Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH COLONIAL LITERATURE
a widow left only to trust in God. Thus she that had made many rich became her
selfe poore.
2.3.2 Reading and Review Questions
1. How does Bradford connect the Pilgrims’ experience typologically with
the Old Testament? Why does he do so?
2. Why and how does Bradford place the Puritan faith within the larger
Christian struggle against Satan and related history of martyrs and
pilgrims such as the Marian exiles?
3. How does Bradford measure God’s approval of the Puritan eorts? Why?
Are his views consistent? Why or why not?
4. What governing (versus religious) principles shape the Mayower
Compact? Why?
5. What is Bradford’s attitude towards Native Americans? What shapes his
attitude? How do you know?
2.4 JOHN WINTHROP
(1588–1649)
John Winthrop was born into a prosperous
family in Groton, England, and
followed the path of many such prosperous
gentlemen by studying at Cambridge
University. Though he practiced law at
the Inner Temple, he soon shifted paths
when he became a Puritan, devoted to
purifying the Anglican Church from within
and eschewing lingering Catholic practices
and rituals. When Charles I ascended the
throne, Puritans such as Winthrop faced
being ruled by a monarch with clear and
expressed sympathies for Catholicism. To
avoid losing his earthly possessions to the
Image 2.3 | John Winthrop
throne, Winthrop joined a group of Puritans Artist | Charles Osgood
Source | Wikimedia Commons
who obtained permission from the king to
License | Public Domain
leave England for America. They gained a
charter from the Council for New England and formed themselves as “The Company
of Massachusetts Bay in New England,” free to found a religious colony beyond the
king’s rule. Their colony would in time become New England’s chief colony.
In 1629, Winthrop was chosen governor, a position he would hold for twenty
years. The initial group of colonists left England on April 8, 1630, sailing on the
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