Note 536 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN. (continued 3)

The character of the New Canaan as a political pamphlet of the time, intended to effect a given result in a particular quarter, has already been referred to. (Supra, pp. 68-9.) In this respect the present chapter is the most significant one in the book. It was intended to act on the well-known prejudices of Archbishop Laud, the head and controlling spirit of that Board of Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations which then had supreme authority over the colonies. To that Board Morton dedicated his book; and at the time he was writing it the Lords Commissioners, and especially the Archbishop, were taking active measures to vacate the Massachusetts charter and to assume the direct government of the colonies. It is its connection with these facts which alone gives any great degree of historical value to the present chapter. In itself it is not deserving of careful annotation, as it contains nothing that is new, and the ground is much better covered by Lechford in his Plaine Dealing. Like Morton, Lechford was a lawyer; and, unlike Morton, he was by nature a devout man. A member of the Church of England he has given in his book a remarkably vivid and fair-minded description of the practice of the New England churches during the earliest days of the settlement. Mr. Trumbull’s very learned and elaborate notes to his edition of the Plaine Dealing, which is the edition referred to in the notes to the present chapter, have cleared up Lechford’s text wherever it is obscure; and they obviate the necessity of any careful annotation of the present chapter, except where it is desirable to call notice to the special bearing any particular assertion made may be supposed to have had on Archbishop Laud’s idiosyncrasies.