First Founders: American Puritans and Puritanism in an Atlantic World

John Leverett: Defending the Ways of the Fathers

John Leverett Defending the Ways of the Fathers John Leverett was the governor of Massachusetts at the time of King Philip’s War. He is one of the least known of the colony’s political leaders , a neglect attributable to the fact that he clashed frequently with the clergyman Increase Mather, whose son Cotton Mather did so much to define the history of New England in his monumental Magnalia Christi Americana (1702). But Cotton Mather notwithstanding, Leverett was one of the more important governors of the seventeenth century. His career illustrates the Atlantic dimension of New England puritanism. But it also illuminates how the debates over congregational autonomy and the definition of the religious perimeter fence continued into the last decades of Massachusetts under its original charter. J ohn leverett was part of the New England establishment. He was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, England, in 1616 and baptized there in st. Botolph’s Church. His father, Thomas Leverett, was a Boston alderman and a prominent member of st. Botolph’s. Thomas was a strong supporter of John Cotton and an opponent of what were deemed unjust royal policies. He helped to protect Cotton against interference with his ministry. He was one of those who resisted the royal effort to raise funds that became known as the “forced loan.” John likely began his education at the Boston grammar school. The Leverett family accompanied John Cotton when the clergyman immigrated to New England. The Boston, Massachusetts, church quickly admitted Thomas and selected him as a ruling elder of the congregation. In March 1634 he was granted the status of freeman, and in september of that year he was 214 First Founders chosen for the first of a number of terms as a town selectman. In 1636 Thomas was chosen to be the recorder of the Boston church. John Leverett was admitted to the Boston church in 1637, at the age of twenty-one. In 1639 he married. The same year saw his admission to the Boston Artillery Company, the militia organization, membership in which signified social distinction as well as military interest. In 1640 he was admitted to freemanship. John began his career as a merchant and appears to have engaged in intercolonial trade, on one occasion losing a valuable cargo off the coast of Virginia. But his true future was to be in public service. In 1642 he was chosen along with Edward Hutchinson to be one of the colony’s emissaries to the Narragansett sachem Miantonomo . The two envoys temporarily defused a growing tension between the sachem, the Mohegans, and the English authorities, but hostilities flared in 1643 when Miantonomo invaded Mohegan territory. shortly after the outbreak of the English Civil Wars Leverett joined other colonists who were returning to England to join in the struggle against Charles I. By August 1644 he had a commission as captain in the foot regiment of Thomas rainsborow. The rainsborow family had lived briefly in Massachusetts and were close to the Winthrops—Thomas’s sister Judith married stephen Winthrop around this time, and the elder John Winthrop would marry another rainsborow sister following Margaret ’s death. That connection goes far to explain the large presence of New Englanders in Thomas rainsborow’s regiment. In addition to Leverett, Israel stoughton was lieutenant-colonel and Nehemiah Bourne held the rank of major. It has been estimated that somewhere between eighty and one hundred fifty New Englanders served in the ranks of the regiment. In 1645 stephen Winthrop accepted a commission in Thomas rainsborow’s brother William’s regiment. Leverett may have been with rainsborow’s regiment when it captured Crowland, in Lincolnshire (not too far from his native Boston) in 1644. In June of 1645, serving as part of the New Model Army under sir Thomas Fairfax, the regiment captured Gaunt House, near the king’s oxford base. Two weeks later, it participated in the battle of Naseby. Though the New Model Army’s victory there turned the tide of the First Civil War, the fighting continued. rainsborow’s regiment took John Leverett 215 part in the siege of sherborne, and then took the lead in the assault on Prior’s Hill Fort, which defended Bristol. oliver Cromwell considered that the regiment had “the hardest task of all” in that attack. “There was great despair of carrying the place,” but rainsborow’s “resolution was such, that notwithstanding the inaccessibleness and difficulty, he would...