“The Pompe and Pride of Man”

Pride and Humility in Early New England

Series: 

Author:
Sandra Slater
Huddled on dank ships and tossed about in the waves of the Atlantic, English Puritans envisioned a new society predicated on the values of individual and communal humility. Pride, a pervasive sin, jeopardized their very survival and incited God’s wrath. The first generation of New England settlers, deeply affected by the miseries of their migration experience, crafted New England society on the dichotomy of pride and humility.
Embracing demonstrative suffering as essential, Puritans embraced perpetual martyrdom, often taking great pride in the extent of their humiliation. This ideology affected self-perceptions and informed legal codes, theology, and community values. Anxieties around pride resulted in violent efforts to eradicate “proud” individuals, but also whole communities as demonstrated by the Pequot War (1636-37). The dichotomy of pride and humility permeated all aspects of New England Puritanism.
Copyright Year:
2025
E-Book (PDF)
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-70403-9
Publication:
28 Oct 2024
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-70402-2
Publication:
07 Nov 2024
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Sandra Slater, Ph.D. (2009), University of Kentucky, is an Associate Professor of History at the College of Charleston and a scholar of the early modern Atlantic world who focuses primarily on New England. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Early American History, in Church History, and in French Colonial History.
Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 “The Lord’s Wonderfull Terror and Mercy”: Pride and Passage on the Atlantic
 1 Migration
 2 Suffering on the Sea
 3 Sailors
 4 Storms and Tempests
 5 Deliverance
 6 Incorporation and Identity

2 “Pride and Spirituall Whoardoms”: Pride and Humility in Early New England
 1 Proud Peoples
 2 Collective Humility
 3 Understanding Pride
 4 Seeking and Performing Humility
 5 A Prouder Sex
 6 Self-love and Sexual Sins

3 “The New Creature”: Performing and Purging Pride
 1 Public Confession and Humiliation
 2 Paradox of Pride
 3 Anxieties and Lamentations

4 “To Humble Ourselves Together”: Public Humility in Early New England
 1 Meanings of Fasts and Humiliations
 2 Fast Day Sermons
 3 Performing Humiliation
 4 Days of Thanksgiving

5 “Full of Proud Expressions”: Civil and Church Censure in Early New England
 1 Public Shaming in New England
 2 New England Legal Codes
 3 Pride and Punishment
 4 Drunkenness and Self-Shame
 5 Proud Speech
 6 Humility and Servitude
 7 Confession and Repentance

6 “Pride and Arraigning of Spirit”: Conflict and Strife in Early New England
 1 Plymouth and Reverend Lyford
 2 Plymouth and Thomas Morton
 3 Massachusetts Bay and the Antinomian Controversy (John Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson)

7 “Great Pride and Insolence”: Vehement Violence in the Pequot War
 1 Proud Pequots
 2 Spiritual Warfare against Pride
 3 John Stone and John Oldham, the Importance of Repentance
 4 Mocking Humility
 5 Rejecting God, Refusing Humility
 6 Fort Mystic
 7 Understanding the Pequot War

Conclusion

Bibliography
Index
Academic Institutes, Universities, Colleges, New England Historical Societies, Graduate Students. Scholars of early American literature and history, Atlantic World history, religious studies, studies in rhetoric. Keywords: Puritan, New World, Colonial America, Thanksgiving, Fasts, Legal Codes, Antinomian Crisis, Pequot War, John Winthrop, Anne Hutchinson, John Wheelwright, Michael Wigglesworth, Pilgrim, Separatist, Thomas Shepard, Edward Winslow, King Philip’s War, Cotton Mather, John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, John Davenport, Banishment, Punishment, Martyrdom, Maritime, Atlantic ocean, John Lyford, Henry Vane, John Underhill, John Mason.
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