John Winthrop

John Winthrop was born on January 22 (January 12, Old Style), 1588, in Edwardstone, Suffolk, England. His father was a newly risen country gentleman whose 500-acre estate, Groton Manor, had been bought from Henry VIII at the time of the Reformation.⁠[1]

The Massachusetts Historical Society’s guide to the family papers gives the dates of his father, Adam Winthrop (1548–1623), and his mother, Anne Browne Winthrop (1558–1629).⁠[2]

He was the only son of the family.⁠[3]

The manor had been bought in 1544 by his grandfather, also named Adam Winthrop, a London cloth merchant. He began his schooling at seven under a local vicar.⁠[4]

The Architect of the Capitol’s profile gives his date of birth as January 12, 1587 or 1588.⁠[5]

In 1602 he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied for less than two years. In 1613 he was admitted to Gray’s Inn for legal studies, and in 1617 he became a justice of the peace in Suffolk.⁠[3]

At seventeen he married Mary Forth, the daughter of an Essex squire; the first of his 16 children was born the next year.⁠[1]

The Massachusetts Historical Society’s guide to the family papers lists his four marriages: to Mary Forth (1584–1615) in 1605, Thomasine Clopton (1583?–1616) in 1615, Margaret Tyndal (1591–1647) in 1618 and Martha Rainsborough Coytmore (1617?–1660) in 1647.⁠[2]

For more than 20 years he was primarily a country squire at Groton, with no visible interest in overseas colonization. He studied law and from 1627 to 1629 was an attorney at the Court of Wards and Liveries. He became a committed Puritan, and in 1629 Charles I’s anti-Puritan policy cost him his court post.⁠[1]

In the dozen years after his first marriage he presided over the manorial court, and in the 1620s he developed a law practice in London.⁠[4]

In 1628 he was admitted to the Inner Temple.⁠[5]

In 1629 the Massachusetts Bay Company obtained a royal charter. John Winthrop joined the company, pledging to sell his English estate and take his family to MassachusettsMassachusettsMassachusetts (officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital and largest city is Boston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on February 6, 1788, the sixth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 7,029,917.Open the full entry if the company’s government and charter were also transferred to America. On October 20 the company elected him governor.⁠[1]

The charter, granted by Charles I, gave the “Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England” the land from three miles south of the Charles River to three miles north of the Merrimack and allowed the governor to be chosen from among the colony’s freemen rather than appointed in England. A group of Englishmen had moved from Cape Ann to Naumkeag in 1626, renamed it Salem in 1628 and chosen John Endecott as governor; after Puritans in England bought control of the company, they chose the 41-year-old John Winthrop to replace John Endecott.⁠[6]

Because John Endecott had held the office before him, the introduction at Teaching American History calls him the second governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry and the National Park Service call him the colony’s first governor.⁠[7][1][8]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography attributes his decision to emigrate to dissatisfaction with the government’s religious and political policies, strain on his finances and concern to provide for his sons.⁠[3]

Early in 1630 a fleet of 12 ships was readied to carry roughly 1,000 people to New England. The flagship, the 350-ton Arbella, carried Governor John Winthrop and about 300 English Puritans. On April 7 the last well-wishers left the ship; bad weather delayed the departure several times, and on April 10 the Arbella sailed into the Atlantic, reaching Salem on June 12, where the passengers went ashore two days later.⁠[6]

After a few weeks in Salem his group moved to the north side of the Charles River, to a place they called Charles Town; because fresh water was scarce there, they crossed the river in September and founded Boston. Before the first year ended, 200 settlers had died.⁠[6]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography states that the Arbella was one of four ships carrying about 400 colonists, that about 200 people died in the first winter and that 80 returned home in the spring of 1631. His son Henry was among the first to die, and the rest of his family arrived in the fall of 1631.⁠[3]

After settling in Boston he had a farm on the Mystic River that was far inferior to his Groton estate; Boston became the capital and chief port of Massachusetts.⁠[1]

The sermon entitled “A Model of Christian Charity” presents the emigrants’ undertaking as a covenant with God. It contains the passage: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” The next sentence reads: “So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”⁠[7][6]

Just before this passage the sermon says that men will say of later plantations, “the Lord make it like that of New England.” The text was printed in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1838), 3rd series, volume 7, pages 31–48.⁠[7]

Britannica’s article states that he composed this lay sermon as he sailed west on the Arbella in the spring of 1630, and it cites the title and the phrase in their original spelling as “A Modell of Christian Charity” and “a Citty upon a Hill.”⁠[1]

The Mass Moments article states that exactly where and when the sermon was delivered is not known. The introduction at Teaching American History says that it was given either before the fleet’s departure in 1630 or on board the Arbella.⁠[6][7]

The historian Francis J. Bremer points out that the only surviving contemporary copy, held by the New-York Historical Society, is not in John Winthrop’s handwriting, and that the statement on its 19th-century cover sheet that it was written aboard the Arbella in 1630 is unreliable. Daniel Rodgers (2018) and Richard Gamble (2012) argue that it was a written treatise rather than a sermon, Jerome McGann argues that John Winthrop, a layman, did not deliver it, and Abram Van Engen (2020) argues that the surviving text is a corrupt copy that has probably lost its opening.⁠[9]

Francis J. Bremer’s own conclusion is that the sermon was preached at Southampton, England, before the fleet sailed, probably in the Church of the Holy Rood; Southampton was first proposed by Hugh Dawson (1991). He adds that the phrase became central to the idea of American exceptionalism mainly in the 20th century, when politicians such as Ronald ReaganRonald ReaganRonald Reagan (1911–2004) was an American politician and actor who worked as a radio sports announcer and film actor before serving as governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989.Open the full entry cited it, and that John Winthrop hoped the colony would be a city upon a hill, not the city upon a hill.⁠[9]

Between 1631 and 1648 he was chosen governor 12 times; in the other years he sat on the court of assistants or the colony’s council. In 1634 the freemen insisted on electing a representative assembly to share in decision making, which irritated him. In the mid- and late 1630s numerous colonists migrated from Massachusetts to ConnecticutConnecticutConnecticut is a U.S. state in the New England region. Its capital is Hartford and its largest city is Bridgeport (2010 census). It entered the Union on January 9, 1788, as the 5th state, and had a population of 3,605,944 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, which he took as a personal affront.⁠[1]

Sources list the years of his governorships differently: the Massachusetts Historical Society’s guide to the family papers gives 1630–1634, 1637–1640, 1642–1644 and 1646–1649, while the Encyclopedia of World Biography gives 1630–1633, 1637–1639, 1642 and 1646–1648.⁠[2][3]

In 1634 Thomas Dudley was elected governor.⁠[3]

He at first regarded Roger Williams as “a godly minister” and offered him a post at the Boston church, which Roger Williams declined because he disagreed with the church’s practices. The two remained in contact for the rest of their lives, with mutual respect but without agreement.⁠[10]

He found Roger Williams’s criticism of church–state relations intolerable, but in 1636 he secretly helped Roger Williams to flee to Rhode IslandRhode IslandRhode Island (officially the State of Rhode Island) is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Ocean; its capital and largest city is Providence. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on May 29, 1790, the last of the original 13 to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 1,097,379.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

In 1636 Anne Hutchinson gained control of his Boston church and tried to convert the whole colony to a religious position that he considered blasphemous. He led the counterattack: the General Court tried Anne Hutchinson, mainly for “traducing the ministers,” and sentenced her to banishment. His journal for 1637 lists the court’s charges, among them that she held two public lectures a week in her house and reproached most of the ministers, all except Cotton. The Boston church then tried her as well and formally excommunicated her. In 1638 she founded a settlement on Aquidneck Island.⁠[11]

Henry Vane held the governorship in 1636, and John Winthrop was later reelected in his place; John Wheelwright was banished along with Anne Hutchinson.⁠[3]

In 1644 he published A Short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruin of the Antinomians, Familists & Libertines, defending his part in the expulsion of Anne Hutchinson and John Wheelwright in 1637.⁠[12]

By 1640 he had become the guardian of Massachusetts orthodoxy. In 1641 he helped write the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, the first legal sanctioning of slavery in North America; he himself owned at least one Native American slave, taken in the Pequot War (1636–1637). When the English Civil War broke out in 1642, many New Englanders returned to England to fight against Charles I; he stayed in America and criticized the Puritan Revolution.⁠[11]

An incapable overseer left him in debt, and he sold his Boston house and much of his land; the colony later gave him land and money, and in 1637 the General Court granted him acreage in Concord.⁠[3]

In July 1645 he delivered a speech to the General Court distinguishing two kinds of liberty: natural liberty, the freedom to do as one wishes, evil as well as good, which should be restrained, and civil liberty, the freedom to do good, which he called “the proper end and object of authority.”⁠[3]

Britannica’s article judges that in this speech he defined the magistrates’ authority broadly and the people’s liberty narrowly.⁠[11]

The Architect of the Capitol’s profile states that he was instrumental in forming the United Colonies and served as its first president.⁠[5]

In October 1646 Edward WinslowEdward WinslowEdward Winslow (1595–1655) was a Mayflower passenger and one of the founders of Plymouth Colony, where he served three times as governor, handled the colony’s dealings with the Wampanoag leader Massasoit and repeatedly went to England as its agent. In his last years he served in Oliver Cromwell’s government, and he died on an expedition to the West Indies.Open the full entry of Plymouth Colony left for England as the agent of Massachusetts Bay; that November John Winthrop called Edward Winslow “A fit man to be employed in our present affairs in England.”⁠[13][14]

In the spring of 1649 he died at the age of 61 after about six weeks of “a feverish distemper”; the date was April 5 (March 26, Old Style), 1649, and the place Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony.⁠[11]

He is buried in King’s Chapel Burying Ground on Tremont Street, one of the oldest burying grounds in Boston.⁠[8]

At his death the colony had about 15,000 inhabitants.⁠[3]

Six of his 16 children survived him. His son Henry went to Barbados in 1627 and returned two years later.⁠[4]

His eldest son, John Winthrop, Jr. (1606–1676), born to Mary Forth, became a scientist and governor of Connecticut and is usually called John Winthrop the Younger; later descendants were prominent in American politics, science and business. His letters to his third wife, Margaret, show a tender side.⁠[2][11]

His journal, entitled “History of New England,” consists of three manuscript volumes describing events in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from the sailing of the Arbella in March 1630 until shortly before his death. Volume 1 runs from March 29, 1630, to September 14, 1636, and measures 18.5 by 14 centimeters; volume 2 (1636–1644) was destroyed in a Boston fire in 1825 while James Savage, treasurer of the Massachusetts Historical Society, had borrowed it and was transcribing it in his law office; volume 3 covers 1644–1649.⁠[15][16]

In 1803 Francis Bayard Winthrop, at the urging of his brother Thomas Lindall Winthrop, gave the first two volumes of the journal to the Massachusetts Historical Society; the third was found in 1816. The society’s Winthrop Family Papers date from 1537 to 1990, mostly from 1620 to 1900, and comprise 62 document boxes, 121 volumes, 5 extra-tall volumes and 6 oversize boxes. Between 1929 and 1992 the society published The Winthrop Papers in six volumes, printing selections from family papers dated 1498 to 1654.⁠[2]

Printed editions of the journal include the one published at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1790 (John Porter transcribed much of the manuscript and Noah Webster did most of the editing), James Savage’s Boston editions of 1825 and 1853 and James Kendall Hosmer’s edition (New York, 1908). The third manuscript volume was found among the collections of Thomas Prince deposited in the Old South Church in Boston. Thomas Shepard wrote from Cambridge on January 27, 1639/40, to encourage him in writing the history.⁠[17]

In 1996 the Belknap Press of Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry Press published The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649, edited by Richard S. Dunn, James Savage and Laetitia Yeandle, which transcribes all three volumes and uses the 1853 transcription for volume 2.⁠[15]

Britannica’s article judges that the detailed journal of his American years is a major source for the early history of Massachusetts.⁠[11]

In 1876 Massachusetts gave a marble statue of John Winthrop by Richard S. Greenough to the National Statuary Hall Collection; it stands in the Hall of Columns of the U.S. Capitol.⁠[5]

The American Antiquarian Society holds an oil portrait of John Winthrop by an anonymous artist, bequeathed by William Winthrop in 1830; painted on an oak panel, it was transferred to canvas in 1908 by the Boston restorer Hermann Dudley Murphy and measures 35 by 28¾ inches. It was originally dated to about 1630; Charles K. Bolton proposed 1691 in 1919, and Louisa Dresser and Alan Burroughs later concluded that it was of European origin and mid-17th-century date. Charles K. Bolton called it the “strongest and best likeness extant.” The portrait in the Massachusetts State House, once thought to have been painted from life, is now considered a copy of about 1770.⁠[12]

Britannica’s article notes that some critics have seen him as a visionary utopian and others as a social reactionary, and it judges that his combination of group discipline and individual responsibility gave Massachusetts lasting success as a social experiment.⁠[1]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography calls him a very effective governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and holds that he did more than anyone else to give the colony its distinctive character.⁠[3]

Massachusetts Historical Society: Official website: https://www.masshist.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]