Wits Said Boston now Had Clothing, Fishing, and Masonry
John Cotton, Notable Puritan, arrived in New England with two other famous pastors.
ON THIS DAY, 4 September 1633, the ship Griffin sailed into Boston harbor. Aboard, three prominent Puritan ministers had stowed away to escape the watchful eyes of government agents seeking to arrest them. With persecution against non-conformists (those who did not accept the Church of England) raging in Britain, they had fled to escape it.
The three were John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and Samuel Stone. Puritans in Boston quipped that they now had “Cotton for their clothing, Hooker for their fishing, and Stone for their building.”
Hooker and Cotton played prominent roles in the history of New England, but Stone did not rise to their level of fame. He settled in Hartford, Connecticut with Hooker, serving as teacher while Hooker was a minister. After Hooker’s death, Stone took his place. He also served as chaplain and advisor to the army which fought the Pequot War.
Hooker, on the other hand, was prominent in forming Connecticut’s political theory. He argued that the foundation of government lay in the free choice of the people, who were to select their own public officials according to God’s will and law.
Even in England, Hooker had been a highly respected preacher. When he was expelled from his pulpit for refusing to perform certain high-church ceremonies, such as kneeling to the bread and wine, forty-seven Church of England priests signed a petition asking he be allowed to continue preaching. The authorities ignored it. After an active life, serving Connecticut and New England, Hooker died during an epidemic. Someone remarked to him just before he died, “Sir, you are going to receive the reward of all your labors,” to which Hooker retorted, “Brother, I am going to receive mercy!”
John Cotton rose quickly in the society of Boston, Massachusetts. There he was a prominent advocate of theocracy, a political ideology in which the state sets the religion and enforces beliefs and morals. The controversy with Anne Hutchinson is linked to his name, for he had approved her for a time before renouncing her teachings. (Hutchinson was banished from Massachusetts after she accused its ministers of teaching a covenant of works, rather than of grace.) Cotton died from a lung infection contracted after getting drenched in a rainstorm.
—Dan Graves
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For more about American Puritans, see Christian History #41, The American Puritans
