Early Modern Migration

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Early Modern MigrationAuthor(s): Roger ThompsonSource: Journal of American Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Apr., 1991), pp. 59-69Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British Association for American StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27555423

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State of the Art

Early Modern Migration

ROGER THOMPSON

Since the nineteenth century,a central subtext of much

writingabout the

early

modernperiod

has been the debate about "modernization."

When, whyand how

didpeople

shed their traditionalsuperstition, fatalism, parochialism,

conservatism

and communitarianism and don such modern characteristics as rationalism,

entrepreneurship, internationalism, adaptabilityand individualism?

Following

Marx'sepoch-making contribution, three seminal works

engenderedwide

rangingdiscussion: Ferdinand T?nnies's

Gemeinschaftund

Gesellschaft (1887),

Frederick Jackson Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American

History" (1893)and Max Weber's "Die

protestantischeEthik und der 'Geist'

desKapitalismus" (1904-5).1 Though differing fundamentally

on the causation

andchronology

of the process, allagreed

that aprerequisite

of modernization was

theuprooting

ofpeople

from ancestral ways andplaces.

In the words of

sociologist Wilbert E. Moore:

If one were to attempta one-word summary of the institutional requirements

for economic

development, that word would be mobility. Property rights,consumer

goods and laborers

must be freed from traditional bonds and restraints, from aristocratic traditions, quasi

feudal arrangements, paternalistic and other multi-bonded relations.2

After World War II interest indeveloping

nations led historians to seek to

harness the insights and methods of anthropologists, sociologists, economistsand

demographersto their own

explorationsof

changein

premodernmentalities.

Thisfillip

to modernization studiespopularized investigations

of domestic and

Roger Thompsonis a Reader in the School of English and American Studies, University

of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, England. He would like to thank Professor Robert

Ashton, Professor A. Hassell Smith and Dr. B. A. Holderness for help with this article.

Short titles only have been used in footnotes.

1Most easily accessible in Community and Society (New York: Harper, 1963); George

Rogers Taylor (ed.), The Turner Thesis (Boston: Heath, 1956); The Protestant Ethic and

the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Un win, 1971).2"The Social Framework of Economic Development,"

inRalph Braibanti and Joseph

J. Spengler (eds.), Tradition, Values and Socio-Economic Development (Durham, NC: Duke

University Press, 1971), 71.

fourna I of American Studies, 25 (1991), 1, 59-69 Printed in Great Britain



6o Roger Fhompson

internationalmigration.3

Inparticular,

itproduced

a colourfulscholarly flowering

among historians inEngland

and NewEngland.

II

The career of Bernard Bailyn,as remarkable for its intellectual fertility

as for its

geographical immobility, providesan excellent

starting pointfor a brief survey

of early-modern mobility studies duringthe last thirty years.

Near itsbeginning

hepublished

aprovocative essay called Education in the

Forming ofAmerican Society:Needs and

Opportunities for Study} Defining education

broadlyas the transmission from one

generationto the next of

practicaland

intellectual skills, he took as his thematic

challenge

the then

extraordinary1647

school-provisionlaw in Massachusetts. Why did education shift from an old

fashioned extended-family responsibilityto a

new-fangledinstitutional one? His

answer, derivedpartly

from culturalanthropologists

likeMargaret Mead5 and

partlyfrom Turnerian environmentalism, was that the initial Atlantic frontier

rendered eldersincapable

oftraining

anddisciplining children. Whereas in the

stable, nay static, traditional societyof old

England, ways ofdoing things barely

altered fromgeneration

togeneration,

the NewEngland climate, topography

and

wilderness demandedadaptation, mobility and

experimentation.These were

essentially qualitiesof the young. Suddenly elders lost their natural

authority-

the confidence ofsuperiority

fromhaving

trimmed ahedge

or sheared asheep

or

ploughed

a line or adzed a beam more often and therefore more

expertly.

Experienceno

longertold. With different materials and unfamiliar

problems,it

could become aliability

rather than an asset. Underminedby

the destabilized

societyof the frontier, the older

generationsummoned the state to their aid. The

school, asproxy parent, exerted

authorityand exacted obedience where

theyno

longercould.

3Excellent introductions are:

Cyril E. Black, The Dynamics ofModernisation (New York:

Harper, 1967); Richard D. Brown, Modernisation : The Transformation of American Fife

(New York: Hill and Wang, 1976); Thomas Bender, Community and Social Changein

America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).4

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, i960). Bailyn's essay opens with a

synopsisof Edward

Eggleston'sThe Transit

ofCivilisation

(Boston: Appleton, 1900)which saw

migrantsto New England

asgenerally conservative and tradition-bound. Its

identification with the Herbert Baxter Adams "germ" school led to its swamping in

rising Turnerian seas.Listings of emigrants may be found in Norman C. P. Tyack,

"Migration from EastAnglia

to NewEngland

Before 1660" (University of London

Ph.D. dissertation, 1951), Appendix B; John Camden Hotten, Original Listsof

Persons

ofQuality who went to the American Plantations (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing,

1962); Charles E. Banks, Topographical Dictionary of 288'/ English Emigrantsto New

England (Philadelphia: Bertram, 1937); idem, The Winthrop Fleet (Boston: Houghton

MifBin, 1930); Charles B. Jewson, "Transcription of Three Registersof

Passengers

1637-39," Norfolk Record Society, 25 (1954). The New England Historic Genealogical

Register (NEHGR) (1846- ) is a treasurehouse of genealogical research. The New

EnglandHistoric

Genealogical Societyof 101

Newbury Street, Boston,is

sponsoringThe Great Migration Project (director Robert C. Anderson)

tosupersede James

Savage, Genealogical Dictionary ofNew England (Boston: Little Brown, 1860-62).5

And Keep Your Powder Dry (New York: Morrow, 1942).



Early Modern Migration 61

This

challenging depiction

of a lurch from tradition to

modernizing change,from

stabilityto

mobility,from

hierarchyto

anarchy,caused

byenforced

adaptationto an alien environment, set many young minds furiously

to work.

Thetesting

of theBailyn

thesisproduced

a series ofjustly

famous local studies

by scholars like John Demos, Philip Greven, Kenneth Lockridge, Daniel Scott

Smith, Richard Bushman and Michael Zuckerman.6 Subsequently, synthesizing

review articles by John Murrin and James Henretta evaluated theirfindings.7

They respectfully pronouncedthe Bailyn Thesis a dead duck. Far from the

restless, disjointedand disordered society posited

in Education in theForming of

AmericanSociety,

most of the local studies found theirtownships extraordinarily

stable for the first three or fourgenerations. Corporatism, consensualism,

communalism,cohesion

typifytheir

portraits.Elders seemed

adeptat

usingtheir

control ofcapital

tokeep

their financially dependent juniorsin line. There was

littlesign

ofyouth

at the helm in town orcolony government. Religion

exerted

apowerful

counter to the economictemptation

todisperse.

So did the

impenetrableforest cover, fear of the Indians and of

corruptingwilderness

incivility. David Grayson Allen went so far as to describe NewEngland planters

as ultra-traditionalist, clingingto

English ways in the wilderness likedrowning

men to flotsam.They

resembled theraj

in India, more British than the British,

not the inventive, individualistic, opportunisticTurnerian frontiersman, the

archetypal modernizer.8

Meanwhile, research inEngland

seemed todig

agrave to

burythe

corpse.

Even before Bailyn's book appeared, E. E. Rich had argued in 1950 from theevidence of

changingsurnames in successive Elizabethan muster rolls, lay subsidy

rolls and heralds' visitations thatEnglish people

moved about far more than the

mythof a static, traditional society suggested.9

Laslett and Harrison'sanalysis

of

6John Demos, A Fittle Commonwealth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970);

Philip Greven, Four Generations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970); Daniel Scott

Smith, "Population, Family and Society in Hingham MA 1635-1880," (University of

California, Berkeley,Ph.D. dissertation, 1975); Richard Bushman, From Puritan to

Yankee (New York: Norton, 1970); Kenneth Lockridge, A New England Town (New

York: Norton, 1970); Michael Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms (New York: Knopf,

1970);Susan

Norton, "PopulationGrowth in Colonial America:

Ipswich MA,"Population Studies, 25 (1971), 433?52.

7John Murrin, "Review Article," History and Theory,

11(1972), 226-75 ;James Henretta,

"TheMorphology

of New England Society," Journal of Interdisciplinary History,2

(1971-72), 379-98.8

Murrin, "Review Article," 231 ;David Hackett Fischer, Growing Old inAmerica (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1977); John Demos, "Old Agein

Early New

England,"in

John Demos and Sarane Boocock (eds.), Turning Points (London:

University of Chicago Press, 1978), 248-87; Ralph J. Crandall, "NewEngland's

Second Great Migration," NEHGR, 133 (1975), 349; David Grayson Allen, In English

Ways (ChapelHill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981); idem, "Both

Englands,"

in David D. Hall and David Grayson Allen, (eds.), Seventeenth-Century New England

(Boston:Colonial

Societyof

Massachusetts, 1984).9E. E. Rich, "The Population of Elizabethan England," Economic History Review, 2nd

Series, 2(1950), 247-65. Cf. E. J. Buckatzsch, "Constancy of Local Populations and

Migrationin England before 1800," Population Studies, 5 (1951) 62-69.



6 2Roger Thompson

seventeenth-century

local censuses at the midland

parishes

of

Clayworth

and

Cogenhoeseemed to show

astonishingrestlessness. Of

Clayworth, theywrote:

"A settled, rural, perfectly ordinaryStuart community could

changeits

composition bywell over half, getting

on in fact for two-thirds, in a dozen

years."10 Equally surprisingwere E. A.

Wrigley'sconclusions that the

phenom

enalpopulation growth

of London between 1550 and 1700 must have been fed

by immigrantsto the

cityfrom all over the British Isles. One in

eight peoplemust

have had someexperience

of London life in the first half of the seventeenth

century, he claimed. This was far more than in theallegedly

mobilepresent.11

The received truths of the 1940s and 1950s had been notsimply

called into

question ; theyhad been reversed. The assumed settledness of old worlds and

restlessness ofnew were

replaced by theirexact

opposites.This revolution is

clearlyrecorded in

Bailyn's recently publishedThe

Peopling

ofBritish North America. His own

vigorous prose best reflects his vividportrayal

of "Worlds in Motion":

Nowhere in this thinly settled land[England] did stable communities approach Malthusian

limits topopulation growth; yet people

moved continuouslyas

thoughthere were such

pressure.

The peopling of British North America was an extension outward and anexpansion in

scale of domestic mobility in the lands of the immigrants' origins, and the trans-atlantic

flow must be understood within the context of these domestic mobility patterns.

If there is one uncontroversial fact that has emerged from the past three decades, it is

that traditional society of the early modern period was a mobile society - a world in

motion.

Echoing Rich, Bailyn concludes that,

In the context of the mobility of the time, the familiar puritan exodus... as anorganized

migrationwas

nothing remarkable.... Most puritan emigrantswere normal

Englishmen

acting normally. For some the worst part of the journeywas the road journey

across

England ; their troubles ceased when theywere embarked. The Atlantic had ceased to be

a barrier and had already become ahighway.12

Instead of stolid, unchanging peasants hittingthe wilderness and

going wild,

this neworthodoxy implied

that habitualfidgets

moved to America for a rest. To

describe traditional society as amobile society looks like a contradiction in terms.

Emigration,in this new mould, seemed to throw the process of modernization

into reverse.

The revolution inmobility studies, roughly

sketched here, fitsneatly

with

otherscholarly

revisions. Oneexample

is the contention thatEnglish puritans

wereessentially conservative, reacting against Laudian, Arminian innovations

liketaking communion at a railed-in altar at the east end of the church, bowing

at the name of Jesusor

diminishingthe role of the sermon.

They emigratedin

order to conserve the purer, pre-Laudianfaith and

liturgy,and to return to the

10Peter Laslett and John Harrison, "Clayworth and Cogenhoe," in H. E. Bell and R. L.

Ollard(eds.),

HistoricalEssays Presented

toDavid Ogg (London: A.

&C. Black, 1963).11

E. A. Wrigley, "A Simple Model of London's Importancein

Changing English

Society and Economy," Past and Present, 37 (1967), 45-63.12

(New York: Knopf, 1986), 17, 20, 25-6.




primitive.13

The

stability

and social

discipline

of New

England

towns could be

explainedas a reaction to and relief from the conflict and incoherence of old

world life. Even thegrowing provincialism

of erstwhilereligious

radicals could

have arisen from the calm permanence of colonial communities-

"peaceable

kingdoms

" ?in

sharpcontrast to the

modernizing, metropolitanenthusiasms of

the mothercountry.14

Is it so far-fetched to take American Revolutionaries at

their own valuation aspreservers, custodians of

principles longsince

jettisoned

back home and brakemen on themodernizing

slide to selfishness and

corruption?15

Thediscovery

of apparent English volatility helpsto

explain other

contemporaryconcerns more

satisfactorily.The obsession shown

bycentral

government, parliamentand local

justiceswith

requiring settlement,with

hobbling

people'srestless movement, becomes more

comprehensible.16The

literary

fashion for thepicaresque,

for satires aboutinvading Scotsmen, Welshmen and

rustics in thebig city

or broadsides about country lassescorrupted by

urban vice,

likewise fall into context.17Again,

Puritancampaigning for a reformation of

manners andgovernmental

fears of disorder could well reflectheightened

social

andgeographical instability,18

as could contemporary worries about therising

incidence of melancholia andpsychic disorder.19 Perhaps

all this adds upto a

portrayalof the Great

Migrationas the

flightof dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists

frompolluting modernity.

13Robert

Ashton,"Tradition and Innovation in the Great

Rebellion,"in

J.G. A.

Pocock (ed.), Three British Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980);

Nicholas Tyack, The Anti-Calvinists (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987); T. D. Bozeman, To

Five Ancient Fives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985).14

T. H. Breen and Stephen Foster, "Social Cohesion in Seventeenth-Century New

England," Journal ofAmerican History, 60 (1973-74), 5-22; Michael Zuckerman, "The

Fabrication of Identity in Early America," William and Mary Quarterly (WMQ), 34

(1977), 194.15

Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1967); John Adams, "Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law,

No. 4," in Robert J. Taylor (ed.), The Papers of John Adam, 5 vols. (Cambridge,MA:

Belknap, 1977), 2, 123-8; Edmund Burke," Speechon Conciliation with the Colonies,

22 March1775,"

in F. G.Selby (ed.),

Burke'sSpeeches (London: Macmillan, 1895),

79-85.16

A. L. Beier, Masterless Men (London:Methuen, 198 5) ;J. F. Pound, Poverty and Vagrancy

in Tudor England (London: Longman, 1971).17

Roger Thompson, Unfit for Modest Ears (London:Macmillan, 1979) ; idem, (ed.), Samuel

Pepys's Penny Merriments (London:Constable, 1976) ;Margaret Spufford, Small Books and

Pleasant Histories (London: Methuen, 1981).18

Keith Wrightson, "The Puritan Reformation of Manners" (University of Cambridge

Ph. D. dissertation, 1974); idem, English Society ij8o-i68o (London: Hutchinson, 1982);

idem and David Levine, Population and Poverty in anEnglish Village

:Terling (London

:

Academic Press, 1979); Paul Slack (ed.), Rebellion, Popular Protest and Social Change in

Early Modern England (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1984); Peter Clark and

Paul Slack

(eds.),

Crisis and Order in

English

Towns

(London: Routledge, 1974).19 Robert Burton, Anatomy ofMelancholy (London: Dent, 1961); L. C. Knights, Drama and

Society in theAge of Jonson (London:Chatto, 1937) ;Michael Macdonald, Mystical Bedlams

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).



64 Roger Thompson

III

Despitesuch

satisfying coincidences, the new counter-modernization synthesis of

mobile old world?stable new has not met with universal acceptance. Two

alternative responses havedeveloped:

one hassought

toquestion

research

sources, methods and conclusions, and toquantify just

how mobile thepopulation

of early modern Britainactually

was ; the other has retested thealleged stability

of NewEngland society. Between them, these two revisionist groups have

produceda far more varied and

complicated picture.

Amajor problem

with the use ofpopulation listings

of any kind is thatthey

aresimply snapshots. They

tell how communities were constituted atspecific

moments in time. Where there are subsequent censuses, we rarely know where

the new faces in the group photographhave come from, nor where

missingfaces

havegone.20 Only by piecing together

thebiographies

of individuals can we

answerquestions

like: How far and how often didthey

move andwhy?

Were

someage groups

moreprone

tomoving

than others ? How did other factors?

economic, political, social, intellectual, religious, geographical?

affectmobility?

How didmobility affect the individual, community

andsociety?

On the English side, historians like Peter Clark, Julian Cornwall, Virginia de

John,David Hey, Margaret

and PeterSpufford

have demonstrated that the

simple kaleidoscopic pictureinferred

originally becomes agreat deal more

complexwhen viewed at local level.21

Apartfrom movement to London, where

Wrigley's model has so far stood the test of time, it has emerged that most people

travelledonly short distances. The vast

majority stayed well within a radius of

twenty miles, a knowableneighbourhood.

Astoday, young people, students,

servants-

living-indomestics or farm hands

employed by the yearor

apprentices-

and recently qualified journeymen tended to be most restless.22Marriage

requireda move

byone

party, usually the wife. Thereafter, however, "settling

down" was the norm. The amount of movement has been put into truer

perspective. Thechanges

inClayworth, it has been shown, depended

more on

natural causes like birth and death than ongeographical mobility.

In the average

20MirandaChaytor, "Household and

Kinship: Ryton," History Workshop Journal,10

(1980), 27-34.21

Peter Clark, "The Migrantin Kentish Towns 1580-1640," in Clark and Slack (eds.),

Crisis and Order; Peter Clark and Paul Slack (eds.), English Towns in Transition (London:

Oxford University Press, 1976); Peter Clark (ed.), The Transformation of EnglishProvincial Towns 1600-1800 (London: Hutchinson, 1984); Julian Cornwall, "Evidence of

Population Mobility in the Seventeenth Century,

"Bulletin of the Institute of Historical

Research, 40 (1967), 142?52; Virginia De John, "To Pass Beyond the Seas"(University

of East Anglia M.A. dissertation, 1978); David Hey, An English Rural Community:

Myddle (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1974); Margaret Spufford, ContrastingCommunities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); Peter Spufford, "Population

Mobility

in

Seventeenth-Century England,"

Focal

PopulationStudies, 4

(1970),41-50.

22Ann Kussmaul, Servants inHusbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge

:Cambridge

University Press, 1981).




decade

only

one in twelve

people

were newcomers to the

village

and the same

proportion departed, perhaps only temporarilyor to a

nearby parish.23 Typesof

movers have beenspecified. Young people

who moved tonearby

towns and

settled were often what Peter Clarke has called "BettermentMigrants";

those

whom authority harried asvagabonds, however, were "Subsistence

Migrants,"

vagrant workers, criminal gangs, trampsand discarded women.24 John

Patten has

distinguishedrelative

magneticfields of different kinds of destinations, from the

feeblepull

ofvillages only

as far asneighbouring communities, through

the

attraction of market, industrial orport

towns to the broader field ofprovincial

capitalslike Norwich or Bristol. Over all, of course, loomed the southeastward

magnet of London.25 Different kinds of husbandryand land tenure induced

variedmigration patterns

too.People

belowyeoman

rank incereal-growing

regionswere more

likelyto have to move

(because of economicpressures)

than

their counterparts withcushioning by-employments

and securer tenures in the

wood-pastureor

fenland-edge districts.26 Finally,economic

depressions,such as

occurred in the 1620s and 1630s, had short-term effects onpopulation

movements.

Anthony Salerno, surveying emigrationfrom Wiltshire to America in the 1630s

and 1650s, concludes that for the young unmarried voyagers the usualEnglish

safety valves, the pasture areas, local towns, or, ultimately, London, were all

closed because economicdepression

hadalready

led to saturation. America was

the nextstep

in bettermentmigration.27

As well asage, motives and tenures, the

perspectivesof different classes and

occupational groups need to be distinguished. Gentlemen, graduate clergymenand

entrepreneursin the cloth trade would have wider

perspectivesthan semi

literate tenant farmers or labourers.They

could beexpected

to be more

"modern" than the peasantry,more

open tochange

and morelikely

to travel

around a wider area both in theirprofessional

and familialcapacities.

Certain

occupations,like doctors, carpenters

orglaziers, depended

onmobility.

Even

farmers had to go to market. Residence also affects mind-set. The range of

contacts of a craftsman in acity

or aninnkeeper

on ahighway

would begreater

than a weaver's in a market town and greater still than a servant maid's on an

isolated farm.Finally religion

affected mindsright

down the social scale, as recent

studies ofpopular

belief andunderstanding

have shown. Puritanism, inparticular,

often widened perspectives. Not only did Puritan ministers frequently travel

over wide areas topreach

and lecture, but thelaity

were known togo up

totwenty

23W. R. Prest, "Stability and Change

in Old and New England: Clayworth and

Dedham,"

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (1976), 359?74.24

Clark, "Migrant in Kentish Towns."25

John Patten, "Patterns of Migration and Movement of Labour to Three Pre-Industrial

East Anglian Towns," Journal of Historical Geography,2

(1976), 111?29; idem,

"PopulationDistribution in Norfolk and Suffolk," Journal of the Institute of British

Geographers, 65 (1975), 45-65.26

Margaret Spufford, Contrasting Communities-, Alan Everitt, "Farm Labourers," in Joan

Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England, 7 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge

UniversityPress,

1967),4, 464?78.

27Anthony Salerno, "Social Background

toSeventeenth-Century Emigration

to

America," Journal of British Studies, 19 (1979), 31-52. The author also pointsout that

the centres from which Wiltshiremen emigratedwere hotbeds of religious radicalism.

The Modern Republicans 245



66 Roger Thompson

miles to hear the sermons of favourite divines. This kind of movement needs to

bedistinguished

fromresponding

either to the urbanpull

or the financialpush.28

These detailedfindings certainly

call into doubt theprevious picture

of the

British Isles in constant ferment. For most individuals there would belong

periodswhen residential stasis was the rule

?throughout childhood, for instance,

or for much of married life. Movement usuallycame

duringadolescence and,

perforce,for the few who achieved it, old age. Furthermore, those who left home,

youngwomen who married out of their

parishesor

apprentices learninga trade,

normally stayed within familiar territory. It wasonly the underclass of subsistence

migrants (whose numbers may well have beenexaggerated)

who weregenuinely

rootless. Eventhey

were tethered or beaten back to their homeparishes by poor

laws and local officials.

These refinements and restatements also coincide morehappily

with the

conclusions of scholars inneighbouring

fields. For instance, theconcept

of the

traditional county communityand the

phenomenonof

"persistent localism,"

which seem tofly

in the face ofinstability

andvolatility,

can be moreeasily

reconciled with thefinding

that mostmigration

was adolescent and small-scale.29

Along-term stability

ofmiddle-aged

marriedcouples

would likewiseexplain

the

persistenceof

strong community control, family disciplineand the maintenance

ofrelatively high

moral standards bythe great majority of the

population.Their

decline is often taken as a clearsign

of the onset of-modernization.30

IV

Conclusions about the extent of colonialrerooting

were never so clearcut, as

Bailyn recognizes. Despitethe agreement by

several scholars on the essential

stabilityof New

England townships,others have arrived at

conflicting

conclusions. Sumner Powell, John Demos, Linda Bissell, Timothy Breen and

StephenFoster uncovered considerable amounts of

outmigrationand

dispersal,

especially by younger people.31 Reanalysisof Dedham's records found that its

28David Hey, Family History and Local History (London: Longman, 1987) has an excellent

survey and exhaustivebibliography

of recentEnglish

research. See also Peter Clark and

David Souden(eds.), Migration

andSociety

inEarly

ModernEngland (London:

Hutchinson, 1987). Alan Everitt, "The Marketing ofAgricultural Produce," in Thirsk

(ed.), Agrarian History, 4, 467?537.29

The classic pioneeringaccount is A. M. Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great

Rebellion (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1966); idem, Change in the Provinces

(Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1969). For the colonies, T. H. Breen, "Persistent

Localism," WMQ, 32 (1975), 3-28.30

Peter Laslett and Karla Oosterveen, "Long-term Trends in Bastardyin

England,"

Population Studies, 2.7 (1973), 255?84; Peter Laslett, Family Life and Illicit Love

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); P. E. H. Hair, "Bridal Pregnancy,"

Population Studies, 20(1966), 233?43; idem, "Bridal Pregnancy Further Examined,"

Population Studies, 24 (1970), 59-70; Edward Shorter, The Making of theModern Family

(London: Collins, 1976);Lawrence

Stone,The

Family,Sex and

Marriagein

England,1j00-1800 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977).31

Sumner Chilton Powell, PuritanVillage (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press,

1963); Demos, Fittle Commonwealth; Linda Auwers Bissell, "From One Generation to




statistical appearance of

greater

rootedness was

entirely

due to its inhabitants

living longerthan their

Clayworth counterparts.32 Community studies by

Stephen Innes, Daniel Vickers and ChristineHeyrman

have thrown into

questionthe

utopianism, corporateness and evenChristianity of

fishingand

frontier towns.Exploitation

of land, sea and poorer neighbours by capitalist

entrepreneursseems much more the order of the

day.33Researchers

seekingto

explainthe

long-termcauses of witchcraft accusations have

dislodgedhornets'

nests ofgrudges and feuds within New

Englandtowns.

Boyer and Nissenbaum

associated the vendetta at SalemVillage

with conflict between traditionalists and

modernizers.34 JohnWalters saw

transplanted English regional rivalries,

exacerbated bydifferent levels of

development,as another source of new-world

conflict.35 The volume ofpeople returning

toEngland, beginning

witheighty

from the Arbella fleet andswelling

after 1640, alsochallenges

the claims of

contentment and settledness made for the colonists.36According

to Andrew

Delbanco, many were beset with thefrustrating

sense ofhaving

missed the

apocalypticboat

bytoo

hastily boardingthe transatlantic one.37

New-world conservatism has beenquestioned

too.Although migrants

from

Hingham, Norfolk, might respondin

English ways to localchallenges

in

Hingham, MA, genuineradical reforms also occurred in New

England.

Magistratesand townsmen were not

usuallyelected in

England.The

Massachusettslegal

coderepresented

agiant leap

forward fromEnglish

practice.38The colonies

dispensedwith church hierarchies, lay patronage of

incumbents, ecclesiastical courts and clerical pluralism. These changes were

impressiveinnovations to set

againsta

clingingto the past. The

puritans may

Another: Windsor CT," WMQ, 31 (1974), 79-110; T. H. Breen and Stephen Foster,

"Movingto the New World," WMQ, 30 (1973), 189-222.

32Prest,

"

Stability and Change.

"

33Stephen Innes, Fabor in aNew Fand: Springfield (Princeton

:Princeton University Press,

1983) ;Daniel Vickers, "Work and Life on the Fishing Periphery of Essex County MA,

1630-75," in David D. Hall and David Grayson Allen (eds.), Seventeenth-Century New

England (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1984); Christine Heyrman,

Commerce and Culture: Maritime Communitiesof

Colonial Massachusetts1690-ijjo (New

York: Norton, 1984).34

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed (Cambridge,MA: Harvard

University Press, 1974): cf. John Demos, "Underlying Themes in the Witchcraft,"

American Historical Review, 75 (1970), 1311?26; idem, Entertaining Satan (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1982); Roger Thompson, "'Holy Watchfulness' and

Community Conformism,"

New England Quarterly (NEQ), 56 (1983), 504-22.35

John J.Walters, "Hingham,MA 1631? 61," Journal of Social History,

1(1967?68),

351-70.36

Harry S. Stout, "TheMorphology

of Remigration: New England University Men

1640-60," Journal of American Studies, 10(1975), 151?72.

37Andrew Delbanco, "The Puritan Errand Re-Viewed,

"

Journal of American Studies, 18

(1984), 343-60;idem, The Puritan Ordeal

(Cambridge

:Harvard

UniversityPress,

1989).38Bradley Chapin,

Criminal JusticeinColonial America (Athens, GA :

University of Georgia

Press, 1983); G. B. Warden, "Law Reform inEngland and New

England," WMQ, 35

(1978), 668-90.3-2



68 Roger Thompson

have

despaired

of

achieving

the

cleansing they

desired while still in

England,

but

theseprophets

did much more thanmerely cry in the wilderness.

Nor should weslight

the enormouspolitical, religious

and economic ferment

of the firstgeneration.

NewEngland

was new, and, theoreticallyat least, new

placesare much more

opento

experiment,debate and

change.The Massachusetts

Charter wasadapted

almost out ofrecognition

within four years of arrival. It was

not soeasy in New

Englandas in old to silence

RogerWilliams or Thomas

Hooker orJohn

Cotton or a host of other clerical and lay radicals.39

However, the balance has beentipped

backrecently

towards traditionalist

motives forcrossing

the Atlantic. New research seems to cast doubt on the Great

Migration beingan extension of betterment

migrationwithin

England.Norman

Tyack, George Selement, Virginia Anderson,David

Cressy,Kenneth

Shipps,

TimothyBreen and

StephenFoster all make cases for

reassertingthe

religious

urgeas the main spur

to voyage westward.40 Evidence from church court cases

and from recently arrivedapplicants

for churchmembership

underlines the

argument that to artisans or established yeomenor minor gentry New

England

would morelikely spell

economic detriment than betterment. The Netherlands a

few hours across the North Sea wouldprovide

bothreligious

toleration and

greater economicopportunities,

it is claimed. Onlya

burningmission to conserve

a threatenedgod-centred society could have moved middle-class, middle-aged

migrantsto risk all in the wilderness.

Thevitality

ofearly

modernmigration

studies is confirmed bynew and

pending publications. Frank Thistlethwaite's Dorset Pilgrims, a finely craftednarrative of the Mary

andJohn migrants from the west country to Dorchester MA

and then Windsor CT, confirms the view that culturalbaggage weighed heavy

and that old-world outlooks survived thesea-change.41

Thisinterpretation

is

carried to its ultimate in David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed. Fischer's "seed"

is Herbert Baxter Adams's"germ"

in modern dress.Minimizing

theimpact

of

the new world, Fischer traces fourEnglish "folkways"

as thedistinguishing

culturalshapers

of colonial NewEngland, Virginia, the Delaware

Valleyand the

Appalachian backcountry.Their

legacy"remains the most

powerfuldeterminant

of avoluntary society

in the United Statestoday."

One would be more confident

of this ambitiousstudy

if it were less hidebound byits thesis and more familiar

with the English background.42 My forthcoming study of over 2,000 East

39Edmund S. Morgan (ed.), Puritan Political Ideas

(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965);

Robert E. Wall, Massachusetts :The Crucial Decade 1640-jo (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1972); T. H. Breen, The Character ofa Good Ruler (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1970).40

Norman C. P. Tyack,

"The Humbler Puritans of East Anglia and the New England

Movement," NEHGR, 138 (1984), 79-106; George Selement, "Meeting of Minds,"

WMQ, 41 (1984), 32-48; Breen and Foster, "Movingto the New World"; Virginia

De

John Anderson, "Migrants and Motives:Religion

and Settlement in Early New

England," NEQ, 58 (1985), 339-83 ;David Grayson Allen respondedwith "Matrix of

Motivation," NEQ, 59 (1986), 408-18; David Cressy, Coming Over (New York:

Cambridge UniversityPress,

1987);

Kenneth A.

Shipps,

"Puritan

Emigration

to New

England: A New Source on Motivation," NEHGR, 135 (1981), 83-97.41

(London: Barrie and Rockliffe, 1989).42

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).




Anglian emigrants

to New

England during

the 1630s has found that the

greatmajority

had come fromlong-settled

ancestries andpersonally

stable back

grounds. The trauma ofuprooting

and transatlantic relocation was minimized

bytheir

movingalmost

exclusivelyin groups, by

theirpersonal

and residential

longevityin New

Englandand by their

rapid sinkingof roots there. They were,

quite literally,settlers. Few of the different

occupational groups betrayeda zest

for modernization. Preservation of traditional norms and values was the aim of

their errand into the wilderness.

Mobilitystudies have been on the move

duringthe last

thirty years. The

presentconsensus holds that most

peopleabove the destitute in

Englandand

NewEngland

moved onlyshort distances and remained rooted in familiar

neighbourhoods.With

majornew studies in the

pipeline, however,we

maydoubt

whether this will remain the state of the art forlong.43

43Virginia De John Anderson's adaptation of her Harvard University Ph.D. dissertation

of 1987 is expectedin the spring of 1991; Susan Hardman Moore is completing

an

important study of remigration between 1640 and 1660; Stephen Fender has just

completeda

study of the rhetoric of early migration,to be published by Cambridge later

this year.

Early Modern Migration

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