Hall, David D.

Looks at how the people who founded the New England colonies used laypeople, petitioning, and participation to set up churches, civil governments, and methods for distributing land that avoided the development of unlimited authority and advanced the idea of democracy.

Contains a critical anthology of the historical, sociological, and religious life and culture of the early Puritans in America during the seventeenth century including testimony from dissenters like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson as well as excerpts from William Bradford's "Of Plymouth Plantation.".