John Winthrop Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on John Winthrop

The first and the most important governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, John Winthrop had a powerful voice in determining the character of that colony and thus was influential in shaping the nature of American Puritanism. His sermon "Christian Charitie. A Modell Hereof," delivered in 1630 on the way to America, is the most exalted statement of Puritan aspirations. The journal that he kept from 1630 to 1648 serves as a vital record of the activities of the colony, and it, along with his other writings--on such topics as his religious experience, the nature of nonseparatist Congregationalism, Antinomianism, the authority of the magistrate and the liberty of the people--makes him one of the two most important nonclerical prose writers of early New England, the other being the governor of the Plymouth colony, William Bradford. It was characteristic that he should deliver his most important speech in 1645 after he had been acquitted of the charge of exceeding his authority and that his speech should be both modest, as he referred to his own qualifications for leadership, and supremely confident, as he discussed his notion of the authority of his office.

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