Although the author of this wonderful book might be thought to have exaggerated the extent to which his subject has been neglected, this should not detract from the fact that he has made a stunning intervention, which is historiographically confrontational and which also has broader relevance. Key to both of these contributions is Winship's statement that his aim has been to produce “a study in applied sacred political theory” and to recover the origins and fate of “godly republicanism,” from England in the late sixteenth century, through to New England in the early seventeenth century, and back to England in the Restoration (4). This involves explaining the origins of congregationalism within Elizabethan Puritanism and surveying the work of successive generations whose ideas and experiences led them to the Low Countries and then to the New World. However, while this story, and the characters involved, might be thought to be fairly familiar, the argument that Winship constructs is never less than challenging.

First, Winship is adamant that historians went astray when—in reacting against an older Whiggish narrative that traced the origins of modern constitutional democracy to early modern Puritanism—they insisted on the need to separate discussions of church government and political history. One of Winship's very clear goals, therefore, is to challenge this “revisionist” move and to insist that the various strands of Puritan thought and practice involved a determined and principled connection between civil and ecclesiastical worlds, as contemporaries became convinced that restoring purity in the church necessitated reforming civil constitutions, not least because of the threat posed by the abuse of monarchical power. In reemphasizing the connection between Puritanism and constitutional struggles, however, Winship's account is sophisticated rather than simplistic. What we get, therefore, is a nuanced account of the origins and development of New England congregationalism, which recognizes the significance of contingent factors. These are evident in his account of the impact of James I's exaggerated crackdown in the face of pressure from Lincolnshire Puritans, as well as in his vivid depiction of the curious twists and turns that led to the Plymouth planters settling where they did, rather than in Virginia, or indeed in what is now New York.

Second, Winship's work is also important for what he says substantively about the political thought of Puritan congregationalism and for the challenge that he makes to intellectual historians. For Winship, therefore, Puritanism was inseparable from both the fear of tyranny and the ideal of consensual government, and he is insistent that it involved commitment to a more or less mixed, or more or less democratic, kind of political system. As such, he argues that the journey from church Puritanism to civic republicanism was more or less logical and principled, if perhaps not exactly inevitable. He is certainly determined to argue that the system in Massachusetts—involving a wide electoral franchise that was anchored in church membership rather than property—involved principles rather than pragmatism, and involved a clearly thought through attempt to ensure honesty in both voters and magistrates. For Winship, therefore, John Cotton possessed a clear vision of a “self-sustaining loop of piety and virtue” (229). What becomes clear, indeed, is that such insights are intended to offer a response to those intellectual historians who have challenged the compatibility of Puritanism and republicanism, not only because Winship's Puritans are theoretically sophisticated, but also because too little attention has been paid to the godliness of the republicanism of men like Algernon Sidney.

Third, Winship's account of the politically radical nature of Godly republicanism is also intended as a bold challenge to the ongoing legacy of Perry Miller, not only because the Massachusetts model involved political principles, but also because it was not particularly tolerant, and not at all the kind of “city on a hill” that was once thought. Key here is Winship's suggestion that Miller's work rested on “extremely optimistic techniques for discovering supporting evidence” and that these led historians “down a blind alley” for generations (148). He thus rejects Miller's idea that the Massachusetts experiment involved “non-separating” congregationalism and that it was uninfluenced by the “separating” congregationalism of Plymouth Colony, an idea that he suggests represents assertion and aspiration as much as description. This is not only about drawing distinctions between different churches within Massachusetts—not least by highlighting Salem—but also about stressing that the element of “spiritual intolerance” within Massachusetts (relating to admission to the sacrament) indicates that even here Puritanism was an “unstable compound” (222). More broadly, Winship argues powerfully that by misinterpreting the kind of “city on a hill” that Massachusetts was thought to represent, Miller “provided deep historical roots for Americans' intermittent messianic sense of destiny” (172).

In pursuing these three argumentative strands, and in a book clearly intended for more than a narrow specialist audience, Winship is not beyond challenge. Just as the claim to originality might be thought to be exaggerated, not least given the clear sense that he is building upon work by Peter Lake, Nicholas Tyacke, Patrick Collinson, and Stephen Brachlow, so some will question the boldness of key claims, regarding Puritan debts to classical republican theory and practice; regarding the “logic” of Puritan thought, and ideas that had often “hovered somewhat incoherently” behind Puritan beliefs (184); and regarding the value of retrospective comments from the 1670s for fleshing out “circumstantial” evidence from the 1630s (188). It might also be argued that Winship is clearer on specific aspects of his argument—not least the wonderful account of the differences between separating and non-separating congregationalism—than on weaving together its various strands across successive chapters, which are, in no small part, chronologically arranged. However, these are minor gripes about a challenging and important book, which certainly ought to provoke debate and which offers yet more proof that the most rewarding works are those that require serious, rather than merely superficial, engagement on the part of the reader.