A NARRATIVE Of The Planting of the Massachusets COLONY Anno 1628. With the LORDS Signal Presence the First Thirty YEARS. Also a Caution from New-Englands APOSTLE, the GREAT COTTON, How to Escape the Calamity, which might Befall them or their POSTERITY. And Confirmed by the EVANGELIST NORTON With Prognosticks from the FAMOUS Dr. OWEN. Concerning the Fate of these Churches, and Animadversions upon the Anger of God, in sending of Evil Angels among us. Published by Old Planters, the Authors of the Old Mens Tears.

Authors

Joshua Scottow
Paul Royster (transcribed & edited by), University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

ORCID IDs

Paul Royster

Date of this Version

1694

Comments

The original was published in Boston in 1694. This edition is based on a transcription of the copy held in the Harvard University Library. It is a searchable PDF document.

Abstract

This edition of A Narrative of the Planting of the Massachusets Colony Anno 1628 is based on the first edition published in Boston in 1694. The spelling, orthography, punctuation, and capitalization of the original have been retained; only obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Scottow's Narrative is the sequel to Old Mens Tears for their Own Declensions, published three years earlier. It is an expansion of the argument that God and history are being unkind to New England because its churches have strayed from the strict practice of the unanimously-minded early founders of the Congregational Way. Scottow treats of the miraculous events and deliverances that characterized the first generations, and contrasts these with the reverses and humiliations suffered by the later generation, including bad neighbors (the French and the Dutch), natural disasters, Indian wars, witchcraft, the loss of the colony's charter, the imposition of imperial rule, the non-support of ministers, and the abandonment of the office of the Ruling Elders in the churches. Perhaps the most famous quote (found in both works) is "That NEW-ENGLAND is not to be found in NEW-ENGLAND, nor BOSTON in BOSTON."