Reading William Penn and John Winthrop | A Primary Source Close Read w/ BRI

0:04 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Bill of Rights Institute’s. Primary Source Close Readings. My name is Kirk Higgins. I’m the director of content at the Bill of Rights Institute, and I am joined once again by my colleague, Tony Williams. Kirk? Hello everyone. How are you doing, Tony? I’m doing great. Great. Well, I’m excited to talk to you today. We’ve got two great documents again to look at.

0:27 These are from the earliest parts of American history, looking at the colonial era, so specifically looking at John Winthrop’s Modell of Christian Charity speech from 1630, and a letter from William Penn trying to recruit colonists to Pennsylvania in 1683.

0:49 So I’m excited, looking forward to the conversation. Yeah, I think these are some great documents that will be very useful for teachers and students in the classroom. Yeah, I think so, too. And as I’m pulling this up here, I think specifically what’s interesting to me is looking at how these showcase the diversity of colonists coming over

1:13 and reasons why colonists came over during this period. I think we often think about the colonial period in colonists coming over, and I think we think about the Pilgrims and we think about Puritans, and then we think later about how those colonists eventually were into the British Empire and got to the American Revolution. And these two documents, I think, gave us a good opportunity to pause and sort of look at that diversity and what the colonists were coming over

1:37 here for, what they were thinking about, and how it was that their experience was shaped, I think, by their purpose in wanting to migrate to North America. Yeah. Different purposes here, differently framed documents and lots to talk about. Yeah. So we’ll dive right into John Winthrop.

1:59 And just to give us some background, Tony, who’s John Winthrop? Why is he talking about the Modell of Christian Charity? What’s happening in 1630 that he’s giving this address? Right. Well, as we know, the Sepratists came over about a decade before and established themselves at Plymouth.

2:22 And now we have the settlement at Massachusetts Bay, and Governor Winthrop is delivering a service to his fellow passengers. And we have really sort of beginnings of a very large migration of thousands of people. Right. The colony has been established

2:46 or colonies, and they are successful after some difficulties. But now we have a very large wave of migrants coming over, and particularly in the form of families, which is, of course, very different than what was going on down in Virginia at Jamestown.

3:07 Great. And so, looking at the speech itself, this is a work that is cited often throughout American history. It’s really one of those seminal documents that we return to again and again. But there’s a few different passages that really stood out to me. One being the second paragraph on this page. Starting with secondly. For the work we have in hand. It is by mutual consent.

3:28 Through a special overvaluing providence in a more than ordinary approbation of the churches of Christ to seek out a place of cohabitation and consortship under a due form of government. Both civil and ecclesiastical. That’s a lot of words packed into a short little span there.

3:49 But it seems like Winthrop is really calling out that this is going to be a specific kind of government, and maybe it’s coming from his experience with Puritan theology, but it’s interesting that he’s really calling out that a place of cohabitation, of civil and ecclesiastical government.

4:14 And those two things seem to be what’s he doing there? Tony, I guess I’m sort of grasping straws what’s he trying to frame up there. Well, I think most fundamentally and most simply, he’s just trying to point out that we have a common purpose here and we need to work together and very important glues holding society together.

4:38 Okay? If they’re going to succeed, if they’re going to establish this colony, they’re going to have sole authorities, they’re going to have the rule of law, they’re going to have some form of self government, and they’re going to have laws to follow. And there’s also an ecclesiastical or sort of religious and church authority as well.

5:01 And of course, these were Puritans, and so they had their congregationalist Modell of Christianity also rooted in Calvinist theology. And so this temporal, secular kind of civil purpose to what they’re doing. But then there’s also a larger,

5:21 obviously religious purpose that the Puritans have in mind, and in many ways that’s why they were coming over. Yeah. And it seems very clear that they are forming this civil body, which I think is interesting. It’s very conscious that they are coming together to form a government under laws, but that those laws aren’t the only thing that is then ruling over them,

5:46 especially for students trying to get into that. Obviously, the writing here is tough, right? I mean, it doesn’t roll off the tongue in a way that we’re used to. The cadence and pattern are a little bit different. But I do think breaking out, especially, even those last two sentences,

6:07 I think really taking a look closely at those and breaking them apart, you start to get to the idea of what he’s trying to what it is that he’s saying. And I think it’s important to keep in mind the preeminence of religion in the minds of these colonists, these Puritans who are coming over here, who had seen oppression in England and were looking for a place to escape that.

6:29 But it’s interesting. They’re not coming to escape completely. There’s still an idea that that has value and that they’ll need to continue that governance just in a way that promotes, I think, their freedom and their opportunity to worship, certainly. And the more mundane as well. Their very lives are estate

6:52 their security against, let’s say, European attacks from the French and Spanish, et cetera, or Native American attack. There are other dangers. Disease, starvation, et cetera. And so they have to bind themselves together. They’re bound religiously,

7:12 and we’ll talk about that a lot more, but they’re also bound together civilly. They have to work together. Right. And they have to some degree, put the common good above their own individual self interest. Yeah. And you see more of that common interest here.

7:33 I think in a sentence, it begins with fourthly for the means whereby this must be affected. Here again, they’re looking at that commonality, that which the most in their church maintain is truth and professionally. We must bring into familiar and constant practice, as in the duty of love.

7:56 We must love brotherly without dissimulation. We must love one another with a pure heart. Fervently it seems like he’s saying what’s binding them together is the action of going over to the colonies, but that it’s the practicing of their faith. And it almost seems like they’re saying that the act of going over here is sort of a tenet of their faith.

8:16 Is that fair to say? Or is it that they’re hoping to really just bring this out in the actions that they’re going to be taking when they get to the North America? Well, it’s both, right? I mean, they have religious duties to each other as Christians, but again,

8:38 there’s a silver component, that temporal component that we need to stick together. And you see this, there’s a duty of love, there’s a brotherly love. We must love one another with a pure heart, bury each other’s burdens, not like only our own things, but on the things of our brethren, right?

9:00 There’s common good and there’s a common purpose that I spoke of earlier. But underlying all that, obviously, is a religious outlook about your duty to your fellow human beings as Christians. And so the two are really woven together in this document somewhat seamlessly.

9:23 It’d be interesting to see what the students thought about that, whether it’s really separated or not. But I think that the two working tandem pretty seamlessly. Yeah, I think what’s interesting here, and we’ll contrast this a little bit when we get to the Penn reading, but it seems like that there’s a shared belief and there’s

9:46 a shared commonality that’s very tight here. Right. And so there’s a decision being made to go to North America by this discrete body of individuals who have these shared tenants, and that is what then they’re going to build their community on. And I think it will be interesting when we get to Penn to see if that kind of thing is there.

10:08 And if it’s not there, what that then means, right? How is it that one builds a community that doesn’t have maybe that same really tightly woven fabric of a particular set of elements of belief?

10:29 But I think you’re right. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I think you’re right. And I also think that some of it may be unstated or not, or sometimes they may be trying to achieve a somewhat different purpose in terms of how they’re framing the settlement. So it’ll be interesting to compare those two documents.

10:50 Yeah. And I think part of what we’re talking about, what it is that uniting them together for the Puritans, obviously, it’s this Covenant Theology, right? And I think that is very much borne out on this line, starting with line 35 here, and talking about what it is that’s connecting this community of people.

11:15 Could you speak a little bit, Tony, about covenant theology? What is it that is at the core that Winthrop is trying to draw on here? And why was that such a, I guess a uniting factor for this group of individuals that was going to North America, right? Well, the Puritans believe that the Church of England was corrupt and had too much

11:40 Roman Catholic practices still in it and just was wrong-headed in his theology. And so they were going to come to the New World and build what you will call a city upon a hill and establish a pure church, right? That’s where we get the name Puritan. They’re going to purify the church of its Anglican corruption and it’s going

12:03 to establish a pure form here in the New World, in their wilderness, if you will. That covenant is simply an agreement, a compact with God. And they saw themselves as a new Israel, that they were chosen people, and that if they kept their faith in God and they were virtuous and walked in God’s ways,

12:30 then they would be blessed and they’d be prosperous and everything would go well. If they didn’t, though, if they broke that covenant, if their faith wavered, if their society was filled with sin, then God would punish them in some way. So it’s really sort of as simple as that. And, you know, God’s punishment might take

12:52 the form of, let’s say, an epidemic like disease, like smallpox. There might be a particularly difficult winter and very little food. So it’d be sort of these temporal punishments here on earth. As the chosen people,

13:13 they were blessed that they also had many duties and responsibilities to God. And as a side note, this plays itself out politically, economically, and the family socially, throughout all of society, that all the Pearsons were knit together

13:33 by a covenant, as I said, politically, they’d have to obey the rulers and the rulers would have to be just in society. People have responsibilities, but they also maybe have greater power in economic dealings. They would have to be honest with each other and be fair.

13:56 And so it plays itself out throughout society that’s coming in theology. Yeah. And again, I think it’s that uniting factor. Right. So it seems to be that their motivation for going is also so that they can have the opportunity to live this out in the way that they need to. It seems that the opportunity of coming to North America is allowing them to sort

14:22 of structure and build the church that they want to have seen built. Right. And the relationship then with the civil covenant or the civil governing body would be to ensure that it’s being directed towards right ends, I guess. Is that fair? Oh yeah.

14:44 In every way that I mentioned before. And you see that in this documentary, you see the religious covenant component to it, but you also see the civil covenant and how it plays itself out economically, politically, socially, et cetera. Yeah. And here again, he’s talking about what they need to do in order to accomplish that.

15:04 Right. Talking about the weaving together of those elements and what it means to maintain a community, too. It seems to be very much that they’re concerned about what it would be to move away. But also, I think, if you think about it as these are a group of individuals who are about to go and embark into an unknown world to them.

15:29 And it seems here that at least this section runs out to me as this is gearing up to know that there’s going to be tough times coming and that we’re going to need to fall back on these ideals for us to maintain our civil order and maintain the society that we’re building and to continue them in maintaining that.

15:51 To pursue the ends that their faith decrees. It seems to me. Yeah. There’s a lot of civic virtues here, again, as you say, informed by their religion, but then also with some great application to society. They have to follow the Council of Micah by being just, by being merciful with one

16:14 another, by being humble, by showing humility. You go down about five lines we’re going to uphold the commerce with each other, a friendship, we’re going to uphold relationships with each other, and meekness and gentleness, we’re going to be patient, we’re going to be liberal with one another. Right. A lot of great virtues on there so that they can thrive together

16:38 in this covenant and therefore serve their larger covenant with God. And you see the ways they’re going to again, unite in that spirit of a common purpose in that second to last sentence. They’re going to mourn together, rejoice together, labor together, suffer together, and do everything together as a community.

17:00 Yeah. And all to be the city upon a hill. Right. To be the quintessential example of what it is to the world. I think that they wanted to Modell, which I think again goes to the speech,

17:21 the title of Speech a Modell of Christian Charity. But it also seems to me, resident, that their goal at the outset is to say, hey, we’re going to draw this line and try to live up to it. And I liked on the previous slide, we’re looking at mourn together, rejoice together, labor together, all towards building this thing that’s larger than themselves, larger than the community.

17:44 And that, to me, I think, if people do are familiar with the speech, usually it’s that line, we shall be as a city upon a hill as the one that rings out. But I think what that city on the hill is, I think, is this dedication to the community to build this example that can be shown

18:05 throughout the world as an example of what they’re going to do, which for a group of colonists who haven’t set foot in North America yet, who are this speech is given in England, as I recall, and that’s a tall task. Right. That’s a bold thing to say and to set out to do. And it certainly isn’t going to be without challenges, I think.

18:31 Yeah. And some people might see this idea of believing that they were got shoozing people or a city upon a hill as somewhat arrogant, but really it carried a great deal of responsibility. Right. And so they were going to establish that pure church here in the New World in North America, and that was going to be the Modell.

18:54 And the idea was that they would probably go back to the someday and once England had reformed itself based upon the Puritan Modell here in America. They would go back once it was pure enough that they would be that shiny example for all the world. And really in many ways reform Christianity writ large.

19:16 From that example, we get this idea of A City upon a Hill. And then I would argue that over the course of time it becomes somewhat secularized right, according to our political philosophy, with ideals related to the American founding of Republican self-government.

19:40 And we are going to be a nation of democracy for the world and a nation of liberty, and we’re going to set that example and that other countries around the world will then follow that political example. Originally, it was a theological example and then later on it becomes that political example for the world as well.

20:01 Yeah. And that develops many ways, I think, throughout American history. And I think the idea that this was one of the early addresses about the purpose of coming to a new world, even that made New World so it has connotations of shaping what they thought was an uninhabited, unshaped land.

20:23 And I think it’s interesting that this is the speech that people tend to look back on as the beginning of some of those trends, what kind of example North America could be and eventually the United States could be on a world stage. It’s something that I think has been returned to time and again.

20:47 And I think it’s interesting from that perspective. And again. Putting on the lens of what was it these individuals were thinking about as they were going to go over. The fact that they are setting themselves this goal of being that modell. Like you said. I think encumbers them with the responsibility to live up to it and set themselves the challenge of living up to it. Even as the language came across as being sort of self assured that they’ll be able

21:13 to accomplish this and they’ll be the ones that everyone’s looking to. It’s really interesting how this plays out over American history, as you said. I mean, this is really a very specific document for very specific community in a specific locale. Right. This is not a sermon or speed show is delivered

21:36 for all of the American colonies, for example. It’s really kind of restricted to its time and place and yet it’s become, in many ways almost American sort of secular scripture. Right. This idea of a city upon a hill has really resonated for Americans as an exceptional or as a unique nation

22:05 because of its republican self government, because of its ideals of liberty, because of the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. And yet we’ve really shaded the meaning from the original document and really from its original intent and time and place.

22:26 So it’s rather interesting how it’s been used over time, particularly by politicians, to share their vision of what America is. Yeah absolutely. So thinking about the intent of what John Winthrop was doing, we’ll switch over to the other document for our readings

22:48 this week, which is Penn’s Letter recruiting colonistst in 1683. So we’re moving up a few years, 50 years, which is consequential. 50 years is a long time. That’s a couple of generations of individuals. I don’t really know how they measure generations these days, but I think it’s one or two. But Europe is changing during this time.

23:10 The conflicts from the 1630s have continued, but are beginning to change shape a little bit. In Europe, the pressures are changing and the reasons colonists are coming to North America is changing somewhat, too. So I like these two in dialogue with one another because you see Winthrop in 1630 thinking about really making the case

23:32 to his congregation as to why they are coming to North America. What is it they’re going to accomplish when they get to North America. And here you see William Penn taking a very different tactic in his recruitment. So I think it’s really interesting. So starting right here at the beginning, Penn is opening by saying, hey,

23:57 this is fertile land that is beautiful all the time, and you should definitely come over here because there’s going to be great opportunities for you, Britains, to come here and settle in this new fertile territory.

24:17 Why is Penn addressing colonists this way? Who is he recruiting? What’s going on in Pennsylvania that is so different from the Massachusetts Bay Colony 50 years before? Right. Yeah. That’s a lot to unpack. But this is really an example of promotional literature, right?

24:38 He’s trying to appeal to a number of Quakers, middle class settlers, people who want to try to come over. Land is relatively difficult for a lot of people to come by in England and in Europe. And so this sort of fertile,

24:58 exotic continent, if you will, of just this great riches, right, and great bouncy and this kind of promotional literature. It goes back very far back in the history, but obviously there are examples with Columbus and promoting his voyages and promoting the New World in England.

25:23 They were doing this in the 1570s, 1580s, 1590s and into the 1600s for Jamestown and other settlements like at Roanoke. And they were trying to induce people to come over. And so they would engage in exaggeration and hyperbole and try to draw

25:49 settlers and just sort of extol or praise all the great riches and bounty, come to the New World and get rich, basically, is what they’re saying. There’s also kind of an interesting underlying second strain of this that really goes back

26:09 way back into the Renaissance and even medieval period in really ancient world. One of travel literature in which a lot of ordinary Europeans are people without the means to really travel very far outside their city or their village would be exposed to these new and exotic

26:32 places like Travels in Arcolo or other examples. And they just abound of travelers who share their journals or wrote books about their travels. And it really opened up new lands, new people, new customs and foods

26:56 and new locales and exotic places to the European imagination. And so they would be really very drawn to this kind of thing. This travel literature was extremely popular for centuries. And so I think it’s part recruitment, very large part recruitment, but also there’s some of this underlying

27:19 travel literature that really appeals to people, especially those with less opportunity in England and Europe, especially for land ownership. Yeah, I think that really rings out, saying number two, the air is sweet and clear, the heavens serene. Like the south parts of France rarely overcast,

27:41 and as the woods come by numbers of people to be more clear, that itself will refine. So I think it’s pretty entertaining that I didn’t know that Pennsylvania was hardly ever overcast, but they’re really trying to sell the atmosphere, what the land is like,

28:02 and set the tone for this just beautiful area that you go down. The waters are generally good for the rivers and brooks have mostly gravel and stony bottom. And it’s those details that I think really get called out, which wasn’t all part of John Winthrop’s presentation. Right. John Winthrop’s presentation was much more

28:24 ideologically driven, religiously driven, much more setting the tone for what was going to happen when that community of individuals arrived. And that was something we touched on before, thinking about it in terms of he’s not necessarily recruiting a single community of individuals, but instead a type of person who is wanting to come

28:45 and make the most of the opportunity of these lands and of this settlement. Which is interesting because it’s not as though William Penn was absent a religious movement, sort of a religious drive for what he was trying to establish in Pennsylvania.

29:09 But it seems a much more open invitation. I guess calling it an invitation, I think is even something that you could probably say of this that you couldn’t say of a Modell of Christian charity. It’s kind of interesting. The Puritans have the theological purpose in mind, and the settlers have bought into it. That’s why they’re going. And so it’s just kind of assumed

29:32 that there will be fishing and woods and farmland and there’ll be all the tangible things that they’ll need to survive. And here, it’s not that the settlers are bereft of theology, because many of them are Quakers or other Christians, and yet

29:56 this is definitely more focused on the practical, whereas the theological maybe just kind of assumed somewhat mirror images of each other. But as we looked at this document, you can see very quickly right, it’s appealing to someone who wants to take advantage of opportunity, like you said.

30:16 Right? The farm one, I’m about to grate for the land. Right. Well, who wants that? Well farmers planters who wants rivers for transportation, to transport their goods and so forth, have a water source to water their crops and so forth. Well, obviously farmers talked about the trees.

30:37 Right? You need trees for furniture and to build homes, and if you want to build some ships to travel on, either on the rivers or on the ocean. And there was in another section talking about fruits and vegetables, so you can have a rich and varied diet and so forth.

30:59 All of that is really important as the students going through this thing about what purposes are they going to use these trees for, what are they going to look at the great variety of crops that grow there? Right? These are farmers who are really going to be attracted to having this land and having it extremely fertile,

31:23 just to provide for all their needs and really make self sufficient farms or self sufficient communities trading with each other. Yeah. And here we have this word that was not at all in John Winter speech, but profit. Right. It’s very clear that it’s here for food and profit.

31:47 This is an opportunity to make money, even as it’s a beautiful new country. I don’t necessarily think that the profit is intended to be exploitative or that it’s exploiting the land in some way that’s negative, but just saying that this abounds and that there’s an opportunity here to better ourselves

32:09 in all these different ways, and it goes on the list down here. The creatures for profit only by skin or fur they have to make natural to these parts. The wildcat panther, otter, wolf, fox, fisher, mink, muskrat, all of this deliberately. It’s not just about settlement, as it was for John Winthrop, and it’s not just about the idea of setting an example,

32:32 a religious example in that or some sort of a Modell, but instead it’s for the purpose of betterment of condition in some capacity. Right. If you work hard, you’ll be able to take care of this bounty. I mean, I want to go here. That’s great, right? I mean, there’s fur that you can sell and get rid of.

32:56 You can keep warm in the winter. There’s plenty of animals to hunt at the top. There’s fishing with just bounds and the great variety. A lot of those domesticated animals can also do labor on your farms. If you’re very sporting.

33:17 You can hunt whale for oil there. It’s just that the variety of the bounty is just, again, sort of there for the taking. But it’s going to require certain virtues, right? You’re going to have to be bold, you’re going to be courageous. Taking a chance on going to this new world might not work out for everyone.

33:40 Right. You don’t get that sense here. But you’re going to have to work really hard and go there and start your own farm and keep it going. It’s going to be a lot of hard work. And so there’s a lot of character virtues that it doesn’t really address but are implicit in the message.

34:02 But it’s an extremely bountable area, apparently. Yeah. And I think you’re right. In saying it is implicit even in the beginning they said that there’s still a lot of acreage of woods to be cut down but when it is cut down we can improve it here in 11 they’re talking about that there’s areas of great virtue there’s plans of great virtue but there’s

34:26 different ways of accessing it and working on building up those skills and so I think it’s implicit that look. This land is here it’s not going to just going to be there to be taken but if you work you’ll be able to take advantage of these things and in order to do that government again comes into play right?

34:50 So thinking about you’re going off as they would have seen it into an unsettled territory and so what that is needed law and order stability right that is something that people are consciously thinking about again it’s interesting that this is a part of a recruiting level that there’ll be letter that there are peacemakers chosen by every county

35:16 every county court in the nature of common arbiters to hear and end differences between man and man in spring and fall there’s an orphans court in each county too describing how the losses are going to work is interesting and seems sort of discordant with the other things we’ve been reading about the plentiful land and everything else and now all of a sudden you have this kind of tacked

35:39 on the end here but it doesn’t seem as though it’s of lesser importance it seems as though it’s of equal importance to the profitability of the land or the fertility of the land which is interesting right. Because even in this Garden of Eden right and sort of in this John Lockian and type of perfect sort of state of nature that there may be disputes right.

36:05 With neighbors and you might fight over where your land ends and where it begins it’s a reassurance to these settlers that there’s going to be a rule of law that it’s not just a free for all that sort of your rights are going to be protected your person.

36:29 Your body or your safety is going to be protected as well and so I think that that adds a little bit of reassurance don’t forget. I mean these people are just going to give up everything. Leave home. Leave their families they might have been there for just countless generations and they’re asking.

36:50 These promoters are asking them to pick up. Take a very difficult voyage across the ocean which may last a couple of months and settle in a completely unknown land right. Where there could be many dangers or threats or it could just go wrong in so many

37:13 different ways and so this reassurance of sort of rule of law. Of security. Of having your rights protected just like they would be in England I think it is really important and critical yes. Absolutely so that brings us to the end of our slideshow.

37:35 So thank you, Tony, for joining us. I really enjoyed the conversation, as always. And I wanted to note, too, that both of these primary sources are available in our new digital textbook, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. It’s a free, online US history text that we hope you all check out. But thanks for joining me. I think looking at these two different

37:56 perspectives of different colonists has been a lot of fun. So I hope we’ll see you all next time.