Intended for the undergraduate classroom, this entry in the Routledge Historical American series combines an overview of John Winthrop's life with a small collection of sources on that life. Inevitably it will draw comparison to Edmund S. Morgan's popular The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop, now in its third edition. Morgan draws the modern reader into the puritan mind through the device of a dilemma that transcends the centuries, the problem of trying to do good in a world that does evil. Professor Parker eschews such an organizing theme in favor of a straightforward narrative. The city upon a hill reference in the title refers of course to Winthrop's famous sermon, but Parker wisely does not subsume the entire story under that metaphor.
In prose that is clear though not compelling, Parker surveys Winthrop's life in seven chapters. “The Winthrops of Groton” carefully describes Winthrop's family and its land holdings, along with young John's first two marriages, both of which ended tragically. “The Decision for New England” provides a reliable account of the effort to organize what became the Massachusetts Bay Colony, including the legal subtleties of its charter. “Balancing Order and Freedom” summarizes the early efforts to form a government and early controversies over the authority of that government. “The Pequot War” explains the origins and course of that conflict, while “An American Jezebel” tells the story of Anne Hutchinson and the antinomian crisis. “Magistrates and Deputies” describes the ongoing tensions within the government, especially the dispute between Winthrop and Thomas Dudley. “Toward the New England Way” summaries the 1640s arguments over religious dissent, Dr. Thomas Clark and the Remonstrants, the early codification of statutes, and the Cambridge Platform of 1648.
Winthrop forces an author to combine the story of his life with the early history of Massachusetts Bay Colony, while at the same time introducing the reader to the English Calvinists whom we call puritans. In a relatively brief text, that is a tall order. The standard full-length biography of Winthrop, Francis J. Bremer's John Winthrop: America's Forgotten Founding Father (New York: Oxford University, 2003), runs over 500 pages. In condensing that work to a classroom suitable length (John Winthrop: Biography as History [New York: Continuum, 2009]), Bremer had to eliminate much of the theology. Similarly, in Parker's book some summaries of the major developments in English history feel rushed, as do some explorations of theological matters. Those disappointments admitted, however, Parker writes clearly, sure-footedly describing the Winthrops' houses and land holdings in East Anglia, the Antinomian trials, or the Warwick Commission of 1647, to cite a few disparate examples.
Parker's book makes use of Winthrop's journal, called Experiencia, which shows some sense of Winthrop's spirituality. The endnotes that follow each chapter are dominated by citations from the Winthrop Papers published by the Massachusetts Historical Society (1929–1947) and The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649, edited by Richard S. Dunne, James Savage and Laetitia Yeandle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1996). Parker makes rather little use of the many works published in New England in the 1640s. The “Selected Bibliography” provides a useful but oddly dated guide to the “Secondary Sources”: only four of the eighty-two items listed were published in this century, while ten were published in the 1930s.
One positive feature of this series is the inclusion of some primary sources in Part II. For this section Parker has chosen two Winthrop portraits, a brief selection from Experiencia, the closing paragraphs of A Model of Christian Charity, a “providential story” from his journal, and a “little speech” of 1645 that summarizes Winthrop's views on government. This section is welcome and the selections are well-chosen for the classroom. But the brevity of this section disappoints. Descriptions of A Model of Christian Charity all too often often reduce that sermon to its closing passages warning of God's judgment should the settlers fail, thus robbing the sermon of much of its argument and richness. Parker avoids this error in his summary of the sermon (39–42), but then risks making that error in this brief excerpt (191–193), an excerpt that is in fact shorter than his own summary of the document.
A volume intended to compete with volumes by Edmund Morgan and Francis Bremer faces an uphill climb. While Parker's John Winthrop may lack the narrative charm and thematic drive of Morgan's The Puritan Dilemma (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1958), Parker also avoids over-simplifying Winthrop. Likewise, while few can compete with Bremer's comprehensive knowledge of puritanism, Parker's longer book does manage to include considerable detail. For some, the inclusion of primary sources may make this the preferred volume for classroom use.
