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This chapter outlines Edwards’s views of the roles and tasks of a Christian minister. It also examines his pastorates and dismissal from the Northampton pulpit. It concludes that the written record of his preaching was unequaled for depth of thought and power of expression. On the sacraments, he clarified the traditional conception that the sacraments are for those who have committed themselves to being God’s people and their children, but made the process of application appear too intimidating. His exercise of church discipline was fearless, especially when confronting influential men over their unjust treatment of women.

This chapter focuses on Dublin, Trinity College, MS 432, a miscellany often neglected in criticism, with the exception of two texts within it, a romance, King Robert of Sicily, and a play, the Northampton Abraham and Isaac. Although clearly missing parts of its original contents, the manuscript displays more coherence than previously thought, and deserves a re-examination, both of the label previously given to it (miscellany; commonplace book) and of its contents. I examine formal features, such as the presentation of all the verse narratives, in what resembles a dramatic/debate format, and the association of rhyme royal with the authority figure of a ‘Doctor’. These choices were possibly informed by its compiler’s choice to record or produce dramatic pieces performed in his region/locality, perhaps for educational purposes. The compiler might have been a schoolmaster, or someone who had an interest in presenting materials of interest to one.

This book provides a discrete analysis of Military Service Tribunals. The Appeals Tribunal files and supplementary material, now held at Northampton Record Office, constituted the principal primary sources for this book. The book explores the character, functions and developing policies of the county's Tribunals generally, and of the Appeals body in particular. It then investigates how the idiosyncrasies impacted upon the consideration of cases, and, in consequence, upon local Tribunals' relationships with the Appeals body, in whose hands laid responsibility for the correction of aberrant decisions. ‘Sovereignty’ is the unifying theme of this book. Its expression within the Tribunal process evaluates the interplay of government intention, the practical application of legislation and the Tribunals' appreciation of their relative responsibilities to nation and community.

Tribunalists came from widely different backgrounds and enjoyed markedly dissimilar expectations of themselves and their immediate society. In the early months of the Tribunal system, many single young men claimed to be the only, or sole remaining, support of a widowed mother or of incapacitated parents. The Tribunals were not part of that inadvertent social experiment. The cases presented offer evidence of the self-serving idiosyncrasies reported of tribunalists elsewhere. If Northampton Borough's treatment of W.P. Townley and Leslie Wiggins suggests a certain direction to their partialities, their quixotic behaviour upon other occasions makes simplistic conclusions problematic. The Appeals Tribunal matched Northampton Borough's predilection for the sentimental, even quixotic gesture. Appeals Tribunal were grateful to the Mayor for giving them the opportunity to affirm so robustly their egalitarian pretensions in the glare of local publicity.

This chapter discusses how Cnut's sudden death left no clear path of succession, and two heirs by different mothers—both of whom had spent considerably more time in Denmark than in England. Initial events were framed by circumstance, in that Harthacnut appears to have had no deputy he could trust to hold Denmark in his stead, and so was forced to remain there after his father's death. This left the way open for Harold Harefoot and his mother, Ælfgifu of Northampton, to return from obscurity to English politics. Harthacnut's mother, Emma, was also in England, but without a resident royal heir to promote amongst the English elites she was powerless.

During the next several decades, from the 1750s through the 1770s, Congregational ministers across New England struggled and frequently failed to corral the unruly religious experiences of their inspired parishioners. Part 5 recounts the strife that plagued not only well-established churches such as Jonathan Edwards’s Northampton, Massachusetts, congregation but also upstart separatist groups led by ardent revival proponents like Separate Baptist minister Isaac Backus. Radical sectarian communities, Perfectionist seekers set out on a ceaseless quest for spiritual purity that led many of them to question all institutions—churches, communities, and families—and to generate startling new conceptions of the body and sexuality; others sought shelter from the growing ecclesiastical maelstrom in the rational faith and orderly worship of the Anglican church. Thrust into a dizzying and unstable religious marketplace, godly walkers, Separate Congregationalists, Anglican conformists, immortalists, Shakers, and “Nothingarians” trafficked in and out of the churches of the standing order at a startling rate. By 1780, religious insurgents had shattered the Congregational establishment.

This chapter presents excerpts from Jonathan Edwards's letter to Thomas Prince, published in the Christian History on December 12, 1743. The Christian History was a weekly magazine established by Prince and his son to document the revivals of the early 1740s taking place throughout America and Britain. Its goal was to provide evidence that the Great Awakening in America and the Evangelical Revival in Britain represented an extension of God's work. In his letter to Prince, Edwards assessed the spiritual vitality of his parish at Northampton, Massachusetts, and compared the spiritual fervor of Northampton in the early 1740s with the earlier period of 1734–1735.

This chapter presents excerpts from Philip Doddridge's 1745 book The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. Dedicated to his friend and fellow Dissenter Isaac Watts, the book brought Doddridge wide acclaim as an important specimen of practical divinity. Doddridge is a veritable bridge between Puritanism and early evangelicalism. In 1729 he relocated to Northampton, England to become a pastor of the Independent congregation at Castle Hill. He also headed a Dissenting academy at Northampton.

This chapter presents excerpts from Jonathan Edwards's A Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of That Freedom of Will, Which is Supposed to Be Essential to Moral Agency, V[i]rtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame (1754). Edwards had a greater impact on evangelicalism than any American theologian. In 1737, he published A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, an account of the spiritual transformation at Northampton that began in late 1734 and lasted into the late spring of 1735. In Freedom of the Will, Edwards refuted the idea that a self-determining will could make choices irrespective of outside circumstances or motives. He introduced the concepts “moral necessity” and “natural necessity” to prove that humans are hopelessly enslaved to sin unless divine grace is given to counteract their inherent evil cravings.

This chapter presents excerpts from Esther Edwards Burr's “The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr, 1754-1757,” which offers a firsthand perspective of the day-to-day life of a prominent woman living in eighteenth-century America. Esther, the daughter of Jonathan Edwards and Sarah Pierpont Edwards, grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts, at the height of the Great Awakening. In 1752, she married Aaron Burr, a Presbyterian minister in Newark, New Jersey, who also served as the second president of the College of New Jersey. Her journal consisted of a chain of letters addressed to her childhood friend, Sarah Prince Gill, the daughter of the Boston minister Thomas Prince. The letters reflect Esther's personality, way of life, reading habits, and faith.

This chapter looks at how the naming of local historical texts is crucial in claiming places, as the titles already give imperative clues about when the places “first” came to be. For instance, local texts loaded with terms such as “history” and “settlement” imply an already existing social structure, which then spawned serious consequences for Indian peoples who claimed such places as their own. Local writers passionately advocated the New English social order through the structuring of historical accounts as part of declaring their modernity. The chapter details this concept of “firsting” by citing local texts, such as the 1882 history of Northampton, Massachusetts, as well as Plymouth’s abundance of local “first” accounts, specifically James Thacher’s History of the Town of Plymouth from Its First Settlement in 1620 to the Present Time: With a Concise History of the Aborigines of New England, and Their Wars with the English, &c.