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An Arrow Against Profane And Promiscuous Dancing Drawn Out Of The Quiver Of The Scriptures, Increase Mather

Electronic Texts in American Studies

When a dancing master arrived in Boston in 1685 and offered lessons and classes for both sexes during times normally reserved for church meetings, the Puritan ministers went to court to suppress the practice. Increase Mather (1639-1723) took the leading part, writing and publishing this tract, which compiles arguments and precedents for the prohibition of “Gynecandrical Dancing, [i.e.] Mixt or Promiscuous Dancing, viz. of Men and Women … together.” These justifications were certainly shared with the court, which found the dancing master guilty, fined him £100, and allowed him to skip town.

Mather’s tract on dancing is an overwhelming compendium …

The Cry Of Sodom Enquired Into, Samuel Danforth

Zea E-Books in American Studies

This is a well-known execution sermon from seventeenth-century Massachusetts, delivered on the occasion of the sentencing to death of a young man convicted of bestiality—specifically of copulation with a mare, in which he was discovered in the open in broad daylight. Samuel Danforth, who wrote and delivered the sermon, would have known the condemned young man very well. Benjamin Goad had been born into Danforth’s congregation at Roxbury and had grown up under his pastoral care. Danforth was also familiar with the anguish of a parent over the death of a child, having suffered the deaths of eight of his …

Roger Longworth, James Harrison, April 20, 1671, Roger Longworth

Pemberton Correspondence Transcriptions

Letter dated April 20, 1671 (10 2mo. 1617 Old Style) from Roger Longworth in Lancaster Castle to James Harrison. He mentions Thomas Bond receiving ten pounds and fifty shillings at Lancaster but the rest is not yet paid. Longworth and his fellow prisoners wrote to the judges for more information on when they will be called to court. Longworth also mentions travel plans—possibly to London—after he is released.

Four English Histories Of The Pequod War, P. Vincentius, John Underhill, Lion Gardener, John Mason

Zea E-Books in American Studies

P. Vincentius, A True Relation of the Late Battell fought in New England, between the English, and the Salvages : With the present state of things there (1637)

John Underhill, Newes From America; or, A New and Experimentall Discoverie of New England; Containing, a Trve Relation of Their War-like proceedings these two yeares last past, with a Figure of the Indian Fort, or Palizado (1638)

Lion Gardener, Relation of the Pequot Warres [1660]

John Mason, A Brief History of the Pequot War: Especially of the memorable Taking of their Fort at Mistick in Connecticut in 1637 (1736)

Gods Promise To His Plantation, John Cotton

Zea E-Books in American Studies

The work reprinted here, in an online electronic text edition, is Cotton’s famous farewell sermon preached at the departure of the Winthrop fleet in Southampton in 1630. Gods Promise to His Plantation (1630)—courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society—is an ideological justification for engaging in such a risky venture, a promotional tract to encourage emigration, and a typological argument for possessing the wilderness. Like Winthrop’s famous A Model of Christian Charity (1630), John Cotton’s sermon is central to the Puritan experiment in the New World.

New-England Or A Briefe Enarration Of The Ayre, Earth, Water, Fish And Fowles Of That Country. With A Description Of The Natures, Orders, Habits, And Religion Of The Natives; In Latine And English Verse, William Morrell, Andrew Gaudio , Editor

Electronic Texts in American Studies

This text, a Latin poem in dactylic hexameter with an accompanying English translation in heroic verse stands as the earliest surviving work of poetry about New England and the second oldest poem whose origins can be traced directly to the British American colonies. Only two copies of the original 1625 edition are known to survive; one is held at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and the other is housed at the British Museum. The Latin portion comprises 309 lines and praises the geographic features, flora and fauna of New England, and spends a majority of its verses describing …

The Early Causes Of The Virginia-Maryland Boundary Controversy, 1627-1668., J. Taylor Ellyson

Honors Theses

The boundary disputes between Virginia and Maryland were due mainly to the haphazard way in which the King of England granted the land in the New World, but the lack of geographical knowledge, on the part of the commissioners of the colonies, and later of the states, aided much in furthering these disputes, which covered a period of about two hundred and fifty years (1632-1894), and were only ended by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.

This paper is not a history of these boundary controversies, but only that part of the subject, which led to …