John Cotton (1584-1652) was a key figure in the English Puritan
movement in the first half of the seventeenth century, a respected
leader among his generation of emigrants from England to New
England.
This volume collects all known surviving correspondence by and to
Cotton. These 125 letters--more than 50 of which are here published
for the first time--span the decades between 1621 and 1652, a
period of great activity and change in the Puritan movement and in
English history. Now carefully edited, annotated, and
contextualized, the letters chart the trajectory of Cotton's career
and revive a variety of voices from the troubled times surrounding
Charles I's reign, including those of such prominent figures as
Oliver Cromwell, Bishop John Williams, John Dod, and Thomas Hooker,
as well as many little-known persons who wrote to Cotton for advice
and guidance.
Among the treasures of early Anglo-American history, these letters
bring to life the leading Puritan intellectual of the generation of
the Great Migration and illustrate the network of mutual support
that nourished an intellectual and spiritual movement through
difficult times.