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Edmund S. MorganThe Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1958A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
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Index of Terms
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BetaChapters 11-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “The New England Way”
Winthrop and allies like Cotton believed that magistrates derived their power from God, not the people, even if they were selected by the people. He and his allies saw the value of popular input in government, yet saw those elected to lead as being the colony’s most qualified men. Therefore, their guidance and opinions should have ultimate authority. For the unruly masses to govern their governors would be to invite chaos. In this reckoning, the new representative deputies were a sounding board of public opinion rather than real government officials.
The deputies disagreed. To restrain them, Winthrop claimed a “negative voice” or veto power for the magistrates. Through a strained reading of the quorum requirements in the charter, he argued that no law or judicial decision could pass by the General Court without the assent of the governor or deputy governor and six assistants. Winthrop’s party eventually won after the troubles with Williams and Hutchinson convinced people of the need for more authority. The negative voice was formally enshrined in law in 1644. He also convinced the freemen to institute a Council for Life, with lifetime members drawn from former magistrates (including himself) to handle matters between sessions of the General Court. His political successes and victory in a bloody war that obliterated the Pequot tribe of Indigenous Americans confirmed his sense of divine vindication.
The clergy had hesitations about Winthrop’s growing power. Although there was a stricter separation between churches and the government than in England, the ministers had considerable influence and often served as impartial experts when political disagreements arose. Remembering the abuses of absolute authority they had seen in England, many of them—including even Cotton—began to worry about Winthrop, despite their personal liking for him. In 1639, they began to urge the freemen to rotate the governorship. Winthrop still won the election (his third time in a row) but, in 1640, the freemen coalesced behind Dudley, the clergy’s preferred candidate, to oust Winthrop. The General Court also heavily restricted the power of the Council for Life.
The deputies meanwhile had been struggling to create a code similar to the Magna Carta that would define and limit the power of the magistrates. They formed committees in two successive years to make proposals, but Winthrop sabotaged one and the other envisioned too strong a government. Winthrop believed that laying down detailed prescriptions for government in this early stage of colonial life would be unwise. He argued for gradual development based on the magistrates’ decisions building upon the English common law tradition. He also feared provoking royal intervention.
Finally, the deputies selected an older, highly trained lawyer named Nathaniel Ward to draw up a code. Ward viewed democracy with some hesitation but had a deep appreciation for rights and liberties. His work—the Body of Liberties—included traditional rights, such as trial by jury, while affirming the supremacy of God’s law. He protected the role of deputies, defined the right of both church and state to govern their own spheres, and established the basics for the new system of dividing New England into townships. The General Court passed it with some modifications in 1641 and, with freedoms protected by statute, returned the following year to reelecting Winthrop as governor for most of the remainder of his life.
Chapter 12 Summary: “New England or Old”
Winthrop’s formal and informal public duties left him with little time to manage his own estates, which amounted to 2,000-3,000 acres. His steward, James Luxford, badly mismanaged affairs and left him in considerable debt. He had to sell much of his land, but the General Court donated 3,000 acres to his wife while friends and supporters raised money for him.
Meanwhile, the events leading to the English Civil War began in 1640 when Charles I tried to impose the Anglican prayer book on Scotland, provoking a rebellion there and forcing him to recall Parliament. Parliament and king quickly turned on each other, and civil war engulfed the country in 1642. Few immigrants came to New England as English Puritans threw themselves into the struggle at home. Without new arrivals to bring manufactured goods and buy the colonists’ timber and cattle, Massachusetts entered an economic depression. Some colonists, including educated leaders, decided to return to England to join Parliament and work to create a Puritan government there. Winthrop, however, decided to ignore pleas from home and instead remain in Massachusetts to nurture the colony’s experiment in godly government.
Religious developments in England also alienated Massachusetts Puritans. The old English Puritans tended towards Presbyterianism rather than New England’s Congregationalism. Those who were Congregationalist in England embraced a range of separatist views and rebuked Massachusetts colonists for being intolerant. Winthrop and the colonists saw the English Congregationalists’ views as a disturbing breakdown into lawlessness. This reinforced Winthrop’s decision to continue to work on his American experiment. Meanwhile, to combat the depression, the New Englanders tried to develop the rudiments of home manufacturing and to find foreign markets for their produce.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Foreign Affairs”
As the fresh perspective of new immigrants faded, Winthrop and other colonists began to see themselves as the sole pocket of righteousness in the world rather than a vanguard pioneering a path for others. Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven had allied with Massachusetts in 1643 against Indigenous American rivals and were also under God’s providence; even other colonies such as Rhode Island and Virginia were now dens of iniquity in Winthrop’s eyes.
Winthrop, however, opposed the isolationist majority in Massachusetts, who refused to repeal a law restricting the arrival of strangers and did not want to aid Rhode Island in fighting Indigenous Americans. When French Acadia had two quarreling claimants to the post of governor, Winthrop even allowed one of them to recruit men from Massachusetts to aid in their miniature civil war. Several magistrates formally protested his reception of French Catholic soldiers in New England, and the voters reduced him from governor to deputy governor in the next two elections.
The people of Massachusetts felt divided about England once the conflict between Parliament and king began, though most empathized with Parliament. Winthrop just wished to be left alone. Charles I had tried to revoke Massachusetts’ charter, but Winthrop created delays and the king’s troubles with Parliament distracted him before he could suppress the colony’s self-government. Parliament generally supported the colonies’ liberty, but its Presbyterian Puritanism and toleration of separatists emboldened Presbyterian settlers, who had been excluded from church membership and, therefore, the voting privileges of freemen.
Robert Child, a recent immigrant, and six allies filed a petition in the General Court in 1645, arguing for the expansion of church membership and suffrage to other Christian men such as Presbyterian settlers. They also demanded that the colony accept the laws and religious reformations being imposed by Parliament in England. Contrary to Winthrop’s advice, the deputies confronted Child directly and he proclaimed his intention to appeal to Parliament.
Winthrop and the General Court took a tough stance against this existential threat to Massachusetts’ self-government. They fined Child, intercepted him when he tried to leave the colony, charged him with sedition upon finding two more petitions in his trunk, and so delayed him for months. By the time they allowed Child to reach England, they had already poisoned Parliament’s opinion of Child and secured a reaffirmation of the colony’s liberties. In the end, the General Court did allow church nonmembers a vote in town affairs, but not in that of the wider colony.
Margaret Winthrop died in 1647. Though Winthrop loved her dearly, he married again the following year at age 60. He served yet again as governor until early 1649 when he became ill. He died March 26th, 1649.
Chapters 11-13 Analysis
Morgan concludes his narrative of Winthrop’s life without a concluding chapter, meta-analysis, or summary of his main points. Although the book provides argumentative interpretations of Winthrop’s motives and leadership, Morgan keeps to the notion that this is an accessible biography that tells what happened. Academic debates remain in the background. For readers interested in issues of interpretation and theme, however, Morgan continues to repeat key words and ideas in the narrative. He most clearly signals his thematic interests with his final sentence: “On March 26, he reached what in life he had never sought, a separation from his sinful fellow men” (205).
Morgan emphasizes throughout the narrative that Winthrop, as a man of ideals confronting a broken world, struggled with the question of Isolation Versus Worldly Engagement. Winthrop always came down on the side of engagement, and so created a thriving colony whose self-government and commitment to rights would play a key role a century later in forming the United States. Those separatists who gave up on the world to withdraw into a self-righteous enclave therefore became the obstacles to this achievement. Separation came to Winthrop with death; otherwise he always opposed it.
Moderation and Consensus in Successful Leadership continues as a major theme in the final quarter of the book. Winthrop approaches problems with more flexibility and moderation than his contemporaries. Morgan notes his willingness to adapt to a French warship appearing in Boston Harbor, ultimately striking an alliance with the hated traditional enemy. Many of his contemporaries in Massachusetts condemned this willingness to see the world as it is and to stretch the rules to achieve the larger goal (i.e., preserving a godly colony from attack). Winthrop trusted that he was acting wisely as God’s steward, and sought to shape popular opinion rather than be shaped by it. Morgan offers the success of the colony and the fact that people kept returning Winthrop to the governorship (despite a couple lulls) as proof that Winthrop’s style of leadership succeeded.
As Morgan tells it, the story of Winthrop is in many ways the story of the colony as a whole, which speaks to his interest in Rehabilitating the Puritans. The colony wrestled with the same issues of moderation, separatism, and temptation as Winthrop did personally. It grew over time, sometimes making mistakes but always moving forwards. Its relatively united front in confronting Child’s design to bring them under Parliament’s new power suggests a kind of maturation. Like Winthrop personally, Massachusetts no longer felt the temptation to bind itself to the old country. Its leaders worked together to maneuver through the shoals of civil war to keep their new society’s independence. Politically, it instead formed alliances with neighboring colonies to focus on American issues. Economically, it started to strike out on its own to manufacture its own goods and create trade with different nations. These economic efforts faltered at first but slowly began to bear fruit.
Narratively, the defeat of Child is the climax of a long struggle by Winthrop and his fellow colonists to create a unique, godly, experimental state in America. Morgan alludes to troubles ahead that would include the erosion of Puritan domination, increased royal control, and continued economic ups and downs. However, the colony’s triumph in maintaining independence from turbulent Civil War-era England serves as a fulfillment of Winthrop’s career. Having the final chapter focus on that high note allows Winthrop to exit the narrative gracefully as a man who, despite his imperfections, had a practical genius that helped lay the foundation of a new American society. That is the implicit narrative conclusion that the structure of the final chapters creates.
