Hadley, located on the Connecticut River at the far western frontier of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was settled from the colony of Connecticut to the south, and early Hadley’s social and economic relations with Connecticut remained very close. The move to Hadley was motivated by religion and was a carefully planned removal. It resulted from an important dispute within the church of Hartford, and Hadley’s earliest settlers continued to observe their very strict form of Puritanism which had evolved as the “New England Way.” The settlers of Hadley also believed in a high degree of colonial independence from the Crown. These beliefs, combined with a high degree of internal cohesion and motivation in the early settlement, enabled the community of Hadley, despite its isolation and small size, to play an unusually prominent and contentious role in three great crises which threatened the Bay Colony. The first Episode examines the refuge given by Hadley, at great risk and in defiance of the Crown, to the important English Regicides, Edward Whalley and William Goffe, between 1664 and 1676 when the surviving Regicide, Goffe, was removed to Hadley’s allies in Hartford where he was sheltered before disappearing from the record. The second Episode describes Hadley’s divisive support for Increase Mather and John Davenport in opposing the “Half-Way Covenant,” a dispute which split the New England churches over baptismal practice and church polity. The third Episode deals with an internal dispute within Hadley over the direction of the local school which then was caught up into the larger dispute over the Dominion of New England government imposed by the Crown after the suspension of the Bay’s Charter. Through the course of these troubles within the Bay Colony from the 1660s to the 1680s, the initial internal solidarity of the town fractured, and its original unity of purpose with the rest of Colony was eroded. This secular “declension” led to Hadley’s political decline from prominence into the pleasant but unremarkable village it is today.

Examining the colonial history of western Massachusetts, this book provides fresh insights into important colonial social issues including African slavery, relations with Native Americans, the experiences of women, provisions for mental illness, old age and higher education, in addition to more traditional topics such as the nature of colonial governance, literacy and the book trade, Jonathan Edwards’ ministries in Northampton and Stockbridge, and Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s efforts to prevent a break with Britain. For related reading on this topic, check out Carl I. Hammer’s Pugnacious Puritans.

""...full of fascinating facts and significant implications...an inexhaustible well of living water."" The New York Times ""Man has an inner life as complicated and challenging as the outer world. During most of his history advances in one sphere have been balanced by equal advances in the other. The problem of uneven, uncompensated progress in understanding and controlling the powers of nature did not arise in an acute form until the mind fissured into a critical and analytic conscious intelligence insulated from contact with the large unconscious mind. In order to cope with this situation man needs to learn and practice deliberate psychological techniques. Is there evidence that he has done so? Yes, answers Mr. Heard..."" Rev. Edmund A. Opitz Gerald Heard (1889-1971) was a well-known author, philosopher, and lecturer. Trained as a historian at Cambridge, he served as the BBC's first science commentator. Later in California he founded and directed Trabuco College, which advanced comparative-religious studies. His broad philosophical themes and scintillating oratorical style influenced many people. Heard wrote thirty-eight books, including his pioneering academic works, several popular devotional books, and a number of mysteries.

In A Constitutional Culture, Adrian Chastain Weimer uncovers the story of how, more than a hundred years before the American Revolution, colonists pledged their lives and livelihoods to the defense of local political institutions against arbitrary rule. With the return of Charles II to the English throne in 1660, the puritan-led colonies faced enormous pressure to conform to the crown’s priorities. Charles demanded that puritans change voting practices, baptismal policies, and laws, and he also cast an eye on local resources such as forests, a valuable source of masts for the English navy. Moreover, to enforce these demands, the king sent four royal commissioners on warships, ostensibly headed for New Netherland but easily redirected toward Boston. In the face of this threat to local rule, colonists had to decide whether they would submit to the commissioners’ authority, which they viewed as arbitrary because it was not accountable to the people, or whether they would mobilize to defy the crown. Those resisting the crown included not just freemen (voters) but also people often seen as excluded or marginalized such as non-freemen, indentured servants, and women. Together they crafted a potent regional constitutional culture in defiance of Charles II that was characterized by a skepticism of metropolitan ambition, a defense of civil and religious liberties, and a conviction that self-government was divinely sanctioned. Weimer shows how they expressed this constitutional culture through a set of well-rehearsed practices—including fast days, debates, committee work, and petitions. Equipped with a ready vocabulary for criticizing arbitrary rule, with a providentially informed capacity for risk-taking, and with a set of intellectual frameworks for divided sovereignty, the constitutional culture that New Englanders forged would not easily succumb to an imperial authority intent on consolidating its power.

A pictorial volume of all the islands making up the Bahama Islands.

Originally published in 1967, this book is a history of church puritanism as a movement and as a political and ecclesiastical organism; of its membership structure and internal contradictions; of the quest for ‘a further reformation’. It tells the fascinating story of the rise of a revolutionary moment and its ultimate destruction.