Sex: The First Requirement
Puritans loved logic and argument. Their greatest gift to the church may be in the realm systematic theology; they excelled at laying out the tenets of the faith in an orderly fashion, with all...
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Ruling the Home
They say that when William Gouge, author of the 17th-century bestseller Domesticall Duties, preached on the submission of wives, his congregation got restless and unruly. And there's no doubt that he...
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How I Drove to England
Somewhere in a quiet corner of England is St. Andrew’s church, standing as it has for a millennium or so. It's all that's left of the village of Sempringham where once upon a time an upper-class girl...
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"Why Can’t You Be Like the Virgin Mary?"
Just a quick note on my current research on Ms. Bradstreet. I’m still reading and notating “Domesticall Duties,” the 17th-century marriage and family manual. It is very helpful for understanding just...
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Carping For Real
“The Alchemist” by Pieter Brueghel. This is what the insidemy head looks like when I’m writing.I am writing a lot at the moment, backing off of the research I’ve been at so happily for most of a year,...
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On The Dock
Replica of the Arbella, flagship of the Winthrop fleet.Wouldn't you love to climb that rigging if you werea kid stuck on this boat for weeks?My writing goal was to get Anne Bradstreet to the dock by...
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The Quats
How many of you folks read poetry on a more-than-occasional basis?When was the last time someone recommended a poet to you?Likely we’d all be reading more of it if we lived in Anne Bradstreet’s time....
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Time For a Poetry Break
Happy Poetry Month, everybody! I only just realized today, April 18, that that is indeed what it is. I suppose that a historian writing about a poet should keep up on these things. But it’s because...
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Sailing, Sailing O’er the Ocean Blue . . .
In any century, tall ships take one’s breath away.I’m stuck learning stuff I really don’t want to have to learn (a sensation that my students are no doubt familiar with) now that Anne is leaving...
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Kick a Puritan, Hard
Were you one of those precocious tots who awed their parents and grammar-school classmates by learning to spell, “antidisestablishment- arianism?” But what does it mean, ha ha? It means being opposed...
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Roger Williams’ Banishment
No portrait of Williams exists. This hypotheticalsketch was done in 1936. This is how Iimagine him.It’s Roger-Williams-time at last: the enigmatic puritan whose views on justice were hundreds of...
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What Happened to Roger Williams?
Roger Williams has undergone quite a transformation over the centuries: from a purist who was too pure to worship in Massachusetts (which is how his neighbors saw him) to a backslidden Christian...
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Real Men
This is a little off topic, but it's something that I've been wondering about a lot lately. Men. What's up with them? Since when was the ideal for male behavior strong, rugged, silent, etc?Here's...
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Writing Pains #2
Abigail's small round face, with its pretty cheeks, mild brow and petite nose, was all feminine softness. But the tilt of her chin, the ease of her hands resting on the coverlet with knuckles lightly...
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Poetry for Dummies
Bad news, folks . . . writing poetry is more than rhyming emotion-laden words in meter. Worse news: 17th-century poetry was a craft as much as an art, and I think I probably should learn a lot of the...
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Being loved by your enemies: Roger Williams
I’ve often been struck by how much people seemed to like Roger Williams. Williams, you will recall, was the Puritan minister who was thrown out of New England for teaching unpalatable things...
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Writing Pains #3
In making window glass in the 17th century, you'd get a "bull's eye" in your glass sheets, which would be used for your less prominent windows. Nicer windows were only slightly wavy.Thanks to...
View ArticleJohn Winthrop, Scoundrel and Cheat
This is a little study on inaccurate history and how it gets going. Here's what I read this morning:"Winthrop befriended the younger [Isaac] Johnson (29 years old at his death) in earlier days in...
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Anne Hutchinson: Our First Miss America
Go, girl!"Therrrre she iiiiiis, Miss America . . . "If any woman gained that title, it would be Anne Hutchinson, the woman who was put on trial for heresy, and whose clever and spirited defense of...
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Anne Hutchinson: Too Smart to Get Along?
I was at my kid's school this week for conferences, and as I was sitting in the hallway on my uncomfortable chair, waiting for the conference before mine to end, my attention was drawn to a...
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Writing Pains #4
Well, I've been neglecting this blog shockingly, but for good reason: I've been writing madly, doing little research for a change, learning to write, finding out where the walls are by walking into...
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Obnoxious (adj.)
Go ahead, Anne, choose the words thatwill screw up my big plans."I am obnoxious to each carping tongueWho says my hand a needle better fits . . . "Wonderful! Can't you see Anne Bradstreet at her...
View ArticleRoger Williams, Painful Saint
They called Roger Williams a "painful saint" in his happier days in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I bet when he heard that he blushed and said, "Aw, fellas, thanks."For you see, this was a great...
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Half a boat
. . . coming to an anchor about nine of the clock the same day, within a league of the shore, we hoised out the one halfe of our shallop and . . . [we] went ashore . . . Hang on a minute. Half a...
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The Vanished Ship
This is the story of fate of the good ship, Arbella. The Arbella began her life as the Eagle. She was a 400-ton ship, good sized for that era, over twice as big as her much-more-famous predecessor,...
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