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Transatlantic Print Culture and the Rise of New England Literature, 1620-1630

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Transatlantic Print Culture and the Rise of New England Literature, 1620-1630 TRANSATLANTIC PRINT CULTURE AND THE RISE OF NEW ENGLAND LITERATURE 1620-1630 by Sean Delaney to The Department of History In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of History Northeastern University Boston, MA April 2013 1 TRANSATLANTIC PRINT CULTURE AND THE RISE OF NEW ENGLAND LITERATURE 1620-1630 by Sean Delaney ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate School of Northeastern University, April 2013 2 Transatlantic Print Culture And The Rise Of New England Literature 1620-1630 Despite the considerable attention devoted to the founding of puritan colonies in New England, scholars have routinely discounted several printed tracts that describe this episode of history as works of New England literature. This study examines the reasons for this historiographical oversight and, through a close reading of the texts, identifies six works written and printed between 1620 and 1630 as the beginnings of a new type of literature. The production of these tracts supported efforts to establish puritan settlements in New England. Their respective authors wrote, not to record a historical moment for posterity, but to cultivate a particular colonial reality among their contemporaries in England. By infusing puritan discourse into the language of colonization, these writers advanced a colonial agenda independent of commercial, political and religious imperatives in England. As a distinctive response to a complex set of historical circumstances on both sides of the Atlantic, these works collectively represent the rise of New England literature. 3 This dissertation is dedicated with love to my wife Tara and to my soon-to-be-born daughter Amelia Marie. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 3 Dedication 4 Table of Contents 5 Introduction 6 Chapter 1: Plymouth Colony and the Rise of New England Literature 15 Chapter 2: Early New England Literature in a Transatlantic Context 80 Chapter 3: A Colonial Text for English Eyes, Part I: Mourt’s Relation 139 Chapter 4: A Colonial Text for English Eyes, Part II: Good News from New England 211 Chapter 5: Kindred Spirits: Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth Colony and the Expansion of 292 New England Literature Chapter 6: Contested Ground: Early New England Literature and the Denial 327 of Separatism Conclusion 393 Bibliography 395 5 Introduction During the seventeenth century, English America grew from a handful of villages and outposts planted along the coast of North America to a vast empire that stretched across land and sea for thousands of miles. Each settlement within English America had a unique character shaped by its climate, geography and demographics, as well as by the irregular, uncoordinated and sometimes adversarial pattern of colonization by a number of English organizations. A number of stories have been told about the history of English America, but the settling of a small area along the coast of the North Atlantic by a relatively homogenous group of colonists has garnered the lion’s share of scholarly attention. Puritan New England became the subject of historical inquiry only a few years after English men and women carved their humble abodes out of the howling wilderness. By the mid-seventeenth century, the founding of New England had already become the stuff of legend. Subsequent generations of English colonists, followed by their American posterity, looked back upon this event as having stamped some indelible character on their own society. Mixing fact with fiction, they constructed a narrative that explained what made New England unique, first within the English Atlantic and later in the United States. The extraordinary efforts of these first generation New Englanders deserve attention, but their historical significance owes a great deal to the number of written accounts they left behind. Historians must work with available sources, and the indefatigable pens of seventeenth-century New England puritans left behind a textual embarrassment of riches. English puritans on both sides of the Atlantic forged a personal relationship with God through a direct and in-depth understanding of Scripture. This made literacy a requirement of the faith. In puritan New England, nearly every member of their community learned to read, and most acquired the ability 6 to write. Not surprisingly, these puritan colonists established in English America the first public school, the first university and the first printing press. Widespread literacy also enabled them to maintain strong connections to affairs in Europe. New England essentially became a transatlantic extension of the puritan communication network that flourished throughout England and the continent. Its colonists had considerable access to information from England, but they also shaped knowledge of their affairs to English audiences. Much of what we know of early New England history comes from these transatlantic exchanges. From the very beginning, writing was a crucial component for the puritan colonization project. Colonists put pen to paper the moment they arrived in New England, usually to send word of their experiences back home. A few of these efforts made their way to printing houses in London, not always with the author’s knowledge or permission. Some of the most famous events in the history of colonial New England were originally fodder for the consumption of English audiences. More than just a report of their doings in the New World, these prints were intended to establish a particular colonial reality in the minds of the English public. This study examines six of the earliest published tracts from and about puritan New England. Written and printed between 1620 and 1630, these works reveal not what actually happened in early New England, but what their authors wished to reveal to contemporaries in England. The first two under consideration, Mourt’s Relation (1622) and Good News from New England (1624), were written by two prominent members of Plymouth colony, William Bradford and Edward Winslow. The other four, New Englands Plantation, God’s Promise to His Plantation, The Humble Request, and The Planters Plea, were printed by the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1630. Like the Pilgrims, the company issued these tracts to support its colonization efforts in English America. 7 Collectively, these six works provide an intimate glimpse into the first anxious, uncertain steps in the puritan colonization of New England. While these tracts have shed considerable light on the history of early New England, the persons responsible for their publication did not think of them as histories. They intended them to make an immediate impact in England. In a general sense, these six prints resembled the literature promoting colonies elsewhere in English America. Their pages conveyed an impression of New England as a land of plenty and promise. Their puritan authors stretched the truth no less than Walter Raleigh, John Smith, or any other advocate of colonization. The New England tracts differed, however, from other promotional works in one crucial respect: they were intended to advance colonial objectives. Tracts promoting the plantation colonies or the fishing settlements in the North Atlantic offered a chance to change one’s fortune, but their authors aligned the interests of the colonies with those of England. They saw their publications as wind for English sails. New England, on the other hand, consisted mostly of puritan exiles living in dissident communities beyond the reach of a hostile Anglican establishment. The founders of these colonies desired to govern themselves with a minimum of interference from England. New England literature emerged in consequence of this objective. Beginning in 1620, advocates of New England borrowed many of the literary conventions found in the existing promotional literature, but they infused their arguments with the language of puritan casuistry. While nearly every publication in early modern England contained religious overtones, New England literature promoted the colonies as the Protestant ideal. Carefully avoiding any overt challenge to the Church of England, authors crafted a narrative designed to establish their respective party as the lawful authority in the colony. They rested the legitimacy of this argument on the righteousness 8 of English puritanism. The six tracts examined in this study reveal how authors made this argument by infusing puritan discourse into the language of colonization. Despite the fact that generations of scholars have utilized these six tracts, they consistently underestimate, and in many cases disregard altogether, the historical circumstances of their production. Much of this oversight can be traced to the nineteenth century. Scholars of that era traced the origins of American exceptionalism to its colonial antecedent. They consecrated the founding of New England as a proto-American creation story and bestowed upon the puritan settlers characteristics and motivations that most nineteenth century Americans wished to see in themselves. These scholars cast the founders of puritan New England as champions of religious freedom and democracy. Many used this history to underscore how far the southern slavocracy had strayed from their nation’s original mandate. The partisan impulse behind this interpretation conferred a sense of historical authenticity upon texts written by New England’s founders. Several of these, such as Mourt’s Relation and Governor Bradford’s
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