tarter, Brent. "Bacon, Nathaniel." In The Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Vol. 1, edited by John T. Kneebone, J. Jefferson Looney, Brent Tarter, and Sandra Gioia Treadway, 271-274. Richmond: Library of Virginia, 1998.

Washburn, Wilcomb E. The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957.

Webb, Stephen Saunders. 1676: The End of American Independence. New York: Knopf, 1984.

Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson. Torchbearer of the Revolution: The Story of Bacon's Rebellion and Its Leader. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940.

Cite This Entry

APA Citation:
Tarter, B., & the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Nathaniel Bacon (1647-1676). (2014, May 30). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Bacon_Nathaniel_1647-1676.

MLA Citation:
Tarter, Brent and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. "Nathaniel Bacon (1647-1676)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 30 May. 2014. Web. READ_DATE.

First published: April 29, 2010 | Last modified: May 30, 2014

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Bacon was born on January 2, 1647, at Friston Hall in Suffolk County, England, the seat of his father. He was the only son and one of several children of Thomas Bacon and Elizabeth Brooke Bacon; his mother died shortly after his birth.

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Crash Course History #4 (discusses Bacon & more)

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Crash Course History #4 (discusses Bacon & more)

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Cotton Mather (February 12, 1663 - February 13, 1728) was a New England Puritan minister, prolific author, and pamphleteer. One of the most important intellectual figures in English-speaking colonial America, Mather is remembered today chiefly for his Magnalia Christi Americana (1702) and other works of history, for his scientific contributions to plant hybridization and to the promotion of inoculation as a means of preventing smallpox and other infectious diseases, and for his involvement in the events surrounding the Salem witch trials of 1692-3. He also promoted the new Newtonian science in America and sent many scientific reports to the Royal Society of London, which formally elected him as a fellow in 1723. A controversial figure in his own day, he sought unsuccessfully the presidency of Harvard College, which had been held by his father Increase, another important Puritan intellectual.

Mather was born in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, the son of Maria (née Cotton) and Increase Mather, and grandson of both John Cotton and Richard Mather, all also prominent Puritan ministers. Mather was named after his maternal grandfather John Cotton. He attended Boston Latin School, where his name was posthumously added to its Hall of Fame, and graduated from Harvard in 1678 at age 15. After completing his post-graduate work, he joined his father as assistant pastor of Boston's original North Church (not to be confused with the Anglican/Episcopal Old North Church of Paul Revere fame). In 1685, Mather assumed full responsibilities as pastor of the church.

Mather wrote more than 450 books and pamphlets, and his ubiquitous literary works made him one of the most influential religious leaders in America. He set the moral tone in the colonies and sounded the call for second- and third-generation Puritans, whose parents had left England for the New England colonies, to return to the theological roots of Puritanism. The most important of these was Magnalia Christi Americana (1702) which comprises seven distinct books, many of which depict biographical and historical narratives.

Mather influenced early American science. In 1716, he conducted one of the first recorded experiments with plant hybridization based on his observations of corn varieties. This observation was memorialized in a letter to his friend James Petiver:

In November 1713, Mather's wife, newborn twins, and two-year-old daughter all succumbed during a measles epidemic. He was twice widowed, and only two of his 15 children survived him; he died on the day after his 65th birthday and was buried on Copp's Hill, near Old North Church.

Boyle's influence on Mather

Robert Boyle was a huge influence throughout Mather's career. He read Boyle's The Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy closely throughout the 1680s, and his own early works on science and religion borrowed greatly from it, using almost identical language to Boyle.

Mather's relationship with his father Increase Mather is thought by some to have been strained and difficult. Increase was a pastor of the North Square Church and president of Harvard College; he led an accomplished life. Despite Cotton's efforts, he never became quite as well known and successful in politics as his father. He did surpass his father's output as a writer, writing more than 400 books. One of the most public displays of their strained relationship emerged during the witch trials, which Increase Mather reportedly did not support.

Cotton Mather helped convince Elihu Yale to make a donation to a new college in New Haven which became Yale College.

Salem witch trials of 1692, the Mather influence

In 1689, Mather published Memorable Providences detailing the supposed afflictions of several children in the Goodwin family in Boston. Mather had a prominent role in the witchcraft case against Catholic washerwoman Goody Glover, which ultimately resulted in her conviction and execution. Besides praying for the children, which also included fasting and meditation, he would also observe and record their activities. The children were subject to hysterical fits, which he detailed in Memorable Providences. In his book, Mather argued that since there are witches and devils, there are "immortal souls." He also claimed that witches appear spectrally as themselves. He opposed any natural explanations for the fits; he believed that people who confessed to using witchcraft were sane; he warned against performing magic due to its connection with the devil; and he argued that spectral evidence should not be used as evidence for witchcraft. Robert Calef was a contemporary of Mather and critical of him, and he considered this book responsible for laying the groundwork for the Salem witch trials three years later:

Nineteenth-century historian Charles Wentworth Upham shared the view that the afflicted in Salem were imitating the Goodwin children, but he put the blame on both Cotton and his father Increase Mather:

Mather was influential in the construction of the court for the trials from the beginning. Sir William Phips, governor of the newly chartered Province of Massachusetts Bay, appointed his lieutenant governor, William Stoughton, as head of a special witchcraft tribunal and then as chief justice of the colonial courts, where he presided over the witch trials. According to George Bancroft, Mather had been influential in gaining the politically unpopular Stoughton his appointment as lieutenant governor under Phips through the intervention of Mather's own politically powerful father, Increase. "Intercession had been made by Cotton Mather for the advancement of Stoughton, a man of cold affections, proud, self-willed and covetous of distinction." Apparently Mather saw in Stoughton, a bachelor who had never wed, an ally for church-related matters. Bancroft quotes Mather's reaction to Stoughton's appointment as follows:

Mather claimed not to have attended the trials in Salem (although his father attended the trial of George Burroughs). His contemporaries Calef and Thomas Brattle place him at the executions (see below). Mather began to publicize and celebrate the trials well before they were put to an end: "If in the midst of the many Dissatisfaction among us, the publication of these Trials may promote such a pious Thankfulness unto God, for Justice being so far executed among us, I shall Re-joyce that God is Glorified." Mather called himself a historian not an advocate but, according to one modern writer, his writing largely presumes the guilt of the accused and includes such comments as calling Martha Carrier "a rampant hag". Mather referred to George Burroughs as a "very puny man" whose "tergiversations, contradictions, and falsehoods" made his testimony not "worth considering".

The afflicted girls claimed that the semblance of a defendant, invisible to any but themselves, was tormenting them; this was considered evidence of witchcraft, despite the defendant's denial and profession of strongly held Christian beliefs. On May 31, 1692, Mather wrote to one of the judges, John Richards, a member of his congregation, expressing his support of the prosecutions, but cautioning; "do not lay more stress on pure spectral evidence than it will bear ... It is very certain that the Devils have sometimes represented the Shapes of persons not only innocent, but also very virtuous. Though I believe that the just God then ordinarily provides a way for the speedy vindication of the persons thus abused."

An opinion on the matter was sought from the ministers of the area and a response was submitted June 15, 1692. Cotton Mather seems to take credit for the varied responses when anonymously celebrating himself years later: "drawn up at their desire, by Cotton Mather the younger, as I have been informed." The "Return of the Several Ministers" ambivalently discussed whether or not to allow spectral evidence. The original full version of the letter was reprinted in late 1692 in the final two pages of Increase Mather's Cases of Conscience. It is a curious document and remains a source of confusion and argument. Calef calls it "perfectly Ambidexter, giving as great as greater Encouragement to proceed in those dark methods, then cautions against them... indeed the Advice then given, looks most like a thing of his Composing, as carrying both Fire to increase and Water to quench the Conflagration." It seems likely that the "Several" ministers consulted did not agree, and thus Cotton Mather's construction and presentation of the advice could have been crucial to its interpretation.

Thomas Hutchinson summarized the Return, "The two first and the last sections of this advice took away the force of all the others, and the prosecutions went on with more vigor than before." Reprinting the Return five years later in his anonymously published Life of Phips (1697), Cotton Mather omitted the fateful "two first and the last" sections, though they were the ones he had already given most attention in his "Wonders of the Invisible World" rushed into publication in the summer and early autumn of 1692.

On August 19, 1692, Mather attended the execution of George Burroughs (and four others who were executed after Mather spoke) and Robert Calef presents him as playing a direct and influential role:

Mr. Buroughs [sic] was carried in a Cart with others, through the streets of Salem, to Execution. When he was upon the Ladder, he made a speech for the clearing of his Innocency, with such Solemn and Serious Expressions as were to the Admiration of all present; his Prayer (which he concluded by repeating the Lord's Prayer) [as witches were not supposed to be able to recite] was so well worded, and uttered with such composedness as such fervency of spirit, as was very Affecting, and drew Tears from many, so that it seemed to some that the spectators would hinder the execution. The accusers said the black Man [Devil] stood and dictated to him. As soon as he was turned off [hanged], Mr. Cotton Mather, being mounted upon a Horse, addressed himself to the People, partly to declare that he [Mr. Burroughs] was no ordained Minister, partly to possess the People of his guilt, saying that the devil often had been transformed into the Angel of Light. And this did somewhat appease the People, and the Executions went on; when he [Mr. Burroughs] was cut down, he was dragged by a Halter to a Hole, or Grave, between the Rocks, about two feet deep; his Shirt and Breeches being pulled off, and an old pair of Trousers of one Executed put on his lower parts: he was so put in, together with [John] Willard and [Martha] Carrier, that one of his Hands, and his Chin, and a Foot of one of them, was left uncovered.

On September 2, 1692, after eleven of the accused had been executed, Cotton Mather wrote a letter to Chief Justice William Stoughton congratulating him on "extinguishing of as wonderful a piece of devilism as has been seen in the world" and claiming that "one half of my endeavors to serve you have not been told or seen."

Regarding spectral evidence, Upham concludes that "Cotton Mather never in any public writing 'denounced the admission' of it, never advised its absolute exclusion; but on the contrary recognized it as a ground of 'presumption' ... [and once admitted] nothing could stand against it. Character, reason, common sense, were swept away." In a letter to an English clergyman in 1692, Boston intellectual Thomas Brattle, criticizing the trials, said of the judges' use of spectral evidence:

The later exclusion of spectral evidence from trials by Governor Phips, around the same time his own wife's (Lady Mary Phips) name coincidentally started being bandied about in connection with witchcraft, began in January 1693. This immediately brought about a sharp decrease in convictions. Due to a reprieve by Phips, there were no further executions. Phips's actions were vigorously opposed by William Stoughton.

Bancroft notes that Mather considered witches "among the poor, and vile, and ragged beggars upon Earth", and Bancroft asserts that Mather considered the people against the witch trials to be witch advocates.

In the years after the trials, of the principal actors in the trial, whose lives are recorded after, neither he nor Stoughton admitted strong misgivings. For several years after the trials, Cotton Mather continued to defend them and seemed to hold out a hope for their return.

Wonders of the Invisible World contained a few of Mather's sermons, the conditions of the colony and a description of witch trials in Europe. He somewhat clarified the contradictory advice he had given in Return of the Several Ministers, by defending the use of spectral evidence. Wonders of the Invisible World appeared around the same time as Increase Mather's Cases of Conscience."

Mather did not sign his name or support his father's book initially:

There are fourteen worthy ministers that have newly set their hands unto a book now in the press, containing Cases of Conscience about Witchcraft. I did, in my Conscience think, that as the humors of this people now run, such a discourse going alone would not only enable the witch-advocates, very learnedly to cavil and nibble at the late proceedings against the witches, considered in parcels, while things as they lay in bulk, with their whole dependencies, were not exposed; but also everlastingly stifle any further proceedings of justice & more than so produce a public & open contest with the judges who would (tho beyond the intention of the worthy author & subscribers) find themselves brought unto the bar before the rashest mobile [mob]

-  October 20, 1692 letter to his uncle John Cotton.

The last major events in Mather's involvement with witchcraft were his interactions with Mercy Short in December 1692 and Margaret Rule in September 1693. The latter brought a five year campaign by Boston merchant Robert Calef against the influential and powerful Mathers. Calef's book More Wonders of the Invisible World was inspired by the fear that Mather would succeed in once again stirring up new witchcraft trials, and the need to bear witness to the horrible experiences of 1692. He quotes the public apologies of the men on the jury and one of the judges. Increase Mather was said to have publicly burned Calef's book in Harvard Yard around the time he was removed from the head of the college and replaced by Samuel Willard.

Charles Wentworth Upham wrote Salem Witchcraft Volumes I and II With an Account of Salem Village and a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects, which runs to almost 1,000 pages. It came out in 1867 and cites numerous criticisms of Mather by Robert Calef.

William Frederick Poole defended Mather from these criticisms.

In 1869, Poole quoted from various school textbooks of the time demonstrating they were in agreement on Cotton Mather's role in the Witch Trial

If anyone imagines that we are stating the case too strongly, let him try an experiment with the first bright boy he meets by asking,...
'Who got up Salem Witchcraft?'... he will reply, 'Cotton Mather'. Let him try another boy...
'Who was Cotton Mather?' and the answer will come, 'The man who was on horseback, and hung witches.'

Poole was a librarian, and a lover of literature, including Mather's Magnalia "and other books and tracts, numbering nearly 400 [which] were never so prized by collectors as today." Poole announced his intention to redeem Mather's name, using as a springboard a harsh critique of Upham's book, via his own book Cotton Mather and Salem witchcraft. A quick search of the name Mather in Upham's book (referring to either father, son, or ancestors) shows that it occurs 96 times. Poole's critique runs less than 70 pages but the name "Mather" occurs many more times than the other book, which is more than ten times as long. Upham shows a balanced and complicated view of Cotton Mather, such as this first mention: "One of Cotton Mather's most characteristic productions is the tribute to his venerated master. It flows from a heart warm with gratitude."

Upham's book refers to Robert Calef no fewer than 25 times with the majority of these regarding documents compiled by Calef in the mid-1690s and stating: "Although zealously devoted to the work of exposing the enormities connected with the witchcraft prosecutions, there is no ground to dispute the veracity of Calef as to matters of fact." He goes on to say that Calef's collection of writings "gave a shock to Mather's influence, from which it never recovered."

Calef produced only the one book; he is self-effacing and apologetic for his limitations, and on the title page he is listed not as author but "collector". Poole, champion of literature, could not accept Calef whose "faculties, as indicated by his writings appear to us to have been of an inferior order;...", and his book "in our opinion, has a reputation much beyond its merits." Poole refers to Calef as Mather's "personal enemy" and opens a line, "Without discussing the character and motives of Calef..." but does not follow up on this suggestive comment to discuss any actual or purported motive or reason to impugn Calef. Upham responded to Poole (referring to Poole as "the Reviewer") in a book running five times as long and sharing the same title but with the clauses reversed: Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather. Many of Poole's arguments were addressed, but both authors emphasize the importance of Cotton Mather's difficult and contradictory view on spectral evidence, as copied in the final pages, called "The Return of Several Ministers", of Increase Mather's "Cases of Conscience".

Evidenced by the published opinion in the years that followed the Poole vs Upham debate, it would seem Upham was considered the clear winner (see Sibley, GH Moore, WC Ford, and GH Burr below.). In 1891, Harvard English professor Barrett Wendall wrote Cotton Mather, The Puritan Priest. His book often expresses agreement with Upham but also announces an intention to show Cotton Mather in a more positive light. "[Cotton Mather] gave utterance to many hasty things not always consistent with fact or with each other..." And some pages later: "[Robert] Calef's temper was that of the rational Eighteenth century; the Mathers belonged rather to the Sixteenth, the age of passionate religious enthusiasm."

In 1907, George Lyman Kittredge published an essay that would become foundational to a major change in the 20th-century view of witchcraft and Mather culpability therein. Kittredge is dismissive of Robert Calef, and sarcastic toward Upham, but shows a fondness for Poole and a similar soft touch toward Cotton Mather. Responding to Kittredge in 1911, George Lincoln Burr, a historian at Cornell, published an essay that begins in a professional and friendly fashion toward both Poole and Kittredge, but quickly becomes a passionate and direct criticism, stating that Kittredge in the "zeal of his apology... reached results so startlingly new, so contradictory of what my own lifelong study in this field has seemed to teach, so unconfirmed by further research... and withal so much more generous to our ancestors than I can find it in my conscience to deem fair, that I should be less than honest did I not seize this earliest opportunity share with you the reasons for my doubts..." (In referring to "ancestors" Burr primarily means the Mathers, as is made clear in the substance of the essay.) The final paragraph of Burr's 1911 essay pushes these men's debate into the realm of a progressive creed

Perhaps as a continuation of his argument, in 1914, George Lincoln Burr published a large compilation "Narratives". This book arguably continues to be the single most cited reference on the subject. Unlike Poole and Upham, Burr avoids forwarding his previous debate with Kittredge directly into his book and mentions Kittredge only once, briefly in a footnote citing both of their essays from 1907 and 1911, but without further comment. But in addition to the viewpoint displayed by Burr's selections, he weighs in on the Poole vs Upham debate at various times, including siding with Upham in a note on Thomas Brattle's letter, "The strange suggestion of W. F. Poole that Brattle here means Cotton Mather himself, is adequately answered by Upham..." Burr's "Narratives" reprint a lengthy but abridged portion of Calef's book and introducing it he digs deep into the historical record for information on Calef and concludes "...that he had else any grievance against the Mathers or their colleagues there is no reason to think." Burr finds that a comparison between Calef's work and original documents in the historical record collections "testify to the care and exactness..."

1920-3 Kenneth B. Murdock wrote a doctoral dissertation on Increase Mather advised by Chester Noyes Greenough and Kittredge. Murdock's father was a banker hired in 1920 to run the Harvard Press and he published his son's dissertation as a handsome volume in 1925: Increase Mather, The Foremost American Puritan (Harvard University Press). Kittredge was right hand man to the elder Murdock at the Press. This work focuses on Increase Mather and is more critical of the son, but the following year he published a selection of Cotton Mather's writings with an introduction that claims Cotton Mather was "not less but more humane than his contemporaries. Scholars have demonstrated that his advice to the witch judges was always that they should be more cautious in accepting evidence" against the accused. Murdock's statement seems to claim a majority view. But one wonders who Murdock would have meant by "scholars" at this time other than Poole, Kittredge, and TJ Holmes (below) and Murdock's obituary calls him a pioneer "in the reversal of a movement among historians of American culture to discredit the Puritan and colonial period..."

1924 Thomas J. Holmes was an Englishman with no college education, but he apprenticed in bookbinding and emigrated to the U.S. and became the librarian at the William G. Mather Library in Ohio where he likely met Murdock. In 1924, Holmes wrote an essay for the Bibliographical Society of America identifying himself as part of the Poole-Kittredge lineage and citing Kenneth B. Murdock's still unpublished dissertation. In 1932 Holmes published a bibliography of Increase Mather followed by Cotton Mather, A Bibliography (1940). Holmes often cites Murdock and Kittredge and is highly knowledgeable about the construction of books. Holmes' work also includes Cotton Mather's October 20, 1692 letter (see above) to his uncle opposing an end to the trials.

1930 Samuel Eliot Morison published Builders of the Bay Colony. Morison chose not to include anyone with the surname Mather or Cotton in his collection of twelve "builders" and in the bibliography writes "I have a higher opinion than most historians of Cotton Mather's Magnalia... Although Mather is inaccurate, pedantic, and not above suppresio veri, he does succeed in giving a living picture of the person he writes about." Whereas Kittredge and Murdock worked from the English department, Morison was from Harvard's history department. Morison's view seems to have evolved over the course of the 1930s, as can be seen in Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (1936) published while Kittredge ran the Harvard press, and in a year that coincided with the tercentary of the college: "Since the appearance of Professor Kittredge's work, it is not necessary to argue that a man of learning..." of that era should be judged on his view of witchcraft. In The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England (1956), Morison writes that Cotton Mather found balance and level-thinking during the witchcraft trials. Like Poole, Morison suggests Calef had an agenda against Mather, without providing supporting evidence.

1953 Perry Miller published The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). Miller worked from the Harvard English Department and his expansive prose contains few citations, but the "Bibliographical Notes" for Chapter XIII "The Judgement of the Witches" references the bibliographies of TJ Holmes (above) calling Holmes portrayal of Cotton Mather's composition of Wonders "an epoch in the study of Salem Witchcraft." However, following the discovery of the authentic holograph of the September 2, 1692 letter, in 1985, David Levin writes that the letter demonstrates that the timeline employed by TJ Holmes and Perry Miller, is off by "three weeks." Contrary to the evidence in the later arriving letter, Miller portrays Phips and Stoughton as pressuring Cotton Mather to write the book (p.201): "If ever there was a false book produced by a man whose heart was not in it, it is The Wonders ....he was insecure, frightened, sick at heart..." The book "has ever since scarred his reputation," Perry Miller writes. Miller seems to imagine Cotton Mather as sensitive, tender, and a good vehicle for his jeremiad thesis: "His mind was bubbling with every sentence of the jeremiads, for he was heart and soul in the effort to reorganize them.

1969 Chadwick Hansen Witchcraft at Salem. Hansen states a purpose to "set the record straight" and reverse the "traditional interpretation of what happened at Salem..." and names Poole and Kittredge as like-minded influences. (Hansen reluctantly keys his footnotes to Burr's anthology for the reader's convenience, "in spite of [Burr's] anti-Puritan bias...") Hansen presents Mather as a positive influence on the Salem Trials and considers Mather's handling of the Goodwin children sane and temperate. Hansen posits that Mather was a moderating influence by opposing the death penalty for those who confessed-or feigned confession-such as Tituba and Dorcas Good, and that most negative impressions of him stem from his "defense" of the ongoing trials in Wonders of the Invisible World. Writing an introduction to a facsimile of Robert Calef's book in 1972, Hansen compares Robert Calef to Joseph Goebbels, and also explains that, in Hansen's opinion, women "are more subject to hysteria than men."

1971 The Admirable Cotton Mather by James Playsted Wood. A young adult book. In the preface, Wood discusses the Harvard-based revision and writes that Kittredge and Murdock "added to a better understanding of a vital and courageous man..."

1985 David Hall writes, "With [Kittredge] one great phase of interpretation came to a dead end." Hall writes that whether the old interpretation favored by "antiquarians" had begun with the "malice of Robert Calef or deep hostility to Puritanism," either way "such notions are no longer... the concern of the historian." But David Hall notes "one minor exception. Debate continues on the attitude and role of Cotton Mather..."

Toward the later half of the twentieth century, a number of historians at universities far from New England seemed to find inspiration in the Kittredge lineage. In Selected Letters of Cotton Mather Ken Silverman writes, "Actually, Mather had very little to do with the trials." Twelve pages later Silverman publishes, for the first time, a letter to chief judge William Stoughton on September 2, 1692, in which Cotton Mather writes "... I hope I can may say that one half of my endeavors to serve you have not been told or seen ... I have labored to divert the thoughts of my readers with something of a designed contrivance..." Writing in the early 1980s, historian John Demos imputed to Mather a purportedly moderating influence on the trials.

Coinciding with the tercentary of the trials in 1992, there was a flurry of publications.

Historian Larry Gregg highlights Mather's cloudy thinking and confusion between sympathy for the possessed, and the boundlessness of spectral evidence when Mather stated, "the devil have sometimes represented the shapes of persons not only innocent, but also the very virtuous."

The practice of smallpox inoculation (as opposed to the later practice of vaccination) was developed possibly in 8th-century India or 10th-century China. Spreading its reach in seventeenth-century Turkey, inoculation or, rather, variolation, involved infecting a person via a cut in the skin with exudate from a patient with a relatively mild case of smallpox ( variola), to bring about a manageable and recoverable infection that would provide later immunity. By the beginning of the 18th century, the Royal Society in England was discussing the practice of inoculation, and the smallpox epidemic in 1713 spurred further interest. It was not until 1721, however, that England recorded its first case of inoculation.

Smallpox was a serious threat in colonial America, most devastating to Native Americans, but also to Anglo-American settlers. New England suffered smallpox epidemics in 1677, 1689-90, and 1702. It was highly contagious, and mortality could reach as high as 30 percent. Boston had been plagued by smallpox outbreaks in 1690 and 1702. During this era, public authorities in Massachusetts dealt with the threat primarily by means of quarantine. Incoming ships were quarantined in Boston Harbor, and any smallpox patients in town were held under guard or in a "pesthouse".

In 1706, Onesimus, one of Mather's slaves, explained to Mather how he had been inoculated as a child in Africa. Mather was fascinated by the idea. By July 1716, he had read an endorsement of inoculation by Dr Emanuel Timonius of Constantinople in the Philosophical Transactions. Mather then declared, in a letter to Dr John Woodward of Gresham College in London, that he planned to press Boston's doctors to adopt the practice of inoculation should smallpox reach the colony again.

By 1721, a whole generation of young Bostonians was vulnerable and memories of the last epidemic's horrors had by and large disappeared. Smallpox returned on April 22 of that year, when HMS Seahorse arrived from the West Indies carrying smallpox on board. Despite attempts to protect the town through quarantine, nine known cases of smallpox appeared in Boston by May 27, and by mid-June, the disease was spreading at an alarming rate. As a new wave of smallpox hit the area and continued to spread, many residents fled to outlying rural settlements. The combination of exodus, quarantine, and outside traders' fears disrupted business in the capital of the Bay Colony for weeks. Guards were stationed at the House of Representatives to keep Bostonians from entering without special permission. The death toll reached 101 in September, and the Selectmen, powerless to stop it, "severely limited the length of time funeral bells could toll." As one response, legislators delegated a thousand pounds from the treasury to help the people who, under these conditions, could no longer support their families.

On June 6, 1721, Mather sent an abstract of reports on inoculation by Timonius and Jacobus Pylarinus to local physicians, urging them to consult about the matter. He received no response. Next, Mather pleaded his case to Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, who tried the procedure on his youngest son and two slaves-one grown and one a boy. All recovered in about a week. Boylston inoculated seven more people by mid-July. The epidemic peaked in October 1721, with 411 deaths; by February 26, 1722, Boston was again free from smallpox. The total number of cases since April 1721 came to 5,889, with 844 deaths-more than three-quarters of all the deaths in Boston during 1721. Meanwhile, Boylston had inoculated 287 people, with six resulting deaths.

Boylston and Mather's inoculation crusade "raised a horrid Clamour" among the people of Boston. Both Boylston and Mather were "Object[s] of their Fury; their furious Obloquies and Invectives", which Mather acknowledges in his diary. Boston's Selectmen, consulting a doctor who claimed that the practice caused many deaths and only spread the infection, forbade Boylston from performing it again.

The New-England Courant published writers who opposed the practice. The editorial stance was that the Boston populace feared that inoculation spread, rather than prevented, the disease; however, some historians, notably H. W. Brands, have argued that this position was a result of the contrarian positions of editor-in-chief James Franklin (a brother of Benjamin Franklin). Public discourse ranged in tone from organized arguments by John Williams from Boston, who posted that "several arguments proving that inoculating the smallpox is not contained in the law of Physick, either natural or divine, and therefore unlawful", to those put forth in a pamphlet by Dr. William Douglass of Boston, entitled The Abuses and Scandals of Some Late Pamphlets in Favour of Inoculation of the Small Pox (1721), on the qualifications of inoculation's proponents. (Douglass was exceptional at the time for holding a medical degree from Europe.) At the extreme, in November 1721, someone hurled a lighted grenade into Mather's home.

Medical opposition

Several opponents of smallpox inoculation, among them Rev. John Williams, stated that there were only two laws of physick (medicine): sympathy and antipathy. In his estimation, inoculation was neither a sympathy toward a wound or a disease, or an antipathy toward one, but the creation of one. For this reason, its practice violated the natural laws of medicine, transforming health care practitioners into those who harm rather than heal.

As with most colonists, Williams' Puritan beliefs were enmeshed in every aspect of his life, and he used the Bible to state his case. He quoted Matthew 9:12, when Jesus said: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." William Douglass proposed a more secular argument against inoculation, stressing the importance of reason over passion and urging the public to be pragmatic in their choices. In addition, he demanded that ministers leave the practice of medicine to physicians, and not meddle in areas where they lacked expertise. According to Douglass, smallpox inoculation was "a medical experiment of consequence," one not to be undertaken lightly. He believed that not all learned individuals were qualified to doctor others, and while ministers took on several roles in the early years of the colony, including that of caring for the sick, they were now expected to stay out of state and civil affairs. Douglass felt that inoculation caused more deaths than it prevented. The only reason Mather had had success in it, he said, was because Mather had used it on children, who are naturally more resilient. Douglass vowed to always speak out against "the wickedness of spreading infection". Speak out he did: "The battle between these two prestigious adversaries [Douglass and Mather] lasted far longer than the epidemic itself, and the literature accompanying the controversy was both vast and venomous."

Puritan resistance

Generally, Puritan pastors favored the inoculation experiments. Increase Mather, Cotton's father, was joined by prominent pastors Benjamin Colman and William Cooper in openly propagating the use of inoculations. "One of the classic assumptions of the Puritan mind was that the will of God was to be discerned in nature as well as in revelation." Nevertheless, Williams questioned whether the smallpox "is not one of the strange works of God; and whether inoculation of it be not a fighting with the most High." He also asked his readers if the smallpox epidemic may have been given to them by God as "punishment for sin," and warned that attempting to shield themselves from God's fury (via inoculation), would only serve to "provoke him more".

Puritans found meaning in affliction, and they did not yet know why God was showing them disfavor through smallpox. Not to address their errant ways before attempting a cure could set them back in their "errand". Many Puritans believed that creating a wound and inserting poison was doing violence and therefore was antithetical to the healing art. They grappled with adhering to the Ten Commandments, with being proper church members and good caring neighbors. The apparent contradiction between harming or murdering a neighbor through inoculation and the Sixth Commandment-"thou shalt not kill"-seemed insoluble and hence stood as one of the main objections against the procedure. Williams maintained that because the subject of inoculation could not be found in the Bible, it was not the will of God, and therefore "unlawful." He explained that inoculation violated The Golden Rule, because if one neighbor voluntarily infected another with disease, he was not doing unto others as he would have done to him. With the Bible as the Puritans' source for all decision-making, lack of scriptural evidence concerned many, and Williams vocally scorned Mather for not being able to reference an inoculation edict directly from the Bible.

Inoculation defended

With the smallpox epidemic catching speed and racking up a staggering death toll, a solution to the crisis was becoming more urgently needed by the day. The use of quarantine and various other efforts, such as balancing the body's humors, did not slow the spread of the disease. As news rolled in from town to town and correspondence arrived from overseas, reports of horrific stories of suffering and loss due to smallpox stirred mass panic among the people. "By circa 1700, smallpox had become among the most devastating of epidemic diseases circulating in the Atlantic world."

Mather strongly challenged the perception that inoculation was against the will of God and argued the procedure was not outside of Puritan principles. He wrote that "whether a Christian may not employ this Medicine (let the matter of it be what it will) and humbly give Thanks to God's good Providence in discovering of it to a miserable World; and humbly look up to His Good Providence (as we do in the use of any other Medicine) It may seem strange, that any wise Christian cannot answer it. And how strangely do Men that call themselves Physicians betray their Anatomy, and their Philosophy, as well as their Divinity in their invectives against this Practice?" The Puritan minister began to embrace the sentiment that smallpox was an inevitability for anyone, both the good and the wicked, yet God had provided them with the means to save themselves. Mather reported that, from his view, "none that have used it ever died of the Small Pox, tho at the same time, it were so malignant, that at least half the People died, that were infected With it in the Common way."

While Mather was experimenting with the procedure, prominent Puritan pastors Benjamin Colman and William Cooper expressed public and theological support for them. The practice of smallpox inoculation was eventually accepted by the general population due to first-hand experiences and personal relationships. Although many were initially wary of the concept, it was because people were able to witness the procedure's consistently positive results, within their own community of ordinary citizens, that it became widely utilized and supported. One important change in the practice after 1721 was regulated quarantine of innoculees.

Although Mather and Boylston were able to demonstrate the efficacy of the practice, the debate over inoculation would continue even beyond the epidemic of 1721-22. They almost caught the disease themselves. After overcoming considerable difficulty and achieving notable success, Boylston traveled to London in 1725, where he published his results and was elected to the Royal Society in 1726, with Mather formally receiving the honor two years prior.

Throughout his career Mather was also keen to minister to convicted pirates. He produced a number of pamphlets and sermons concerning piracy, including Faithful Warnings to prevent Fearful Judgments; Instructions to the Living, from the Condition of the Dead; The Converted Sinner ... A Sermon Preached in Boston, May 31, 1724, In the Hearing and at the Desire of certain Pirates; A Brief Discourse occasioned by a Tragical Spectacle of a Number of Miserables under Sentence of Death for Piracy; Useful Remarks. An Essay upon Remarkables in the Way of Wicked Men and The Vial Poured Out Upon the Sea. His father Increase had preached at the trial of Dutch pirate Peter Roderigo; Cotton Mather in turn preached at the trials and sometimes executions of pirate Captains (or the crews of) William Fly, John Quelch, Samuel Bellamy, William Kidd, Charles Harris, and John Phillips. He also ministered to Thomas Hawkins, Thomas Pound, and William Coward; having been convicted of piracy, they were jailed alongside "Mary Glover the Irish Catholic witch," daughter of witch "Goody" Ann Glover at whose trial Mather had also preached.

In his conversations with William Fly and his crew Mather scolded them: "You have something within you, that will compell you to confess, That the Things which you have done, are most Unreasonable and Abominable. The Robberies and Piracies, you have committed, you can say nothing to Justify them. ... It is a most hideous Article in the Heap of Guilt lying on you, that an Horrible Murder is charged upon you; There is a cry of Blood going up to Heaven against you."

The Boston Ephemeris was an almanac written by Mather in 1686. The content was similar to what is known today as the Farmer's Almanac. This was particularly important because it shows that Cotton Mather had influence in mathematics during the time of Puritan New England. This almanac contained a significant amount of astronomy, celestial within the text of the almanac the positions and motions of these celestial bodies, which he must have calculated by hand.

When Mather died, he left behind an abundance of unfinished writings, including one entitled The Biblia Americana. Mather believed that Biblia Americana was the best thing he had ever written; his masterwork. Biblia Americana contained Mather's thoughts and opinions on the Bible and how he interpreted it. Biblia Americana is incredibly large, and Mather worked on it from 1693 until 1728, when he died. Mather tried to convince others that philosophy and science could work together with religion instead of against it. People did not have to choose one or the other. In Biblia Americana, Mather looked at the Bible through a scientific perspective, completely opposite to his perspective in The Christian Philosopher, in which he approached science in a religious manner.

Mather's first published sermon, printed in 1686, concerned the execution of James Morgan, convicted of murder. Thirteen years later, Mather published the sermon in a compilation, along with other similar works, called Pillars of Salt.

Magnalia Christi Americana, considered Mather's greatest work, was published in 1702, when he was 39. The book includes several biographies of saints and describes the process of the New England settlement. In this context "saints" does not refer to the canonized saints of the Catholic church, but to those Puritan divines about whom Mather is writing. It comprises seven total books, including Pietas in Patriam: The life of His Excellency Sir William Phips, originally published anonymously in London in 1697. Despite being one of Mather's best-known works, some have openly criticized it, labeling it as hard to follow and understand, and poorly paced and organized. However, other critics have praised Mather's work, citing it as one of the best efforts at properly documenting the establishment of America and growth of the people.

In 1721, Mather published The Christian Philosopher, the first systematic book on science published in America. Mather attempted to show how Newtonian science and religion were in harmony. It was in part based on Robert Boyle's The Christian Virtuoso (1690). Mather reportedly took inspiration from Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, by the 12th-century Islamic philosopher Abu Bakr Ibn Tufail.

Despite condemning the "Mahometans" as infidels, Mather viewed the novel's protagonist, Hayy, as a model for his ideal Christian philosopher and monotheistic scientist. Mather viewed Hayy as a noble savage and applied this in the context of attempting to understand the Native American Indians, in order to convert them to Puritan Christianity. Mather's short treatise on the Lord's Supper was later translated by his cousin Josiah Cotton.

The Handsome Family's 2006 album Last Days of Wonder is named in reference to Mather's 1693 book Wonders of the Invisible World, which lyricist Rennie Sparks found intriguing because of what she called its "madness brimming under the surface of things."

1. ^ Sibley, John Langdon (1885). Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Volume III. Cambridge: Charles William Sever, University Bookstore.

2. ^ Hostetter, Margaret Kendrick (April 5, 2012). "What We Don't See". The New England Journal of Medicine. 366 (14): 1328-34. doi:10.1056/NEJMra1111421. PMID 22475596.

3. ^ Middlekauff, Robert (1999), The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728, Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

4. ^ Hudson, James Daniel (2008). "Cotton Mather 's Relationship to Science" (PDF). Cotton Mather. Georgia State University.

5. ^ Werking, Richard H (1972). ""Reformation Is Our Only Preservation": Cotton Mather and Salem Witchcraft". The William and Mary Quarterly. 29 (2): 283. doi:10.2307/1921147. JSTOR 1921147. PMID 11633586.

6. ^ Harley, David (1996). "Explaining Salem: Calvinist Psychology and the Diagnosis of Possession". The American Historical Review. 101 (2): 315-316. doi:10.2307/2170393. JSTOR 2170393. PMID 11609193.

7. ^ Mather, Cotton (1971). Silverman, Kenneth (ed.). Selected Letters. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. pp. 35-40. ISBN 0-8071-0920-7.

8. ^ Craker, Wendel D. (1997), "Spectral Evidence, Non-Spectral acts of Witchcraft, and Confessions at Salem in 1692", The Historical Journal, 40 (2): 331-358, doi:10.1017/S0018246X9700719X

9. ^ David D Hall, "Witchcraft and the Limits of Interpretation" NEQ Vol 58 No. 2 (June, 1985) see p 261-3. Note, Hall doesn't mention the September 2, 1692 letter in this essay and no subsequent mention of the letter in his later publications has been located.

10. ^ Demos, John (2004). Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-503131-8.

11. ^ "Dr. Larry Gragg - Missouri State Magazine - Missouri State University". Mar 6, 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-03-06.

12. Hopkins, Donald R. (2002). ^ The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History; ISBN 0-226-35168-8, p. 140.

13. Coss, Stephen. (2016). ^ The Fever of 1721: the Epidemic that Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 87; ISBN 9781476783086

14. ^ Niven, Steven J. (2013). "Onesimus (fl. 1706-1717), slave and medical pioneer, was born in the..." Hutchins center. Harvard College. Archived from the original on September 10, 2015.

15. ^ The Smallpox Inoculation Hospital at St. Pancras, UK: BL, 2003-11-30, archived from the original on 2013-10-29

16. ^ Niederhuber, Matthew (December 31, 2014). "The Fight Over Inoculation During the 1721 Boston Smallpox Epidemic". Harvard University.

17. ^ Cooper, William (1721), A Letter from a Friend in the Country, Attempting a Solution of the Scruples and Objections of a Conscientious or Religious Nature, Commonly Made Against the New Way of Receiving the Small Pox, Boston: S. Kneeland, pp. 6-7 Apparently Cooper, also a minister, wrote this in cooperation with Colman because nearly the same response to the objections to inoculation is published under Colman's name as the last chapter to Colman (1722), A Narrative of the Method and Success of Inoculating the Small Pox in New England

18. ^ Flemming, Gregory N. (2014). At the Point of a Cutlass: The Pirate Capture, Bold Escape, and Lonely Exile of Philip Ashton. Lebanon NH: ForeEdge. ISBN 9781611685626.

Aronson, Stanley M; Newman, Lucile (2002), God Have Mercy on This House: Being a Brief Chronicle of Smallpox in Colonial New England, Brown University News Service.

Blake, John B (December 1952), "The Inoculation Controversy in Boston: 1721-1722", The New England Quarterly, 25 (4): 489-506, doi:10.2307/362582, JSTOR 362582.

Boylston, Zabdiel. An Historical Account of the Small-pox Inoculated in New England. London: S. Chandler, 1726.

Calef, Robert (1700), More Wonders of the Invisible World, London, ENG, UK: Nath Hillar on London Bridge.

Felker, Christopher D. Reinventing Cotton Mather in the American Renaissance: Magnalia Christi Americana in Hawthorne, Stowe, and Stoddard (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993); ISBN 1-55553-187-3

Gronim, Sara Stidstone (2006), "Imagining Inoculation: Smallpox, the Body, and Social Relations of Healing in the Eighteenth Century", Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 80 (2): 247-68, doi:10.1353/bhm.2006.0057, PMID 16809863, S2CID 42010940.

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Cotton Mather (February 12, 1663 - February 13, 1728) was a New England Puritan minister, prolific author, and pamphleteer.

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Born on Feb. 12th 1663 into a family of renown New England Puritan ministers, including Rev. John Cotton and Rev. Richard Mather, Cotton Mather seemed destined to achieve fame. His own father, Rev. Increase Mather, also held a position of prominence as a well-admired political leader, minister of the South Church in Boston, as well as the presidency of Harvard College. Excelling in his entrance exams in Latin and Greek, young Cotton began his schooling at Harvard at only 12 years of age. After receiving his M.A. at age 18, he felt called to a life of service in the clergy. A terrible stutter, however, forced him to delay entering the ministry and the demands of preaching, and instead he entertained the notion of becoming a doctor. Encouragement from a friend eventually pulled him over this speech impediment and back to his calling, although medicine remained a key interest throughout his life. Mather preached his first sermon in August of 1680, and went on to be ordained by 1685 at age 22. Besides his involvement with the witch trials in Salem during the 1690s, Cotton Mather is remembered as one of the most influential Puritan ministers of his day. Never achieving his father's success as a political leader or president of Harvard, Cotton made his mark through his efforts as a master of the pen. By the end of his life, he had published over 400 of his works, ranging from the subject of witchcraft to smallpox inoculation. His publication, Curiosa Americana(1712-24), demonstrated his abilities as an accomplished scientist, and earned him election to the prestigious Royal Society of London, England. Although his efforts of encouragement in smallpox inoculation were met with much resistance and nearly killed his own son, he is recognized as having been a progressive medical advocate for his day.

In regard to the Salem witch trials, however, it was Mather's interest in the craft and actions of Satan that won him an audience with the most powerful figures involved in the trial proceedings, several of the judges and the local ministers in Salem. Before the outbreak of accusations in Salem Village, Mather had already published his account, Remarkable Providences (1684), describing in detail he possession of the children of the Goodwin family of Boston. Mather actually took the eldest of the children, 13-year-old Martha, into his home to make a more intense study of the phenomenon. Later scholars have suggested that this book in fact outlined the symptoms of clinical hysteria. It was this same hysteria that provided the behavioral model for the circle of "afflicted" girls during the trials in Salem. Mather, however, used his experience with Goodwins to further his notion that New England was in fact a battleground with Satan. Similar themes appear in his sermons and in the Preface to one of his children's books, in which he warns young readers: "They which lie, must go to their father, the devil, into everlasting burning; they which never pray, God will pour out his wrath upon them; and when they bed and pray in hell fire, God will not forgive them, but there [they] must lie forever. Are you willing to go to hell and burn with the devil and his angels?". Thus, the subject of eternal damnation weighed constantly upon Mather's mind, and it resonates in his own diary accounts. Scholars suggest that Mather's dramatic descriptions the devil's activity upon the young Goodwin children may have led to the first cry of witchcraft among the young girls in Salem Village.

Although Mather was not directly involved in the proceedings of the Salem witch trials, he wrote a letter to one of the magistrates in the trials, John Richards of Boston, urging caution in the use of spectral evidence. Mather was also the author of the "Return of the Several Ministers," a report sent to the judges of the Salem court. This carefully-worded document advised caution in the use of spectral evidence, saying that the devil could indeed assume the shape of an innocent person, and decrying the use of spectral evidence in the trials, their "noise, company, and openness", and the utilization of witch tests such as the recitation of the Lord's Prayer. However, the final paragraph of the document appears to undercut this cautionary statement in recommending "the detection of witchcrafts". Thus, in Bernard Rosenthal and Perry Miller's opinions, the courts interpreted the letter as Mather's seal of approval for the trials to go on.

Accounts of eye-witnesses and historians paint a more contradictory portrait of Mather's hand in the trials. Mather is haunted in history by the account given in Robert Calef's book More Wonders of the Invisible World (1700) of his conduct at the hanging of former Salem minister George Burroughs. Calef reported that Burroughs recited a perfect rendition of the Lord's Prayer while on the gallows, something Mather himself thought impossible for anyone guilty of an alliance with the devil. The crowd was so moved that some wanted to prevent the execution. Mather, mounted on his horse, proclaimed that Burroughs was no ordained minister, and that the "Devil has often been transformed into an Angel of Light." With those words, under the tearful gaze of an ambivalent crowd the George Burroughs was hanged.

Perhaps Cotton's most self-damning act within the public eye was his publication of the volume The Wonders of the Invisible World, in October, 1692, after the final executions. Although Cotton's words describe, and to some degree justify the trials and deaths in Salem that year, the book is anything but resolved with regards to Mather's true feelings about the trials. Although Cotton insists the book is not written in an evil spirit or with any prejudice, he writes of the trials of accused witches such as Bridget Bishop saying there was "little occasion to prove witchcraft, it being evident and notorious to all beholders". He describes Susanna Martin as, "one of the most impudent, scurrilous, wicked creatures in the world". And worst of all, he condones the use of the spectral evidence to convict the witches of his five cases outlined! In his own letter to William Stoughton, penned during the trial of George Burroughs, Cotton also asserts the guilt of this man, stating he is the ringleader of 10 other witches, a confession received from five Andover witches that "refreshes his soul".

Careful analysis of the document, as well as Mather's own diaries, reveals that he may not have been quite as convinced of the righteousness of the trials as he describes in his book. A cautious foreword to the manuscript reads, "I live by Neighbours that force me to produce these undeserved lines". Perry Miller describes the whole work as "utter confusion". Robert Calef, author of More Wonders of the Invisible World, published a very different account than Mather's that put Cotton on the defensive for the rest of his life. Mather cried libel and threatened to sue, but the issue was never resolved and Cotton was forced to bite his tongue and bear what would become a flood of contemporary scorn for his witch-hunting labors. Near the end of his life, his diary records a hint of regret for the thanklessness of the groups he had spurned in his work. He is baffled by why "everybody points at me, and speaks of me as by far the most afflicted minister in all New England". Perry Miller describes Cotton's later years as a time of intense regret and remorse about the trials. He points out that Cotton's diary paints a picture of a man "panicky lest the Lord take revenge upon his family 'for [Mather's] not appearing with Vigor enough to stop the proceedings of the Judges'". Clearly Cotton could not see his outside of his own world of expectations, reputations, and contradictions. He died on Feb. 13th 1728 at age 66, survived by only one of his three wives and two of his fifteen children.

Bibliography

Calef, Robert. More Wonders of the Invisible World,1700,

Hill, Frances. A Delusion of Satan, 1997.

Miller, Perry. The New England Mind, from colony to province, 1953.

Mather, Cotton. Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681-[1724]

Mather, Cotton. The Wonders of the Invisible World, 1693.

Rosenthal, Bernard. Salem Story, 1997.

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Born on Feb. 12th 1663 into a family of renown New England Puritan ministers, including Rev. John Cotton and Rev. Richard Mather, Cotton Mather seemed destined to achieve fame. His own father, Rev. Increase Mather, also held a position of prominence as a well-admired political leader, minister of the South Church in Boston, as well as the presidency of Harvard College.

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Crash Course History #4 (discusses Salem Witch trials)

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Crash Course History #4 (discusses Salem Witch trials)

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Such a GREAT presentation on allowing students to interact with materials and show mastery in a way that is culturally relevant.

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Sharing Stories: Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning with Andratesha Fritzgerald