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J Four J Which Man’s Land? Conflict and Competition in Pequot Country Two conflicts that surfaced with explosive force in New England in 1637 reverberated with particular impact on Winthrop’s new plantation in the mid1640s . For more than a decade, the success or failure of the alchemical project hinged on how the issues raised by these earlier events would be resolved.The first of these conflicts, the Pequot War of 1637, had reduced the once powerful Pequot nation to servile status and exacerbated already strained Indian relations in the former Pequot territory. At the same time, the war had created competing claims to the former Pequot lands between the English colonies of Connecticut and Massachusetts as well as among their Indian allies, all of whom had played a part in the Pequots’ overthrow.The decision of John Winthrop , Jr., to establish his new plantation in the heart of the former Pequot country heightened the tensions produced by destabilized Indian relations and intracolonial English competition, as various protagonists, including Winthrop, sought to manipulate events to achieve the greatest advantage. The second conflict of 1637, the antinomian, or free grace, controversy surrounding Anne Hutchinson and her followers, left in its wake still-unresolved questions about the limits of acceptable Puritan practice in New England. These questions would, for a time, come to focus on ecumenically inclusive practitioners of alchemy like Winthrop, whose tolerance for religious diversity raised substantial concerns among some Puritan leaders about the potential ecclesiological consequences of establishing an alchemically focused research center. Immigration laws had been tightened during the Hutchinsonian free grace crisis to exclude from residence in Massachusetts anyone whose religious beliefs were thought in conflict with the emerging Independent orthodoxy. Alchemists such as Winthrop, despite his personal adherence to the New England way, readily associated with and in fact eagerly recruited natural philosophers representing a broad range of confessional beliefs. Their potential presence in New England, even—or perhaps especially—in a remote area such as Winthrop’s new plantation, caused some Puritans great concern. This was especially true after Winthrop’s associate Robert Child  · Conflict and Competition in Pequot Country confronted Massachusetts’s limited religious tolerance head-on, presenting a remonstrance to the General Court demanding that Bay officials loosen their restrictive church membership and political enfranchisement policies. In the wake of Child’s remonstrance in Massachusetts, just as Winthrop’s plantation was starting up, Connecticut’s wariness of Winthrop’s settlement increased, and its willingness to support his plantation, even against incursions from the English settlers’ Indian opponents, was limited. Massachusetts, too, cracked down on at least some of the alchemists in its colony, intimidating them to the point that they left the country. While the backlash against alchemy in New England was short-lived, its timing was significant and dampened the ambitions of the New London plantation. The backlash also negatively affected relations between John Winthrop, Sr., governor of Massachusetts, and his son and namesake. In principle, the elder Winthrop supported his son’s alchemical practices and his new plantation scheme. The younger Winthrop had built a chemical furnace at his father’s house in Boston, which he presumably made use of during visits to Boston, for he stored both chemicals and alchemical texts there. Furthermore, the grants the younger Winthrop had secured from Massachusetts allowing him to establish the plantation in the contested former Pequot territory were obtained while the elder Winthrop was a Massachusetts magistrate, and presumably with his support. On close inspection, though, it is clear that the father had misgivings about the spiritual rectitude of his son’s pansophic undertaking and even greater concerns about the strategy his son followed in his relations with the Pequot Indians. The result was, if not a breach between father and son over the project, a very clear expression of disagreements. Understanding how the residual tensions from the free grace controversy and the ownership of the contested Pequot lands affected the early days of Winthrop’s plantation helps us better contextualize alchemy’s status in early New England. Because of the benefits it could provide—in medicine, mining , agriculture, and industrial processing—many New Englanders valued alchemical practitioners and welcomed them into their communities. Yet alchemists who too openly embraced ecumenical religious perspectives or who seemed to flirt with unacceptable magical arts could come under critical and sometimes harsh scrutiny. At the New London plantation, critical scrutiny of the project preceded its later valued acceptance and made the younger Winthrop ’s difficult...

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