Social & Cultural

The Articles of Confederation between the Plantations under the Government of the Massachusetts, the Plantations under the Government of New Plymouth, the Plantations under the Government of Connecticut, and the Government of New Haven with the Plantations in Combination therewith: Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus ...

Two of Charles I advisers drafted and persuaded the king to issue a document, His Majesty’s Answer to the Nineteen Propositions of Both Houses of Parliament, in which the king, eager to dismiss his image as a monarch, declared that England was a mixed government and not a condescending monarchy. The Answer was a critical turning point in constitutional history because in it the king proclaimed that ...

Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the first law in the New World requiring that children be taught to read and write. The Massachusetts School Laws were three legislative acts of 1642, 1647 and 1648 enacted in the Massachusetts Bay Colony with he most famous by far, the law of 1647, also known as the Old Deluder Satan Law (after the law's first sentence). The English Puritans who ...

In 1638, John Lilburne was arrested upon his return from Holland and put on secret trial by the Star Chamber of Charles I. His crime? The writing and distribution of seditious pamphlets that skewered the legitimacy of the monarchy and challenged the primacy of the high prelates of the Church of England. He was promptly convicted of publishing writing of “dangerous consequence and evil effect.” For ...

Only eighteen years after the Pilgrims landed in the New World, Harvard College, the first of the Ivy League schools, was established for the sake of educating the clergy and raising up a Christian academic institution to meet the needs of perpetuating the Christian faith. All of the Ivy League schools were established by Christians for the sake of advancing Christianity and meeting the academic needs ...

John Lathrop was born December 20, 1584 in Etton, Yorkshire, England. It is said the ancestral home of the Lathrop family is Lowthrope, England. He was baptized in Etton, Yorkshire England December 20, 1584 and died in Barnstable, Mass November 8, 1653. The name was sometimes written Lathrop, other times Lothrop and originated in the town of Lowthrope, England. John Lathrop was born in Yorkshire England. He ...

The Petition of Right (see document) is a statement of the objectives of the 1628 English legal reform movement that led to the Civil War and deposing of Charles I in 1649. One of England's most famous Constitutional documents, it expresses many of the ideals that later led to the American Revolution. It was written by Parliament as an objection to an overreach of authority by King ...

When the Virginia colony was founded in 1607, the majority of unfree laborers in the colony were indentured servants, men and women who signed a legal contract called an indenture that bound them to work for a certain individual for a certain number of years, in exchange for which they received room, board, and some type of education or training. During their indenture, the servant was ...

Is the story we've been taught about the Gunpowder plot really treason by Guy Fawkes and the group of Catholic men, or has history gone the way of the victors once again? What we're told... As midnight approaches on November the 4th – the eve of the traditional opening of Parliament – armed agents of the King raid a basement room of the Houses of Parliament ...

The Speech to the Troops at Tilbury was delivered on 9 August Old Style, 19 August New Style 1588 by Queen Elizabeth I of England to the land forces earlier assembled at Tilbury in Essex in preparation for repelling the expected invasion by the Spanish Armada. Prior to the speech the Armada had been driven from the Strait of Dover in the Battle of Gravelines eleven ...