Winthrop, John

Category: Business and political leaders

John Winthrop (12 January 1587/88 – 26 March 1649) was an English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading figures in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England, following Plymouth Colony.

Winthrop led the first large wave of immigrants [over 1000] from England in 1630 and served as governor for 12 of the colony's first 20 years. His writings and vision of the colony as a Puritan "city upon a hill" dominated New England colonial development, influencing the governments and religions of neighboring colonies.

But this is not why he is on the site.

The settling of the first Puritan colony in Boston was chronicled by Governor Winthrop. A historian himself, Winthrop kept a record of the colony's first years in the New World. 

Originally a diary, Winthrop documented his religious life, keeping a journal beginning 1605, it later became a book - John Winthrop -  The History of New England from 1630 to 1649.

His journal is far from being a mere collection of unlikely anecdotes or village gossip. It is quite significant, therefore, that he regarded two spectacular sightings of unexplained phenomena as being sufficiently important to be recorded for posterity.

It was not Winthrop himself who made the sighting.  It was Puritan James Everell and two others, who were “stunned as they saw a luminous mass that hovered and returned over a three-hour period”.  Furthermore, their boat was pulled upstream by the phenomenon.  But it is Winthrop’s account that provides us with the evidence.  So a biography is in order.

Life

John Winthrop was born in Edwardstone, Suffolk, England. His father's family had been successful in the textile business, and his father was a lawyer and prosperous landowner with several properties in Suffolk. His mother's family was also well-to-do, with properties in Suffolk and Essex. When Winthrop was young, his father became a director at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Winthrop was first tutored at home and was regularly exposed to religious discussions between his father and clergymen; he thus came to a deep understanding of theology at an early age. He was admitted to Trinity College in December 1602, matriculating at the university a few months later.  The teenage Winthrop admitted in his diary of the time to "lusts ... so masterly as no good could fasten upon me."  So he was normal!  So normal that in the end, he left Trinity College to marry Mary Forth on 16 April 1605 at Great Stambridge.
In approximately 1613, Winthrop was enrolled at Gray's Inn. There he read the law but did not advance to the Bar, principally because in 1613, John’s father transferred the family holdings in Groton to Winthrop, who then became Lord of the Manor at Groton.

As Lord of the Manor, Winthrop was involved in the management of the estate, overseeing the agricultural activities and the manor house. He eventually followed his father in practicing law in London.  He was also appointed to the county commission of the peace.  The commission's responsibilities included overseeing countywide issues, including road and bridge maintenance and the issuance of licenses. Some of its members were also empowered to act as local judges.

But great sadness was to follow.  Mary bore him five children, of whom only three survived to adulthood.  The oldest of their children was John Winthrop, the Younger, who became a governor and magistrate of Connecticut.  Their last two children, two girls, died not long after birth, and Mary died in 1615 from complications of the last birth.

John married Thomasine Clopton, soon after Mary died, on 6 December 1615. She was more pious than Mary had been; Winthrop wrote that she was "truly religious & industrious therein".  And then Thomasine died on 8 December 1616 from complications of childbirth; the child did not survive.

He began courting Margaret Tyndal in 1617, the daughter of Sir John Tyndal, a chancery judge, and his wife Anne Egerton, sister of the leading Puritan preacher Stephen Egerton. The couple were married on 29 April 1618.  Winthrop eventually acquired ‘a highly desirable post’ in the Court of Wards and Liveries.

The Puritan migration begins

In the mid to late 1620s, the religious atmosphere in England began to look bleak for Puritans. King Charles I had ascended the throne in 1625, and had married a Roman Catholic. Charles supported the Church of England in its efforts against religious groups such as the Puritans and this led Puritan leaders to consider emigration to the New World as a viable means to escape persecution.

The first successful religious colonization of the New World occurred in 1620 with the establishment of the Plymouth Colony on the shores of Cape Cod Bay. An effort in 1624 orchestrated by pastor John White led to a short-lived colony at Cape Ann, also on the Massachusetts coast.

In 1628, some of the investors in that effort joined with new investors to acquire a land grant for the territory roughly between the Charles and Merrimack Rivers. It was first styled the New England Company, then renamed the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629 after it acquired a royal charter granting it permission to govern the territory. Shortly after acquiring the land grant in 1628, it sent a small group of settlers led by John Endecott to prepare the way for further migration.

In March 1629, King Charles dissolved Parliament, beginning eleven years of rule without Parliament. Winthrop lost his position in the Court of Wards and Liveries in the crackdown on Puritans that followed the dissolution. He wrote, "If the Lord seeth it wil be good for us, he will provide a shelter & a hidinge place for us and others".

The Massachusetts Bay Company shareholders met on 20 October and Winthrop was elected Governor.  Winthrop and other company officials then began the process of arranging a transport fleet and supplies for the migration. Winthrop’s wife was due to give birth in April 1630, near the fleet's departure time, so she stayed behind.  Margaret arrived on the second voyage of the Lyon in 1631, but their baby daughter Anne died during the crossing. Two more children were born to the Winthrops in New England before Margaret died on 14 June 1647.

The voyage

"A Model of Christian Charity" is the sermon John Winthrop is said to have delivered on board the ship Arbella on April 8, 1630 while en route to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  It is also known as "City upon a Hill" and has become so famous we have included it on the site in full.  There is no mention of it in his diary and there are some who think it was delivered before they had set sail.

The sail was a very long one and the wind on occasions exceedingly strong.  But they seem to have weathered it remarkably well………………… for example

It is difficult for us today to imagine the conditions on the ship, they had to tack when the wind was against them, whereas today of course people use their engine, and they had to be extremely careful with provisions, especially as they had no refrigeration……………

Monday, 7 June, 1630: The wind south. About four in the morning we sounded and had ground at thirty fathom, and was somewhat calm; so we put our ship a-stays, and took, in less than two hours, with a few hooks, sixty-seven codfish, most of them very great fish, some a yard and a half long, and a yard in compass. This came very seasonably, for our salt fish was now spent, and we were taking care for victuals this day (being a fish day). After this we filled our sails, and stood WNW with a small gale. We hoisted out a great boat to keep our sounding the better [This sentence has a line drawn through it]. The weather was now very cold. We sounded at eight, and had fifty fathom, and, being calm, we heaved out our hooks again, and took twenty-six cods; so we all feasted with fish this day. A woman was delivered of a child in our ship, stillborn. The woman had divers children before, but none lived, and she had some mischance now, which caused her to come near a month before her time, but she did very well.

But eventually they arrived.
Below: The Founders Memorial on Boston Common showing William Blackstone, left, greeting John Winthrop

On Thursday, 1 July, 1630, The Mayflower and the Whale arrived in Charlton [modern Charlestown] harbor. Their passengers were all OK, but most of their cattle had died.  On Friday, 2 July, 1630,  The Talbot arrived. She had lost fourteen passengers and John learned that his son, Henry Winthrop, had drowned at Salem.  Winthrop had sailed on the Arbella, accompanied by his two young sons Samuel and Stephen, both of course without their mother.  On Tuesday, 6 July, 1630:The Success arrived. She had had goats on board for food but lost them, and many of her passengers were near starved.

Winthrop and his deputy Thomas Dudley found the Salem area inadequate for a settlement suitable for all of the arriving colonists, and they embarked on surveying expeditions of the area. They first decided to base the colony at Charlestown, but a lack of good water there prompted them to move to the Shawmut Peninsula where they founded what is now the city of Boston.

Colonial life and death

Right Boston in 1770

The colony struggled with disease in its early months, losing as many as 200 people to a variety of causes in 1630; about 80 returned to England in the spring due to these conditions. 

Winthrop set an example to the other colonists by working side by side with servants and labourers in the work of the colony. According to one report, he "fell to work with his own hands, and thereby so encouraged the rest that there was not an idle person to be found in the whole plantation."

The colony saw a large influx of immigrants in 1633 and 1634, following the appointment of strongly anti-Puritan William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury.  It also saw inevitable heated discussion about how it should be run.  Bearing in mind the people had just left a kingdom still ruled by a king and with no democracy, it is inevitable that the demand for cautious advancement in deciding how laws should be enacted would be made.  Winthrop was on the side of caution.

In general, Winthrop gives the impression of being a diplomat and peace maker over some extraordinarily difficult questions.  For example on December 1636, a dispute had become so heated that Winthrop attempted to bridge the divide between the two factions, by writing an account of his religious awakening and other theological position papers designed to harmonize the opposing views. Winthrop was even criticized for being too moderate, with calls that he should "make their wickedness and guile manifest to all men that they may go no farther and then will sink of themselves."  One particularly active trouble maker returned to England and was beheaded after the Restoration.

It is interesting that the pros and cons of tight immigration control were being discussed even then, but in relation to their fellow Englishmen.  Winthrop vigorously argued that Massachusetts was within its rights to "refuse to receive such whose dispositions suit not with ours".

Winthrop's attitude toward the local Indian population, on the other hand,  was generally one of civility and diplomacy. He described an early meeting with one local chief:

Furthermore the colonists generally sought to acquire title to the lands that they occupied in the early years.

Winthrop married his fourth wife Martha Rainsborough some time after 20 December 1647 and before the birth of their only child in 1648.

Winthrop died of natural causes on 26 March 1649, and is buried in what is now called the King's Chapel Burying Ground in Boston. He was survived by his wife Martha and five sons.

Observations

For iPad/iPhone users: tap letter twice to get list of items.

• James Silk Buckingham - 1660, New England, American Colonies - Aerial phenomena to the rescue of Puritanism
• Winthrop, John - 18 January 1644, Boston, Mass.: Luminous figures
• Winthrop, John - 25 January 1644, Boston, Massachusetts - A Voice from the light
• Winthrop, John - March 1638, Muddy River near Charlton - Massachusetts: Missing time among the Puritans
• Winthrop, John - The City upon a Hill Sermon
• Winthrop, John Junior - 11 September 1787, Edinburgh, Scotland - Wandering globe