Susan Hardman Moore – författare

As many as one in four English settlers who joined the Great Migration to New England in the 1630s went back. Why?This book uncovers what might seem to be a dark side of the American dream: the New World from the viewpoint of those who decided not to stay. At the core of the volume are the life histories of people who left New England during the British Civil Wars and Interregnum, 1640–1660. More than a third of the ministers who had stirred up emigration from England deserted their flocks to return home. The colonists’ stories challenge our perceptions of early settlement and the religious ideal of New England as a "City on a Hill." America was a stage in their journey, not an end in itself.Susan Hardman Moore first explores the motives for migration to New England in the 1630s and the rhetoric that surrounded it. Then, drawing on extensive original research into the lives of hundreds of migrants, she outlines the complex reasons that spurred many to brave the Atlantic again, homeward bound. Her book ends with the fortunes of colonists back home and looks at the impact of their American experience.Of exceptional value to studies of the connections between the Old and New Worlds, Pilgrims contributes to debates about the nature of the New England experiment and its significance for the tumults of revolutionary England.

In a field where primary sources are thin and difficult, Abandoning America is an excellent tool for reference and research. The book is fully annotated and offers a substantial introduction providing for further historicalcontext.CHOICE Outstanding Academic TitleAbandoning America brings together the biographies of hundreds of people who crossed over to New England in the 1630s but later braved the Atlantic again to return home. Some wentback quickly, disenchanted or discouraged. Many invested everything to make New England a success, yet after ten or twenty years resolved to leave America - against a backdrop of civil war and Cromwell's commonwealth in England, and personal dilemmas about family ties, health and prospects. The book retrieves their forgotten life-stories from thousands of scattered fragments of evidence in early New England records and British archives, often starting fromsome incidental, passing, reference. The result of this scholarly detective work is a remarkable and evocative collection of personal histories, of people overlooked in the onward march of American history. Their anxieties and aspirations speak eloquently about the experience of being a New Englander, for those who stayed on as well as for those who left.The book traces settlers' lives with an eye to the information historians look for. It is a richoriginal resource for scholars of early America and the English Revolution - for research on religion in England and New England, Atlantic migration, and much more.SUSAN HARDMAN MOORE is Professor of Early Modern Religion at the University of Edinburgh.

This volume provides a rich new resource for exploring religion and daily life in Interregnum and Restoration England.Thomas Larkham kept his 'diary' - an account book with spiritual musings and autobiographical notes - throughout his time as Vicar of Tavistock, Devon, and on into his days as a nonconformist apothecary in the town. Only fragmentshave appeared in print before. This edition provides a new resource for exploring religion and daily life in Interregnum and Restoration England.Larkham's life captures the twists and turns a clerical career could take in the 17th century. He went to New England in the 1630s, then came back and joined the Parliamentary army. As Vicar of Tavistock in the 1650s, he took a controversial path. He preached to the parish at large but restricted baptism and communion to an ever smaller circle. Local resentment erupted in a no-holds-barred pamphlet war. A watershed came in 1660. Larkham scored a thick black line in his diary under these words: 'The Lords day Oct. 21. I left mine imployment of preaching in feare & upon demand of the Patron'. The entries that follow show how his fortunes changed as a result - prisoner, fugitive preacher, Tavistock apothecary.The diary illuminates the private side of a turbulent public life. It is intriguing both for what it includes and for what has to be read between the lines. The edition also includes two rare tracts - Naboth and Judas hanging himselfe - from the vociferous debate his activities provoked. A substantial introduction sets Larkham and his diary in context.SUSAN HARDMAN MOORE is Senior Lecturer in Divinity at the University of Edinburgh.