to balance their judgment. They have
shown no uniformity, some coming to the
problem as political historians, some as
philosophers, some as literary critics,
some as students of cultural and intel-
lectual development, looking often at
quite different aspects of the times they
write about. The reader must weigh their
views, making allowances, judging what
virtue may offset what vice, to reach a
conclusion generally favorable or unfa-
vorable to the Puritans, to find his own
answer to the question of whether the
Puritanism of the Massachusetts-Bay
colonists exercised a constructive or re-
strictive influence in New England colo-
nial development.

More than a century and a quarter of
American history preceded the Puritan
settlement. The voyages of discovery in
the late fifteenth century and during the
sixteenth century gradually laid bare the
eastern outlines of the American conti-
nents and were followed by scattered
settlements: by the Spanish in the Cen-
tral and South American lands, by the
Dutch and Swedes along the Hudson and
Delaware Rivers, by the French in the
St. Lawrence River Valley, and by Eng-
lish colonists along the seaboard from
Maine to Virginia. Jamestown was per-
manently settled in 1607. The colony of
Plymouth was established in 1620 by a
small band of religious radicals known as
Separatists, who represented an extreme
wing of the prevailing group dissatisfied
with religious and civil conditions in
England. Other outposts of fishermen
and fur traders were to be found along
the shores of the present New England.

One of these, at Cape Ann, struggled
along from 1623 to 1626, when, under its
leader, Roger Conant, it moved to Salem
in search of better land. To this little
settlement in 1628 came John Endecott
with some two score colonists and their
possessions, responding to Conant's sug-
gestion that it "might prove a receptacle
for such as upon the account of religion
would be willing to begin a foreign plan-
tation" there. ³ Endecott's colonists rep-
resented the advance guard of those who
were contemplating the establishment in
New England of a prosperous settlement
which would serve as a home and center
of religious activity for those in England
known as Puritans who were disillu-
sioned with conditions in their native
land. Since these Puritans were unwill-
ing to separate from the English Church
as the Pilgrims had, they were not
minded to join the colony at Plymouth.
Instead, a group of Puritan leaders
formed themselves into the Massachu-
setts Bay Colony, with a royal charter
granted by Charles I, and with their
friends, servants, and others interested in
colonization for diverse reasons, removed
with their goods and chattels to the
region Endecott was preparing for them.
The company and charter went with
them, as an effective means of prevent-
ing these instruments from falling into
the control of others who might be un-
friendly to the religious aims of the col-
ony and consequently interfere with the
successful establishment of the ideal
Bible Commonwealth they envisioned.

It is this movement, then, with which
we are mainly concerned, the history of
Massachusetts Bay from its settlement in
the summer of 1630 to the end of the
century: the "Great Migration" of hun-
dreds of English Puritans and their fol-
lowers, led by John Winthrop and
Thomas Dudley; the establishment of a
virtual oligarchy of the Puritan leaders,

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