The Trials of Thomas Morton: An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England

I read Peter Mancall’s book “The Trials of Thomas Morton: An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England” as part of my catch-up reading while I am at home. Found it a most interesting read. Thomas Morton was one of the early New England settlers the Pilgrims and the Puritans had issues with. He was openly an Anglican and was a lawyer both things that the leaders of the New England colonies detested. I am curious if there is a connection on why the best trained lawyers in New England, Morton and Roger Williams, where both exiled from Massachusetts for theological reasons. The book does a good job of describing the culture and issues in Massachusetts and Plymouth and how Morton annoyed and challenged those perceptions. A good history of Morton's book is a central part of the book as well as a description of how this played out in New England history and literature till the present times.

Good book, interesting history.

A wonderful read—deeply compelling and reminiscent of historians like Natalie Zemon Davis and Carlo Ginsburg, who uses the life of an individual to advance more complex interpretations of the worlds that their characters inhabited.

Mancall's newest book is a delight to read. It's an engaging portrait of an iconoclast whose actions and ideas rocked the Puritan establishment. A solid book for students of American history, The Trials of Thomas Morton also will appeal to general interest readers eager for a new take on American history.

I'm not sure what the purpose of this short book was exactly. The story of "Anglican lawyer" Thomas Morton's conflicts with the Pilgrims of Plymouth and Puritans of Boston is well-trodden territory in early New England history. I purchased this expecting to find some new information that might have surfaced, but no, there are no surprises here. Morton himself left behind little biographical information, and barely appears in this narrative until page 100 (1/2 way to the end). Jack Dempsey's self-published "Thomas Morton of Merrymount" (2000) is far more comprehensive and superior to this.