as for "literary" value in the narrow
sense of that word, neither Bradford nor Winthrop seems to have thought
of literary effect. Yet the leader of the Pilgrims has passages of grave
sweetness and charm, and his sketch of his associate, Elder Brewster,
will bear comparison with the best English biographical writing of that
century. Winthrop is perhaps more varied in tone, as he is in matter,
but he writes throughout as a ruler of men should write, with "decent
plainness and manly freedom." His best known pages, justly praised
by Tyler and other historians of American thought, contain his speech
before the General Court in 1645 on the nature of true liberty. No
paragraphs written in America previous to the Revolution would have
given more pleasure to Abraham Lincoln, but it is to be feared that
Lincoln never saw Governor Winthrop's book, though his own ancestor,
Samuel Lincoln of Hingham, lived under Winthrop's jurisdiction.

The theory of government held by the dominant party of the first two
generations of New England pioneers has often been called a "theocracy,"
that is to say, a government according to the Word of God as expounded
and enforced by the clergy. The experiment was doomed to ultimate
failure, for it ran counter to some of the noblest instincts of human
nature. But its administration was in the hands of able men. The power
of the clergy was well-nigh absolute. The political organization of the
township depended upon the ecclesiastical organization as long as the
right to vote was confined to church members. How sacrosanct and awful
was the position of the clergyman may be perceived from Hawthorne's "The
Minister's Black Veil" and "The Scarlet Letter."

Yet it must be said that men like Hooker and Cotton, Shepard and
Norton, had every instinct and capacity for leadership. With the notable
exception of Hooker, such men were aristocrats, holding John Winthrop's
opinion that "Democracy is, among most civil nations, accounted the
meanest and worst form of government." They were fiercely intolerant.
The precise reason for the Hooker migration from Cambridge to Hartford
in 1636--the very year of the founding of Harvard--was prudently
withheld, but it is now thought to be the instinct of escape from the
clerical architects of the Cambridge Platform. Yet no one would today
call Thomas Hooker a liberal in religion, pioneer in political liberty
though he proved to be. His extant sermons have the steady stroke of a