John Clarke and His Legacies: Religion and Law in Colonial Rhode Island 1638 - 1750 [Paperback]

Theodore Dwight Bozeman (Author), Sydney V. James (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1999

John Clarke and His Legacies is the first full-length biography of John Clarke (1609-76), a principal founder of colonial Rhode Island. Although Roger Williams usually gets most of the attention, Sydney James shows that Clarke made a lasting contribution to the colony--perhaps more so than Williams. Williams was the first Baptist minister in America, but he left his church after a very short time. And although Williams won the first charter for Rhode Island, the charter soon had to be replaced. Clarke, however, founded the first Baptist church in Newport, where he continued to contribute to the Baptist community. And in 1663 he procured the royal charter that would remain the foundation of government in Rhode Island until 1842.This inquiry into Clarke's life engages a variety of intriguing topics. It surveys a formative stage in American Baptist history, one that spurned dependency upon government more thoroughly than any part of the United States does today. Through the experience of Clark, we see pioneering American religious volunteerism, problems of church-state relations, and the peculiar nature of colonial relations with the parent country.

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About the Author

T. Dwight Bozeman is professor of history at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Protestants in an Age of Science: The Baconian Ideal and Ante-bellum American Religious Thought (North Carolina, 1977) and To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism (North Carolina/Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1988).

Sydney James was a senior American colonialist at the University of Iowa when he died in 1993. He was the author of A People Among Peoples: Quaker Benevolence in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge, 1963) and Colonial Rhode Island: A History (Scribner's, 1975).

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271028157
• ISBN-13: 978-0271028156
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #560,010 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars John Clarke and His legacies, April 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: John Clarke and His Legacies (Hardcover)

Those interested in colonial New England biography would do well to pay close attention to the title of this slim volume. This book is relatively long on early New England Baptist theology and practice, and the politics of securing Rhode Island's charter of 1663, but very short on John Clarke and his times. Consequently there is little here for the non-professional historical reader and even less on material culture. The book has the feel of something unfinished, not surprising when one learns that the author died before he completed it. There are no illustrations, although a portrait believed to be of Clarke exists. William Dyre's role in revoking Coddington's patent of 1651 and obtaining a new patent with Clarke in 1652 goes without mention. The footnote for the quote in the chapter 2 title is missing. Some descriptions seem outright silly, such as that Coddington's house in Newport was large and Clarke's must have been much smaller. The flaws are not hard to notice. It is difficult to write the biography of a second-tier figure of early New England when so little documentation remains, but the author could have done much more. This is the history of religion and politics, but not of John Clarke.