Reprint of the original, first published in 1864.

Spanning three centuries, these nine stories share the conflicts of a wealthy New England family while portraying the rise and fall of the Puritan ethic. The Winthrop Heritage begins in the stern confines of the Massachusetts Bay Colony—Governor John Winthrop’s covenant with God versus Anne Hutchinson’s compulsion to martyrdom. The burden of conscience falls in varying ways to the Governor’s descendants. To his grandson, a judge in the Salem witch trials, it means dying in torment. To Rebecca Bayard, wife of a Hudson Valley patroon, it becomes an obsessive sense of duty leading to ironic consequences. It persuades an American diplomat, negotiating in Paris with the canny Talleyrand, to reject the easy gain of private power. On the eve of the Civil War, Winthrop Ward, pillar of rectitude in New York society, finds himself playing God at the price of his own humanity. At the century’s turn, there is Adam Winthrop, wealthy clubman and cultural arbiter, and his protégée Ada Guest—the passionate bluestocking novelist who opts to escape his stifling patronage. In a New England boarding school in the 1920s, the headmaster’s bedeviled Winthrop soul becomes a strange challenge to the chaplain. On the current scene, young and fashionable Natica Seligmann yearns for salvation from an empty life. And finally, there is John Winthrop Gardiner, staunch State Department hawk, whose son is an Army deserter—and whose alcoholic ex-wife perceives only too clearly the latter-day perversions of the Puritan spirit. A compassionate, searching, and wholly arresting view of a moral strain that, for better or worse, has marked our national character, The Winthrop Covenant is one of Louis Auchincloss’ highest fictional achievements.

John Winthrop's effort to create a Puritan "City on a Hill" has had a lasting effect on American values, and many remember this phrase famously quoted by the late Ronald Reagan. However, most know very little about the first American to speak these words. In John Winthrop, Francis J. Bremer draws on over a decade of research in England, Ireland, and the United States to offer a superb biography of the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, one rooted in a detailed understanding of his first forty years in England. Indeed, Bremer provides an extensive, path-breaking treatment of Winthrop's family background, youthful development, and English career. His dissatisfaction with the decline of the "godly kingdom of the Stour Valley" in which he had been raised led him on his errand to rebuild such a society in a New England. In America, Winthrop would use the skills he had developed in England as he struggled with challenges from Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, among others, and defended the colony from English interference. We also see the personal side of Winthrop--the doubts and concerns of the spiritual pilgrim, his everyday labors and pleasures, his feelings for family and friends. And Bremer also sheds much light on important historical moments in England and America, such as the Reformation and the rise of Puritanism, the rise of the middling class, the colonization movement, and colonial relations with Native Americans. Incorporating previously unexplored archival materials from both sides of the Atlantic, here is the definitive portrait of one of the giants of our history. John Winthrop recevied an honorable Mention, The Colonial Dames of America Book Award.