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A 19th-century engraving of Cpt. Miles Standish and his men observing the ‘immoral’ behavior of the Maypole festivities of 1628 at Merrymount.
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A 19th-century engraving of Cpt. Miles Standish and his men observing the ‘immoral’ behavior of the Maypole festivities of 1628 at Merrymount.
ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images
By the time his book went to press in London, on November 18, 1633, Thomas Morton had been exiled from the Puritan colonies in Massachusetts. His crimes: drinking, carousing, and — crucially — building social and economic ties with Native people. His book outlined a vision for what America could become. A very different vision than that of the Puritans.
But the book wouldn’t be published that day. It wouldn’t be published for years. Because agents for the Puritan colonists stormed the press and destroyed every copy.
Today on the show, the story of what’s widely considered America’s first banned book, the radical vision it conjured, and the man who outlined that vision: Thomas Morton, the Lord of Misrule.
Guests:
Peter Mancall, a historian of early America at the University of Southern California and author of The Trials of Thomas Morton, An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England.
Sarah Rivett, professor of English and American Studies at Princeton University.
Paula Peters, journalist, educator and activist who’s studied and written extensively about the early history of Massachusetts. A member of the Wampanoag tribe, she has spent most of her life in her tribal homeland of Mashpee, Massachusetts.