The City of Boston is almost always made in reference to the famous biblical maxim ” a city upon a hill,” an oratory trend that dates back to a 1630 sermon made by John Winthrop. A leading figure in the founding of Massachusetts, Winthrop’s speech set in motion the principals and ideals upheld by New Englanders for almost 400 years. On this day in Boston history, we celebrate Winthrop’s birth. Born January 12 in either 1587 or 1588, we bid John Winthrop a happy 426th or 427th birthday.
The uncertainty of the year of his birth is due to the active use of both the outdated Julian and still-in-use Gregorian calendars.
Born in England to a well-to-do family, Winthrop’s father was a successful lawyer and landowner while his mother also came from a family with holdings scattered throughout Jolly Old. His staunch views towards divinity were shaped at an early age when his father took up a position at Cambridge’s prestigious Trinity College, and therefore exposed to the intellectuals and clergymen present at that time.
When King Charles ascended to the throne and subsequently dissolved Parliament, it was essentially the last straw for those with puritan sentiments. They had already felt the Church of England was corrupt and Catholicism much too conservative. Winthrop, by this point, had risen through the ranks of the law having secured a position in the Court of Wards and Liveries – according to Francis J. Bremer – though with Parliament now gone and an extreme crackdown on puritans undertaken, Winthrop became a proponent of settlement across the pond.
According to Samuel Eliot Morrison, Winthrop wrote of emigration “If the Lord seeth it wilbe good for us, he will provide a shelter & a hidinge place for us and others.”
He set sail for Massachusetts in 1630 aboard the Arbella where, anchored in Massachusetts Bay, he delivered his oft-quoted sermon A Modell of Christian Charity where he delivered the famous description of their colonization as a “City upon a Hill… the eyes of all people are upon us.”
The line itself is borrowed from Matthew 5:14 in which he describes Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount in which he tells his audience “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.” In Winthrop’s puritanical interpretation, he took this to mean that the City of Boston must uphold a virtuous moral character to act as the example for all others to follow.
He literally helped to build the colony from the ground up, putting action to his words to uphold morality and set it forth as an example for others. As Bremer notes further, one contemporary account says that Wintrhop “fell to work with his own hands, and thereby so encouraged the rest that there was not an idle person to be found in the whole plantation.”
Winthrop was also inadvertently responsible for continued domestic expansion in the New World which resulted from religious controversy in Boston. Anne Hutchinson, a firm believer that strict non-secular sentiments didn’t necessarily lead to salvation, was notoriously banished for expressing her beliefs, later founding Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Similarly, Roger Williams, who was to be banished for preaching the ideals of religious freedom and separation of church and state, was tipped off by Winthrop of his expulsion and fled to found Providence, Rhode Island.
A firm and uncompromising man with strong convictions towards civility, piety, and community, Winthrop was instrumental in setting the course for Massachusetts in becoming an international leader in institutions abound. He is the namesake of the city of Winthrop, Mass., was a captivating speaker who’s still cited in works today, and the foundation for the strong-willed passions Bostonians possess even to this day.
At 53 State Street in Boston, one can find a plaque dedicated to where his home once stood.
Happy birthday, John.
