Thomas Prince's Chronological History

Abstract

JN i736 Thomas Prince, the scholarly Boston Puritan and co-pastor of the Old South Church, presented the first volume of his Chronological History of New England in the Form of Annals to the House of Representatives of Massachusetts.1 Prince had been interested in New England history since the time of his preparation for the ministry at Harvard, and for years-while he finished his education, traveled and preached in England, and assumed the responsibilities of leadership that accompanied a pastorate at the Old South-he collected documents from New England's past. The voluminous and valuable Prince collection, which was the foundation for part of his history and is now housed at the Boston Public Library, and the Chronological History itself, are the reasons for Prince's modern reputation. Prince's interest in history was never an exclusive concern separate from his basic clerical involvements with the state of the Puritan church and the conditions of New England society. His historical work was an extension of his ministry, and it had a didactic purpose that emerged from his dedicated career as a Puritan clergyman and belonged to his Puritan heritage and experience. The Chronological History is an exacting, pedantic work prepared in the scholarly tradition of the seventeenth-century English chroniclers. Prince selected one of the most popular histories for his model of the traditional chronological form, Archbishop James Ussher's Annals of the