John Winthrop
John Winthrop (1587/88 - 1649) was one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, lawyer, and author. He is known for writing A Model of Christian Charity and for the sermon titled A City Upon a Hill.
- John Winthrop: BritannicaJohn Winthrop, (born January 22 [January 12, Old Style], 1588, Edwardstone, Suffolk, England—died April 5 [March 26], 1649, Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony [U.S.]), first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the chief figure among the Puritan founders of New England.
Research & Reference
- John Winthrop Describes Life in Boston, 1634Between 1629 and 1640, 20,000 Puritans left England for America to escape religious persecution. They hoped to establish a church free from worldly corruption founded on voluntary agreement among congregants.
- To John Adams from John Winthrop, 5 April 1776Letter to John Adams from John Winthrop.
- Winthrop, John: American National BiographyAmerican National Biography of John WInthrop.
- Winthrop Family Papers: YaleThe Winthrop Family Papers are organized in two series: I. Correspondence and II. Other Papers. The papers span the dates 1635-1720, with the bulk of the material dating from between 1670 and 1710.
- The Winthrop Papers Digital EditionThe collection of papers produced by the Winthrop and related families constitutes a rich and critical record of colonial settlement in New England and the events that unfolded in the decades that followed. Beginning in the 16th century, that record encompasses letters and diaries, memoranda and legal documents, and John Winthrop’s journal/history of the colony in Boston.
Streaming Media
- John WinthropWinthrop was born to a wealthy Puritan family. He set out for North America on April 8, 1630. At sea, he delivered his sermon "A Model of Christian Charity."
- City Upon a HillThis is Winthrop’s most famous thesis, written on board the Arbella, 1630. We love to imagine the occasion when he personally spoke this oration to some large portion of the Winthrop fleet passengers during or just before their passage.
Author's Works & Perspectives
The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649
The journal of Governor John Winthrop, one of the key documents of early New England history, records the first two crucial decades of the Bay Colony. Writing in a precise expository style, Winthrop details the myriad religious and political problems of the new settlement. The modernized abridgment incorporates about 40% of the text and includes a copy of Winthrop's sermon, ?A Model of Christian Charity,? This abridged edition, complete with introduction and annotations, also modernizes the governor's spelling and punctuation.
As a City on a Hill
How an obscure Puritan sermon came to be seen as a founding document of American identity and exceptionalism "For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill," John Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans at New England's founding in 1630. More than three centuries later, Ronald Reagan remade that passage into a timeless celebration of American promise. How were Winthrop's long-forgotten words reinvented as a central statement of American identity and exceptionalism? In As a City on a Hill, leading American intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers tells the surprising story of one of the most celebrated documents in the canon of the American idea. In doing so, he brings to life the ideas Winthrop's text carried in its own time and the sharply different yearnings that have been attributed to it since. As a City on a Hill shows how much more malleable, more saturated with vulnerability, and less distinctly American Winthrop's "Model of Christian Charity" was than the document that twentieth-century Americans invented. Across almost four centuries, Rodgers traces striking shifts in the meaning of Winthrop's words--from Winthrop's own anxious reckoning with the scrutiny of the world, through Abraham Lincoln's haunting reference to this "almost chosen people," to the "city on a hill" that African Americans hoped to construct in Liberia, to the era of Donald Trump. As a City on a Hill reveals the circuitous, unexpected ways Winthrop's words came to lodge in American consciousness. At the same time, the book offers a probing reflection on how nationalism encourages the invention of "timeless" texts to straighten out the crooked realities of the past.
Antinomianism in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1636-1638
Introduction -- A short story of the rise, reign, and ruine of the Antinomians, Familists & libertines that infected the churches of Nevy England ... [ascribed to John Winthrop] London, R. Smith, 1644 -- Appendix to the History of the province of Massachusetts-Bay, by Mr. [Thomas] Hutchinson ... Number II. November 1637. The examination of Mrs. Ann Hutchinson at the court at Newton -- A report of the trial of Mrs. Ann Hutchinson before the Church in Boston, March, 1638. [Reprinted from Mass. hist. soc. Proceedings, 1888, ser. 2, v. 4] -- [Selections from] The way of Congregational churches cleared [by John Cotton. London, 1648] -- Robert Keayne of Boston in New England his Book 1639. [From a ms. note-book in the possession the the Mass. hist. soc.]
Prospero's America: John Winthrop, Jr., alchemy, and the creation of New England culture, 1606-1676
In Prospero's America, Walter W. Woodward examines the transfer of alchemical culture to America by John Winthrop, Jr., one of English colonization's early giants. Winthrop participated in a pan-European network of natural philosophers who believed alchemy could improve the human condition and hasten Christ's Second Coming. Woodward demonstrates the influence of Winthrop and his philosophy on New England's cultural formation: its settlement, economy, religious toleration, Indian relations, medical practice, witchcraft prosecution, and imperial diplomacy. Prospero's America reconceptualizes the significance of early modern science in shaping New England hand in hand with Puritanism and politics.