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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2019
This piece explores the origins of the anomalous 1655 New Haven statute against sodomy that broke with legal traditions and codes both in England and New England. A lengthy and extraordinarily specific piece of legislation, the New Haven law stands in stark contrast to the minimalist language favored by the English in the early seventeenth century. When viewed within the larger context of clerical animosities, particularly between Thomas Hooker and John Cotton, there is a strong circumstantial case to make for its implementation as an extension of John Cotton's rejected Massachusetts Bay legal code, Moses His Judicials, applied by his friend and admirer John Davenport in New Haven. A devout disciple of John Cotton, John Davenport's New Haven colony relied on Cotton's influence and stood as a rebuke to Thomas Hooker's Connecticut settlements, often criticized as too spiritually lax by those in Massachusetts Bay and New Haven. While seeking to demonstrate greater piety and rigidity, John Cotton and Thomas Hooker sought to exert dominance over the other, with Cotton employing Davenport's colony as an effective castigation of Hooker's perceived liberality. This piece is reflective of trends in studies of sexuality which suggest that ideas and identities related to sexuality do not operate in isolation, but often mirror anxieties not necessarily connected to the regulation of sexual activities. This article situates the 1655 Sodomy Statue within a broader context in order to understand its origins and animosities that potentially motivated its inclusion into the New Haven legal statutes.
The author wishes to extend sincere gratitude to Richard Godbeer, Monica D. Fitzgerald, Cara Delay, and Francis Bremer who read early drafts of the article. Also, many thanks to Bailey Poletti and John Manke, my copy editors at Church History, whose suggestions and edits improved the piece immeasurable.
1 Trumbull, J. Hammond, ed., The True-Blue Laws of Connecticut and New Haven (Hartford: American, 1876), 199Google Scholar. Though nineteenth-century historians often censored sexual reference in historical works, the essence of the sodomy statute is consistent.
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7 In reviewing Isabel Calder's collection of Davenport's writings and letters, Perry Miller wrote that, “while Davenport ranked among the ‘great leaders’ of New England,” he did not “measure up to the stature of Hooker, Shepard, or even John Cotton.” See Miller, Perry, “Review of Letters of John Davenport, Puritan Divine by Isabel MacBeath Calder,” New England Quarterly 11, no. 4 (December 1938): 843–848CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This article challenges the homogeny embraced by Perry Miller and extended by Sacvan Bercovitch.
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11 Ibid., 95.
12 Ibid., 96.
13 Williams, Life of Thomas Hooker, 297–298; and Bremer, Congregational Communion, 99.
14 Bremer, Congregational Communion, 54.
15 Reprinted in Bremer, Congregational Communion, 91.
16 Letter from John Davenport to John Cotton, March 6, 1650; reprinted in Calder, Isabel MacBeath, ed., Letters of John Davenport, Puritan Divine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937), 84–86Google Scholar. The only full-length study of Ezekiel Cheever is Gould, Elizabeth Porter, Ezekiel Cheever, Schoolmaster (Boston: Palmer, 1904)Google Scholar.
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20 Discussions of Hooker's sermons appear in Bozeman, Theodore Dwight, The Precisianist Strain: Disciplinary Religion & Antinomian Backlash in Puritanism to 1638 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 93, 134, 159Google Scholar.
21 Samuel Collins, quoted in Waddington, John, Congregational History, II (London, 1869), 292Google Scholar. William Laud did not become archbishop of Canterbury until 1633, four years after his notice of Hooker.
22 Several friends and acquaintances of John Cotton emigrated to Boston years earlier, making him the more likely choice for the prestigious appointment.
23 Winthrop, 107.
24 Ibid.
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28 Ibid.
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34 Ibid.
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52 Ibid.
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54 Ibid., 289.
55 Winship also considers the Antinomian controversy to be “implicated in the migrations that were to define the cultural geography of New England” in relation to Cotton, Hooker, and Davenport. It was also a triumph of Shepard and Hooker's style of preaching over the less tangible style embodied by Cotton. Winship, Making Heretics, 233, 235.
56 John Winthrop, “Short Story,” reprinted in The Antinomian Controversy, 286. Bozeman makes the argument that John Cotton was the critical figure in the crisis and that his previous teachings allowed for the extremes taken by Hutchinson and her followers. Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain, 241.
57 Archer, Fissures in the Rock, 31.
58 Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain, 211. Cotton initially worked to support Hutchinson, but he increasingly separated himself from her due to her disclosures as well as political pressures from within Boston. Thomas Shepard and Thomas Hooker suspected that Cotton influenced the trial to secretly support Hutchinson and provide her an opportunity for exoneration. See Winship, Making Heretics, 204.
59 Bozeman suggests that Davenport, Hooker, and Cotton all “jousted with antinomian doctrines” before emigrating from England. Bozeman, The Precisiant Strain, 184–210.
60 Ibid., 214.
61 The Massachusetts Bay Company resolved to “ordeyne, & establish, all m[anner] of wholesome & Reasonable orders, Laues, statuts, ordinances, [directions] & Instrucktyons, not Contrary to the Lawes of the Relme of England, ffor the present gouerment of our plantacon, & the Inhabitants residing wthin ye Lymitts of or plantacon.” Records of the Company of Massachusetts Bay from 1628–1641 (Cambridge: Boules and Houghton, 1850), 40Google Scholar.
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88 Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts, 2–3. Knight asserts that this group of ministers lost their claim to orthodoxy in the early decades of settlement. For my purposes, this group reflects an increasingly conservative branch of Puritanism that distinguished itself in contradiction to a more liberal brand offered by Hooker and his Connecticut colony. Knight also connects Davenport and Cotton to an emphasis on grace as a transformative experience, which placed Cotton in a precarious position during the Antinomian Controversy.
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97 Winship, Making Heretics, 150.
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99 Ibid.
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101 John Cotton to Samuel Stone, March 27, 1638, in Bush, Correspondence of John Cotton, 272–274. 1638 was also the height of the Antinomian Controversy, in which John Cotton played a pivotal and controversial role as an initial supporter of Hutchinson.
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105 The 1655 statute was enacted after the deaths of John Cotton and Thomas Hooker. Rather than dissuading the evidence presented in this article, instead it substantiates the degree of conflict between Hooker and Cotton and Cotton's enduring influence on Davenport and New Haven.
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