biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1588–1649)
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| biography:
| English colonist, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay, born in Edwardstone, Suffolk, E England, UK. A Puritan lawyer, he decided to emigrate. He signed the Cambridge agreement (1629) and was chosen as governor of the expedition while he was still in England. He arrived at Salem in 1630 and soon relocated the colony to Boston. He remained the pre-eminent leader of the colony, serving as governor during four periods (1629–34, 1637–40, 1642–4, 1646–9). He came into conflict with the ‘freemen’ of the colony, who resented his belief that governors and magistrates should rule as they best saw fit (he was a theocrat, not a democrat). He demonstrated the harsh and forbidding aspect of Puritan rule when he exiled Anne Hutchinson and her followers for their unorthodox views. He ably defended the colony's charter in a letter to the Lords Commissioners of Plantations (1638) and was elected as the president of the Confederation for the United Colonies (1643). Although less popular in his last years as governor, he had piloted the Massachusetts Bay colony through its first years and had left a deep imprint upon its character. He wrote a journal that was published in part as A Journal of the Transactions and Occurrences in the Settlement of Massachusetts... 1630 to 1644. Throughout his career, his main intent was to erect a pious, godly, Puritan commonwealth. |
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