cover image

A Reforming People

Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England

David D. Hall

Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 08/2012
Pages: 288
Subject: History, Religion | University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78E+12
eBook ISBN: 9780807837115

DESCRIPTION

In this revelatory account of the people who founded the New England colonies, historian David D. Hall compares the reforms they enacted with those attempted in England during the period of the English Revolution. Bringing with them a deep fear of arbitrary, unlimited authority, these settlers based their churches on the participation of laypeople and insisted on "consent" as a premise of all civil governance. Puritans also transformed civil and criminal law and the workings of courts with the intention of establishing equity. In this political and social history of the five New England colonies, Hall provides a masterful re-evaluation of the earliest moments of New England's history, revealing the colonists to be the most effective and daring reformers of their day.