Chapter 12: Puritan Reverends. c1625–1660.

In 1625, the ailing King James was struck dead by a violent attack of dysentery and succeeded by his son, Charles I (1625-1649). In an emotional sermon at St James's Palace, the Reverend John Donne saluted the old king and hailed the new. 1 The new king strove to strengthen relations with France, and within months he had married the Catholic sister of King Louis XIII, Henrietta Maria. Although Charles remained Protestant, Henrietta Maria encouraged him to preserve elements of Catholic ritual and liturgy in Church of England services.

Failure to reform the faith earned King Charles the odium of many Anglican factions – the most numerous of whom were the Puritans. Unlike the Plymouth Separatists, few Puritans sought formal separation from the Church of England; they strove instead to purify the church from within before the imminent Day of Judgment. They emphasized modesty in their behaviour, their clothing, their church furnishings. No trifling sect, Puritans were well-placed to resist the king, with John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell leading the fight in parliament. And with earnest young poets like John Milton pamphleteering for Puritan ideals, the reformist sect grew in influence. King Charles not only rebuffed Puritan principles but actively suppressed them. Spurred by the Separatists' success in Plymouth, radical Puritans contemplated their own colony in New England.

Throughout the 1620s, the Council for New England had issued limited land grants to many colonial promoters and adventurers. Buying up these grants in the late 1620s, Puritan leaders acquired a controlling influence in the Massachusetts Bay Company. While Matthew Cradock governed the colony from London, advance parties under Roger Conant and John Endecott readied the shores of Massachusetts Bay for a great Puritan migration. Forecasting the colony in Biblical terms, many Puritans already envisaged a "New Israel" or "New Jerusalem" in the New World. Drawing inspiration from the Bible, Endecott gave the prospective colonial capital a hallowed Hebraic name meaning Peace, SALEM. In fact, before taking the prefix of "Jeru", the ancient city of Jerusalem may too have started as "Salem."

From Salem, Endecott presided as de facto governor over the budding colony. Planters seeded English crops on New England soil, including apples and cherries; Endecott planted a pear tree in his orchard that was still standing four centuries later. Nevertheless, Salem settlers hungered in their first winters and had to beseech Plymouth planters for vital provisions of food.

While Puritans propagated their Biblical visions of New England, rival Anglicans lambasted their hypocrisy and violence. After his eviction from Merrymount, Thomas Morton became a scathing critic of the Plymouth Separatists, and now also of the Massachusetts Bay Puritans. Ridiculing Puritan hopes of building a New Israel or New Jerusalem in New England, Morton wrote a satirical description of the region called "New English Canaan." Published in the Netherlands in the 1630s, it was the first book ever explicitly banned in America.

By 1630, leadership of the Massachusetts Bay company had fallen to a wealthy Puritan gentleman, John Winthrop. In 1630 Winthrop reached New England with a fleet of 11 ships and almost 1000 settlers. Having learnt from the hunger of Jamestown and Plymouth and Salem, the colonists brought hundreds of livestock, hogsheads of pork and beef, bread and hardtack, and other victuals necessary to sustain them through the first winter. Wary of drinking New England's unfiltered waters, they also brought barrels of beer and wine: the Arbella, Winthrop's flagship, alone carried 10,000 gallons of beer and 10,000 gallons of wine – for men, women, and children.

In Salem, Winthrop's fleet found the rudiments of a city already awaiting them, but they spurned its backwater location and forwent the ease of its readymade shelter. Winthrop's aversion to the site was presently embedded when his second son, Henry, drowned in Salem's waters. Continuing south to the bountiful mouth of the Charles River, the Puritan colonists found conservative Anglicans already settled under patents granted by the Council for New England. Winthrop and several other well-educated elders recognized one of these early pioneers as a fellow student from their days at Cambridge University, William Blaxton. At a fortified post at the river's mouth, they found Samuel Maverick, whose Puritan father and brother now arrived in the colony but could never convert him to their creed. And they met Thomas and Jane Walford, settled on the north bank of the Charles, who had already agreed to sell off their landholdings for a new townsite; rising from the riverbanks, and uplifting the name of King Charles, it was christened CHARLESTOWN. Since Puritans were loath to honor living persons – especially the personage of the king – the name may have been suggested by the Walfords or other loyal Anglicans who still revered King Charles as the head of the Church of England. Winthrop was inclined to call the town "Charlton," a common English placename.

Echoing Christ's sentiments in the Sermon on the Mount, Winthrop had exhorted colonists to be a "Model of Christian Charity" – to build a "City upon a Hill." And as Winthrop's fleet dropped anchor at a narrow promontory opposite Charlestown, they saw three gentle hills rising behind. Coming ashore, colonists christened their new home after a village in Lincolnshire whence many had come: BOSTON. Dozens of settlers had left old Boston for new Boston: farmers, tradesmen, gentlemen, and ministers. Among the first arrivals from old Boston in 1630 was William Coddington, a prominent merchant who built new Boston's first brick house; and Thomas Dudley, who had served as a steward to the Earl of Lincoln, and would rise to serve as a governor of the colony. In the following years came Atherton Hough, a former mayor of old Boston who would represent new Boston in the General Court of Massachusetts Bay; Richard Bellingham, who had represented old Boston in parliament, and would later serve as colonial governor; Thomas Leverett, an alderman of old Boston and a selectman of new Boston, whose son John would later serve as governor; and the Reverend John Cotton, former minister at old Boston's St Botolph's Church who became a minister of new Boston's New Church. Although Puritans shunned the names of saints as a gaudy relic of Catholicism, the naming of Boston belied Puritan sensibilities – the original English city had been named for St Botolph. John Cotton's grandson, Cotton Mather, later remarked, "Old Boston, by name, was but Saint Botolph's town. Wheras thou O Boston, shalt have but one protector in heaven, and that is our lord Jesus Christ."

The New England terrains suggested other familiar names to English settlers. WATERTOWN, often spelled "Waterton," echoed the medieval village of Waterton, Lincolnshire – but the waters of the Charles River probably suggested the town's name. Deputy Governor Richard Saltonstall of Yorkshire, brother-in-law to Lord De la Warr, helped develop the early town before he tired of the venture and returned to England. Another leader of the young community was William Oldham of Derbyshire, who had earlier settled in new Plymouth; his sister, Lucretia, remained in the Plymouth Colony after marrying William Brewster's son, Jonathan. Many early settlers of Watertown would form powerful New England families, including John Whitney from London; Nathaniel Foote from Essex; John Lawrence from Suffolk; and John Coolidge from Cambridgeshire.

Settled on rocky soil, the town of ROXBURY had no exact copy in England – though names like Roxby, Lincolnshire, and Roxborough, Scotland, may have been familiar to Puritan settlers who came from across Britain. William Pynchon and Jehue Burr came from Essex. Miles Morgan was born in Wales. Richard Dummer came from Hampshire. Richard Austin, Dummer's old neighbour back in Hampshire, also joined him in the colony, settling in nearby Charlestown. As pioneers, soldiers, and statesmen for generations to come, these families would help push the Anglo-American frontier north, south, and west across North America.

Thomas Dudley led the settlement of "Meadford" or MEDFORD, perhaps inspired by a ford on the meadow. But the town's principal landowner was Matthew Cradock – the erstwhile colonial governor based in London – who had grown up around the village of Meaford, Staffordshire; in early records, that English town also appeared as Meadford and Medford.

Spreading south from Boston, Puritans named DORCHESTER after the Dorsetshire parish of the Reverend John White, who had been promoting settlement of New England since the early 1620s. While White remained in old Dorchester, many members of his Dorset flock settled in new Dorchester in 1630: farmer Thomas Ford, whose three wives conceived six daughters who would, in turn, produce at least 66 grandchildren for New England's increase; Matthew Grant, a carpenter, whose descendants showed mettle as militia leaders in New England's Indian wars, and generals in much larger conflicts. Still others came from the neighbouring counties of Devonshire and Somersetshire, including brothers Thomas and Israel Stoughton, whose families entwined themselves in the colony's political life; and Henry and Elizabeth Wolcott, who arrived in the colony with half of their children, leaving the other half in Somersetshire to join them years later. The first minister of new Dorchester was the Reverend John Maverick, father of Samuel, whose family had roots in Devonshire.

Having entrenched themselves around Massachusetts Bay, Puritans imposed their version of democratic theocracy over the colony. The Anglican Walfords of Charlestown, who had welcomed early Puritan arrivals into their home, were banished from the colony in 1631. A few years later, dismayed by Winthrop's governance and Puritan intolerance, William Blaxton sold his land in Boston and quit the colony. He settled fifty miles away, building his new home on the banks of the "Blaxton" or BLACKSTONE River; Puritans preferred the latter spelling, since it obscured the link to the Anglican exile, and might describe black stone found in the river's valley gorges.

Puritans also cast out Cornish fishermen who had established small fishing ports by the plentiful coastal waters north of Boston. One site, settled as "Foy," phonetically echoed the fishing village of Fowey, Cornwall. But the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts Bay soon displaced these non-Puritan fishermen and their placenames. Struck by coastal outcroppings of white granite, incoming settlers preferred the name MARBLEHEAD. Among the first Puritan proprietors of Marblehead in the mid-1630s were Moses Maverick, brother of Samuel, who had roots in Devonshire; and Hugh Peter, a wealthy promoter of the Bay Colony, who had been born in Fowey, Cornwall.

Despite pressure from his family and neighbours, Samuel Maverick refused to convert to Puritanism. Although his adherence to traditional Anglicanism excluded him from the colony's political life, Maverick ranked amongst the wealthiest men in Massachusetts Bay. He ran a ferry service from Boston to Charlestown, traded fish, furs, and timber, and acquired valuable tracts of farmland across New England. He alternately charmed and offended Governors Winthrop and Dudley. Anglicans and Puritans alike questioned his morals. While Winthrop, Dudley, and other wealthy Puritans brought with them indentured servants from England, or forced captured Indians into their service, Maverick bought several African slaves – and encouraged rape as a means of breeding more.

With its population exceeding that of the Plymouth Colony by 1631, the Massachusetts Bay Colony asserted itself as the dominant power in New England. In 1634, John Howland and the Plymouth traders on the Kennebec tried to expel a competing party of English traders from the river, leading to an exchange of gunfire that left two men dead. John Alden, who was not present during the fatal gunfight, was returning south to Plymouth with a boatload of furs when he was arrested by Puritan authorities in Boston. The incident threatened to spiral into a border conflict between the two colonies – until Myles Standish marched north and secured Alden's release.

With Puritan settlers pushing deep inland, the Bay Colony would not be confined to the Bay. The Great Hurricane of 1635 decimated New England's Indians, sweeping away wigwams and destroying villages. And as the ravages of European disease plagued native populations, English colonists took over vacant lands. In this, Winthrop saw the Lord's hand, writing, "the greatest part of them are swept away by the smallpox which still contaminates among them. So God hath thereby cleared our title to these parts." Surviving members of dwindling Indian tribes had little choice but to cede their lands to surging colonists in exploitative deals. In 1635, a fair agreement between Indians and Puritans – fair, at least, in English eyes – suggested the name of CONCORD.

Elsewise, English placenames predominated. Rejecting almost every other known current of name-giving, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay insisted that new towns take plain and humble names from old England. Conforming to the old English model, most began as one-church towns, centered around the village green or common.

After the naming of Concord, satisfied settlers south of Watertown tried to style their new town "Contentment." But the General Court rejected the name in favor of DEDHAM, an Essex village whence the Reverend John Rogers preached his fiery brand of Puritanism. While the roaring reverend remained in England, he urged his flock to settle New England. Among those who left old Dedham for new Dedham was John Dwight, whose family would extend the colony's frontiers through trade; and John Sherman, a local politician, soldier, and reverend, whose descendants would earn greater repute as politicians and soldiers.

John Winthrop named IPSWICH after the town in Suffolk, "in acknowledgment of the great honor and kindness done to our people which took shipping there." Among new arrivals to the colony in 1635 was a teenage apprentice from Ipswich named Moses Cleaveland, who settled outside of Boston, and produced 11 children whose branching progeny would exalt the family name.

In establishing Boston as the capital, Winthrop earned the wrath of Dudley – who had built his house in the "New Town" or "Newtown" west of Boston under the understanding that it would be designated capital. Although the marriage of Mary Winthrop to Samuel Dudley in 1632 made the two elders co-fathers-in-law, their enmity simmered over the next two decades as they alternated as governors.

Briefly lodging with Dudley in Newtown was John Haynes, who would serve as the colony's governor in 1634. Among Dudley's other Newtown neighbours were the Reverends Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone. Hooker's insistence upon full suffrage for all Christian men appealed to many Puritans denied freeman status, but it also rallied Dudley and Winthrop in opposition. Hooker, Stone, and Haynes would soon lead half of Newtown's residents beyond the reach of the Massachusetts Bay leadership. Half of neighbouring Dorchester's residents, and many also from Watertown, would join them in forming a new colony.

Newtown received a significant boost in 1636 when it was selected to host the colony's first college, "New College." Since Governor Winthrop and many leading Puritan ministers, including John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and Samuel Stone, had studied at Cambridge University in England, Newtown was renamed CAMBRIDGE. In 1638 Elizabeth Glover, widowed on the voyage to Massachusetts Bay, set up her late husband's printing press in Cambridge; she later married the college president. Concurrently, John Harvard – settler, minister, and graduate of Cambridge University – bequeathed to New College his library and a large sum of money; in gratitude, the General Court renamed America's first English-speaking college Harvard.

In 1633 King Charles had reissued the "Declaration of Sports," which listed a wide range of activities permissible on Sunday, the Lord's Day, including dancing, jumping, and archery. Scandalized Puritan ministers protested the desecration of the Lord's Day and refused to read the declaration from their pulpits. Many chose exile, sparking a new wave of migration to Massachusetts in the mid-1630s. Under the leadership of local ministers, whole families – and, indeed, sometimes whole communities – relocated from England to New England.

The Reverend Robert Peck and his nephew-in-law, the Reverend Peter Hobart, led an exodus from the region around Hingham, Norfolk, to HINGHAM, Massachusetts Bay. Old Hingham and surrounding Norfolk towns lost almost half their population; some small Norfolk villages were left deserted. Among the Hingham congregation were Stephen Paine, John Sutton, and their wives, sisters Julian and Cornelia Adcock. Other family networks from around old Hingham included Edward Gilman and Matthew Cushing, whose children would intermarry in new Hingham. John Folsom, another early arrival in new Hingham, had married Mary Gilman – daughter of Edward – whilst still in old Hingham. Samuel Lincoln and his brothers also arrived in the colony in the 1630s; already related to the Gilmans and Folsoms in old Hingham, the Lincoln family would intermarry with the Cushings in new Hingham. While the Gilmans, Cushings, and Folsoms established themselves as powerful political dynasties in New England, Samuel Lincoln's descendants would exert even greater political and moral influence across the continent.

Led by the Reverend Joseph Hull, neighbouring Puritans embarked from Weymouth, Dorset, 10 miles south of old Dorchester, to settle in WEYMOUTH, Massachusetts, 10 miles south of new Dorchester. Among settlers leading families out of old Weymouth were Henry and Joanna Kingman, and Thomas and Jane Holbrook – whose children would intermarry in the colony. Linking the old Dorset and Somerset folk in the colony, Henry Kingman helped lay out a highway between new Dorchester and new Weymouth.

The Reverend Thomas Parker led a congregation from Newbury, Berkshire, to NEWBURY, Massachusetts Bay. He was soon joined in new Newbury by his nephew, the Reverend John Woodbridge, born and raised 20 miles away from old Newbury.

After years without an official minister, one port town north of Boston welcomed the Reverend Samuel Whiting from King's Lynn, Norfolk. A century earlier, the English port had been Bishop's Lynn, before King Henry VIII removed the bishop's influence in his overhaul of Catholicism; now objecting to King Charles' Catholic leanings within the Church of England, Massachusetts Bay Puritans removed the King's hold on the town and embraced the stripped-back LYNN. Elizabeth St John Whiting, who immigrated with her husband to new Lynn, had common ancestry with the English monarchy and could claim Queen Elizabeth I as her distant cousin. Oliver St John, her brother, remained in England, where he married Elizabeth Cromwell, first cousin of Oliver Cromwell; aligning himself with Cromwell's Parliamentarians against the monarchy, Oliver St John rose to become England's Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.

The Reverend Ezekiel Rogers led his flock from Rowley, Yorkshire to ROWLEY, Massachusetts Bay. Cousins Jeremiah and Ezekiel Northend followed the Reverend Rogers from old Rowley to new Rowley. Brothers Maximillian and Joseph Jewett, from Bradford, Yorkshire, would also join the Yorkshire folk in new Rowley.

The Reverend William Worcester led his flock from Salisbury, Wiltshire, to SALISBURY, Massachusetts Bay. Ready for service, the reverend reportedly arrived in the new community carrying his own church bell. Among those who followed him from old Salisbury to new Salisbury were John Ayer and Thomas Macy, who would establish themselves as wealthy planters and merchants.

The Reverend Edmund Browne led his flock from Sudbury, Suffolk, to SUDBURY, Massachusetts Bay. Edmund and Thomasine Rice, and their children, were among those who followed from around old Sudbury to new Sudbury.

The Reverend John Ward left Haverhill, Suffolk, and settled in HAVERHILL, Massachusetts Bay. His brother, the Reverend Samuel Ward, was presently imprisoned in old Ipswich, Suffolk, for condemning the Declaration of Sports.

While Winthrop remained confident of the Lord's presence in Massachusetts, he reported another supernatural presence hanging over the colony. In his journal entry of March 1, 1639, Winthrop reported:

In this year one James Everell, a sober, discreet man, and two others, saw a great light in the night at Muddy River. When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about three yards square; when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine: it ran as swift as an arrow towards Charlton, and so up and down about two or three hours. They were come down in their lighter about a mile, and, when it was over, they found themselves carried quite back against the tide to the place they came from. Divers other credible persons saw the same light, after, about the same place.

The mysterious light around "Charlton" – Charlestown – may be considered the first unidentified flying object in the annals of American history.

Henry and Edith Adams, along with their nine children, left Braintree, Essex, and settled in BRAINTREE, Massachusetts – on the site of Thomas Morton's Merrymount. Henry was a farmer and a maltster, and he may have opened the town's first brewery. For the next six generations the Adams family remained leading figures in Braintree, exerting increasing influence not only over Massachusetts but across America.

In 1642, dismissing his own hometown, Edward Johnson named WOBURN for the Bedfordshire home of his friend, Robert Sedgwick – a distinguished officer in the colonial militia, who helped survey the townsite. Johnson then built his home on site, while Sedgwick's military duties kept him moving across New England and England. Governor Thomas Dudley, who signed the bill to incorporate the town, also had ancestral ties to the Bedfordshire region; his parents had married and resided for a time outside of old Woburn.

In 1642, after clashing with Separatists in the Plymouth Colony, Richard Blinman led his congregation to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, settling around Cape Ann. Having already established the name of Marshfield, perhaps after a town in Gloucestershire, Blinman's flock now made a new home in GLOUCESTER. Blinman's theology continued to alienate fellow Puritans. The reverend had members of his new Gloucester flock fined and flogged for calling him a "wicked wretch" and questioning his interpretation of the scriptures.

Although fewer Puritans brought the names of their English hometowns to New England, the General Court continued to plant English names with strong Puritan connections. WENHAM appeared in the Bay Colony in the early 1640s, and though some of its early settlers hailed from Suffolk, including the Reverend John Fiske, none have been traced to the small Suffolk villages of Great Wenham or Little Wenham. But the English Wenhams were breeding grounds of Puritan fanaticism. The Reverend James Hopkins of Great Wenham had written to Governor Winthrop praising his endeavours in New England. And his Great-Wenham-born son, Matthew Hopkins, sowed fear across rural England after appointing himself Witchfinder-General; his manual for identifying witchcraft, The Discovery of Witches, was published in 1647 and had an immediate impact in New England.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony harbored the most complete collection of English placenames ever seen in the Americas. Most came from the Puritan heartland of southeast England, from counties like Essex, Middlesex, Suffolk, and Norfolk. Indeed, when administrators divided the Bay Colony into four counties in 1643, they named them ESSEX, MIDDLESEX, SUFFOLK, and NORFOLK. True to their Anglo-Saxon etymologies, the East Saxons of Essex lived east of the Middle Saxons of Middlesex; and the North Folk of Norfolk lived north of the South Folk of Suffolk. However, when administrators dismantled Norfolk County decades later, they ignored the literal value of the old English names, creating a new Norfolk County from the southern portion of Suffolk County.

As good arable land grew scarce around Massachusetts Bay, many settlers pulled up stakes. Dismayed by the rocky soil around Roxbury, Puritan theologian William Pynchon led his family inland seeking greener pastures. With him came other early residents of Roxbury, including Jehue Burr and Miles Morgan. In 1641, having purchased a tract of land from the local Indians, Pynchon named his new home after his English birthplace in Essex, SPRINGFIELD. The name's literal value, suggesting a spring of water in a field, boosted its appeal among generations of westering pioneers.

Pynchon also purchased a neighboring tract of land that appears in the Indian land deed as "Masaksicke," an Algonquian term loosely meaning long field or long meadow. Casting off the heathen name, Puritans rechristened it LONGMEADOW – echoing one Longmeadow, Cambridgeshire, among countless other English farmlands.

Shortly after William Pynchon founded Springfield, Elizur Holyoke arrived in the western settlement. Holyoke promptly courted and married Pynchon's daughter, Mary, acquiring substantial acreage and influence in Springfield. When a dispute arose over the town's boundaries, Holyoke set out to survey the surrounding land. Hiking to the peak of a nearby mountain, he gazed out at the unbroken woods of Massachusetts and named his viewpoint Mount HOLYOKE. His associate, Rowland Thomas, scaled the heights of the nearby Mount TOM. The General Court made no objections to mountains taking men's names – as long as the towns and cities showed no such trace of immodesty or idolatry. But borne by the mountain, Holyoke's surname became a familiar fixture on Massachusetts maps – and in the 18th century it was embraced by a city north of Springfield.

By acquiring valuable tracts of western Massachusetts, and effectively monopolizing the fur trade in New England, Pynchon became one of the most powerful men in the colonies. Safely removed from the Puritan power base in Boston, he published dangerous works of religious commentary, including The Meritorious Price of our Redemption. The General Court damned it as heretical and added it to a growing list of books banned in the colony. Dismayed by the Puritan orthodoxy in Massachusetts Bay, Pynchon returned to England in the early 1650s. But his children and grandchildren furthered his legacy in America. For generations to come, the Pynchons remained among the wealthiest dynasties in the colonies – though their fortunes would ultimately be eclipsed by the Burrs and the Morgans.

The Puritan migration to Massachusetts Bay slowed in the early 1640s, as civil war erupted between King Charles and the Parliamentarians. Whilst Charles commanded the loyalty of most conservative Anglicans, Parliamentary forces aligned themselves with the growing congregation of Puritans. Indeed, some New England Puritans returned to England to enlist in the Parliamentary army under Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. Among the repatriated Puritans were Stephen Winthrop, son of Governor Winthrop, who served with distinction through the 1640s; Hugh Peter, who served as a campaigner and chaplain for Parliamentary forces; Israel Stoughton, who died in his native Lincolnshire in 1645; and John Leverett, son of Thomas Leverett, who married Robert Sedgwick's daughter, Sarah, whilst in England. As the most experienced soldier in the colony, Robert Sedgwick stayed in New England for the duration of the Civil War – though he would later return to England to have his commission formalized by Cromwell himself.

Instead of honoring old English hometowns, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay began honoring English cities lauded as Puritan centres and Parliamentary strongholds. The English city of Manchester withstood a Royalist siege in late 1642; in 1645, the General Court formally created the town of MANCHESTER. Kingston Upon Hull resisted the armies of King Charles in both 1642 and 1643; in 1644, the General Court named a defensive outpost overlooking Boston Harbor HULL – after removing any suggestion of it being a King's Town. The strategic borough of Reading fell to Royalist forces in 1642 but was recaptured by Parliamentary forces in 1643; in 1644, the General Court formed the town READING.

Under the stout leadership of Fairfax and Cromwell, the Parliamentary army began routing royalist forces. With Puritans now ascending to power, puritanical reforms swept England. London theatres and taverns began closing; playing cards were condemned as the "Devil's Picture Book"; witch-finders condemned innocent victims to the gallows. By 1647, Parliament had outlawed every festive celebration of Christmas. Puritan administrators in Boston now lagged behind their fellows in London: The Bay Colony would not ban Christmas until 1659.

Whatever the upheavals in England, the enthusiasm for English placenames remained unabated in the Bay Colony. Throughout the late 1640s and 1650s, new generations of Puritans speckled the maps of Massachusetts Bay with English names.

Joseph Hills was a virile Puritan colonist who arrived in the late 1630s, married four times, and fathered two dozen children. In the late 1640s, while serving in the House of Deputies, Hills named MALDEN for his former home of Maldon, Essex. Around his erstwhile Essex home, Puritans had already begun purging churches of loyalist Anglican ministers. The Reverend Lawrence Washington, a wealthy Anglican rector who had helped purge Oxford University of Puritans, was now ousted by Puritans from the lucrative parish of Purleigh, a few miles south of Maldon, and banished to the poor parish of Little Braxted, a few miles north of Maldon. Dying in poverty in 1652, Washington was buried in Maldon. Two of his sons would soon immigrate to America – not to the Puritan province of Massachusetts Bay, but to the Anglican stronghold of Virginia.

Ralph Wheelock was a well-educated Puritan who had studied at Cambridge alongside John Milton. Among the founders of new Dedham, he was the first teacher of the town's first school and among the first public school teachers in America. Wheelock and his wife, Rebecca Clark, were soon joined in the colony by her brother Joseph Clark and his wife, Alice Fenn. In the late 1640s, Wheelock led this extended family network, most of whom hailed from Norfolk and Suffolk Counties in England, to settle a new town they named, MEDFIELD. Although local meadow fields may have inspired its name, it echoed Metfield, a Suffolk village also spelled Medfield, where the Fenn family was based, just 15 miles from Wheelock's old home in Norfolk. In Medfield, Wheelock would establish a new school and serve as its headmaster. His descendants would establish much larger educational institutions.

Samuel Symonds had been well-connected to the Winthrops back in Essex: his first wife was a distant Winthrop relative, but he immigrated to New England with his second wife, Martha Reade, sister-in-law of John Winthrop the Younger. Buying land directly from the Winthrops, Symonds developed and named TOPSFIELD, Essex County, New England, after his hometown in Toppesfield, Essex, England. The new town's elevated location, on top of the fields, suggested the simplified spelling.

John Woodbridge arrived in Massachusetts in the 1630s and settled with his uncle Thomas Parker in Newbury. In 1638 he married Mary Dudley, the daughter of Governor Dudley. In the 1640s, along with his in-laws Anne Dudley and Simon Bradstreet, Woodbridge developed the town of ANDOVER, named for his old home of Andover, Hampshire. In a reversal of the usual order, Reverend Woodbridge became the first minister of Andover, Massachusetts, before returning to England to serve as minister of Andover, Hampshire; political and religious upheaval would force him once more from Andover, and then Newbury, in England, and he returned again to the New England towns of Andover and Newbury.

In the early 1650s, the General Court named a new town on the western frontier NORTHAMPTON; relative to Springfield, it was indeed the north town. But several early settlers, including Thomas Root and Thomas Lord, had roots in Northamptonshire. And Governor Thomas Dudley, an ever-present figure in colonial politics and real estate, was born in Northampton, Northamptonshire. Anne Dudley, his daughter, had married Simon Bradstreet back in old Northampton before migrating to Massachusetts Bay. Bradstreet would soon acquire land in new Northampton and, like his father-in-law, would later serve as governor of Massachusetts Bay. Anne, however, would outshine her husband. Since their early days in Massachusetts, she had been writing poetry with little intention of publishing it. But after her brother-in-law, John Woodbridge, took a manuscript of her work to England in the 1640s and had it printed without her knowledge, Anne Bradstreet became the first American poet published in the British Empire.

The General Court of Massachusetts Bay retained strict control over the names of new towns and cities. Names honoring actual persons, however important their services to the colony, were deemed immodest or idolatrous. John Prescott was a brash pioneer and blacksmith who, when Indian troubles threatened, would don a complete set of metal armor and defy anyone to attack him. In 1653 he tried to incorporate a small settlement under the name of "Prescott." The General Court rejected his surname. The court did, however, approve a name drawn from Prescott's home county of Lancaster shire, now Lancashire, LANCASTER.

By the 1650s, five Parker brothers – John, James, Abraham, Joseph, and Jacob – had emigrated from Essex to Massachusetts Bay. Linking with other old Essex families from new Braintree, including brothers Thomas and Samuel Adams – sons of Henry Adams – they pushed inland and founded CHELMSFORD; both the Parkers and the Adams family had ties to Chelmsford, Essex.

The Parker brothers laid the foundations of other local towns. While Abraham and Jacob settled permanently in new Chelmsford, John, James, and Joseph moved on to found BILLERICA, after Billericay, Essex, their old hometown. In England, Chelmsford is 10 miles north of Billericay; in New England, Chelmsford is 10 miles north of Billerica. The General Court of Massachusetts Bay incorporated the two towns on the same day in 1655.

On the same day that Chelmsford and Billerica were incorporated, a third town was incorporated as GROTON, Massachusetts Bay. Dean Winthrop, son of John Winthrop, named the town after his birthplace, and that of his father, Groton, Suffolk. James and Joseph Parker were also among its early settlers.

After leaving their homes in Wiltshire in the 1630s, brothers-in-law John Ruddocke and Thomas Goodenow led their families to settle in new Sudbury, Massachusetts Bay. In the early 1650s, Ruddocke purchased an indentured servant, James Ross, one of many Scottish soldiers captured by Cromwell's forces after the battle of Worcester and shipped to New England. In 1655, Ross was found guilty of "shameful abuse and violence towards his master," Ruddocke, and whipped 39 times. Two years later, Ross received another 21 lashings for fornicating with Goodenow's daughter – Ruddocke's niece – Mary Goodenow; the teenage Mary, now pregnant, received 10 lashings too. In the late 1650s, John Ruddocke and Thomas Goodenow left the scandalous affairs and whippings behind in Sudbury and settled to the west in "Whip Sufferage." The townsite was soon rebranded with a more dignified name from their home county of Wiltshire, MARLBOROUGH.

As English colonists spread out across the wilds of New England, they saw mammals unlike any in England. Although shaped like compound English words, woodchucks, muskrats, and chipmunks all began as Algonquian names for small mammals. Colonists had begun corrupting savage Indian names into civilized English words; they would corrupt many Indian placenames in like fashion. A point of red rock settled in the 1630s as a section of Lynn early appeared as "Squampskut"; the Algonquian name was soon Anglicized, or perhaps Scotticized, as SWAMPSCOTT. But Swampscott would have no official status as a place or a name until it was formally separated from Lynn centuries later.

The most powerful voice for Indian placenames in the colony was the Reverend John Eliot. Eliot had studied at Jesus College in Cambridge, England, and later became overseer at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts Bay. He helped edit the Bay Psalm Book of 1640, the first book printed in British North America; and founded the Roxbury Latin School in 1645, the oldest continually existing boys' school on the continent. He began learning the local Algonquian dialect and in 1646 commenced preaching to Indians at a site near Cambridge; Eliot suggested an Algonquian name for the site, meaning blessing or rejoicing, NONANTUM. He later convinced the tribe to relocate, opening Nonantum to a new English settlement called "New Town," and then NEWTON, echoing the original name of Cambridge. Nonantum remains the name of a village within the city of Newton.

Whereas Governor Winthrop revelled in Indian deaths, the Reverend Eliot strove to save the Praying Indians. He encouraged Indians to settle in praying towns, or missions, which they could select and name for themselves, on lands set aside by parliament. In 1651, after searching some time for the ideal site, Eliot's Indians finally settled on NATICK; the Algonquian name probably means place of our searching.

Eliot continued to study the dialects of new converts and in the 1660s completed the first Algonquian translation of the Bible. He would also establish 13 more praying towns with Indian names, but English folk would ultimately swamp them all with English names.