University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 2015 On the Trade Winds of Faith: Puritan Networks in the Making of an Atlantic World Rachel L. Monroy University of South Carolina - Columbia Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Monroy, R. L.(2015). On the Trade Winds of Faith: Puritan Networks in the Making of an Atlantic World. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/3128 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 2015 On the Trade Winds of Faith: Puritan Networks in the Making of an Atlantic World Rachel L. Monroy University of South Carolina - Columbia Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Recommended Citation Monroy, R. L.(2015). On the Trade Winds of Faith: Puritan Networks in the Making of an Atlantic World. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/3128 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ON THE TRADE WINDS OF FAITH: PURITAN NETWORKS IN THE MAKING OF AN ATLANTIC WORLD by Rachel Love Monroy Bachelor of Arts Liberty University, 2007 Master of Arts Liberty University, 2010 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2015 Accepted by: Daniel C. Littlefield, Major Professor Kathryn Edwards, Committee Member Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Committee Member Lacy Ford, Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies © Copyright by Rachel Love Monroy, 2015 All Rights Reserved ii DEDICATION To Mom and Dad for teaching me to dream, and to Hansel for reminding me those dreams could come true. Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. William Butler Yeats iii ABSTRACT This dissertation dismisses the New England dominance of colonial puritan historiography to argue that an interconnected community of Atlantic puritans pursued an alternate path to their faith apart from the Massachusetts Bay experiment. While a number of Atlantic puritans emerged from the nucleus of the Ancient Church and others eventually joined those original networks, ultimately membership within the puritan Atlantic involved the embrace of a particular attitude about faith, commerce, and political involvement. Atlantic puritans were concerned with the spiritual fate of Europeans and Native Americans scattered throughout the Caribbean and along the Atlantic coastline of North America as central to both England’s political hedge against Catholic colonization and the hope for Christ’s millennial return. This eschatological perspective served as the foundation of these puritans’ Atlantic focus. Having imbued the Atlantic world with apocalyptic significance Atlantic puritans centered their commercial and political interests there as well. As a result individuals like Richard Bennett, Daniel Gookin, Nathaniell and Constant Sylvester, and the Bland Brothers exemplified the puritan Atlantic through their fusion of faith and commerce allowing providence to guide their way. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ....................................................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1: OUT OF THE ASHES OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH: THE DIASPORA AND FORMATION OF THE PURITAN ATLANTIC ...................................................................20 CHAPTER 2: THE SPIRITUAL ECONOMY OF RICHARD BENNETT ..........................................34 CHAPTER 3: A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING: DANIEL GOOKIN’S MILLENNIAL CHALLENGE FOR THE CITY ON A HILL ..........................................................................................78 CHAPTER 4: WIDOWS, WIVES, AND DAUGHTERS: GENDERING THE PURITAN ATLANTIC ..123 CHAPTER 5: SWEETLY BOUND: SYLVESTER FAMILY NETWORKS IN THE BUILDING OF A PURITAN ATLANTIC EMPIRE ...................................................................................162 CHAPTER 6: ORDERING THE ATLANTIC: THE BLANDS’ HOLY UNION OF COMMERCE, POLITICS, AND PURITAN FAITH ...............................................................................203 CHAPTER 7: FROM PURITAN TO QUAKER .........................................................................247 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................280 v INTRODUCTION In late sixteenth-century London a small separate puritan congregation by the name of the Ancient church began meeting on the southern banks of the Thames River. This community of believers became the foundation of Atlantic puritan networks that would reach from England to Amsterdam and across the Atlantic and Caribbean into Barbados, Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Long Island. English religious reform coupled with their separatist tendencies towards schism eventually brought the fellow believers to Holland seeking religious asylum, only to witness their congregation’s eventual collapse in the 1620s. The Ancient Church’s separatism had culminated in a diaspora with the first waves of migration leaving Amsterdam for the Chesapeake. Individuals including former elder of the Ancient Church Edward Bennett and his nephew Richard set up plantations in Virginia and transported fellow puritans across the Atlantic. Other congregants remained behind in Amsterdam using their connections to Virginia as the cornerstone of their burgeoning trade. Into the 1630s, the Sylvester family, Giles and his two sons Constant and Nathaniell, kept their base in the Netherlands while trading in Spain, France, Africa, Barbados, and among the Bennetts for Virginia’s tobacco. Nathaniell and Constant later left Europe for posts in Barbados and on Shelter Island, New York stretching the reach of puritan networks with roots in the Ancient Church. 1 At the same time puritans whose antecedents lay outside of the Ancient Church crossed paths with the former congregants and eventually joined their endeavors in building the puritan Atlantic. While the Bennetts were establishing a foothold in the Chesapeake, Daniel Gookin, and his two sons Daniel and John, signed a contract with the Virginia Company to import British cattle to the colony. The family also established a plantation called Marie’s Mount, south of the James River and near to the Bennetts. The Bland family, brothers John, Adam, Edward, and Theodorick stationed themselves at ports in Spain, England, Virginia, and Tangier where they also came across one-time members of the Ancient Church and entered upon their networks. Adam, Edward, and Theodorick all eventually settled among puritans in the Nansemond region of Virginia, while Theodorick married Richard Bennett’s daughter and John Bland helped the Sylvester daughters escape England for Rhode Island at the end of the English Civil War. Together, the remnant of the Ancient Church and the shared convictions of fellow Atlantic puritans coalesced in an extensive network of puritan believers during the middle of the seventeenth century. This web of relationships based upon a common understanding of puritan faith blossomed into a network of business partners, planters, merchants, politicians, and even kinsman whose impact radiated throughout the Atlantic. These puritans’ transatlantic focus shaped both their spiritual and temporal endeavors. While New England puritans had maintained relationships across the Atlantic divide these puritans, birthed from the Ancient Church, embraced the Atlantic as the nexus of their colonial pursuits. Their Atlantic perspective redrew the New Englanders’ errand into the wilderness through an imperial lens.1 Rather than an experiment of exemplary living, 1 Perry Miller “Errand into the Wilderness,” The William and Mary Quarterly 10, no. 1 (1953): 3-32. 2 Atlantic puritans initiated an effort for puritan evangelization and colonization resting on the British mercantile system and a millennial hope for Christ’s immanent return. Under the guidance of providence their Atlantic trade ventures, plantation efforts, and colonization experiments achieved a dual purpose of filling British coffers and strengthening the British religious and political position against Spanish and French Catholic colonization. At the same time, the puritans’ millennial eschatology portended widespread conversion on the eve of Christ’s apocalyptic return and through their providential perspective puritan efforts in the Atlantic, whether religious, economic, or political, encouraged the spread of their