Spring 1970

[Robin Landseadel]

On Mar 11, 2010, at 5:51 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> It wouldn't take an ungodly amount of semiotic torsion to stretch  
> the meaning
> of LA (Hollywood and Hollywood endings and beautiful people and
> the culmination of the Turner thesis and tolerance - nay,  
> cultivation -
> of alternate sexual customs) losing to Boston (the place where they  
> ban things . . .

	Celebrate Banned Books Week

	Another Springfield First!

	The first book banned in the New England colonies was written
	by William Pynchon, founder of Springfield, Massachusetts

	William Pynchon was a merchant and trader, founder of the
	small colony of Springfield on the banks of the Connecticut
	River, and the author of the first book "banned in Boston."

	Born in 1590 in Springfield, Essex, England, after which the
	new settlement was eventually named, Pynchon was an
	influential member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He
	arrived in New England in 1630, was elected assistant and
	treasurer of the colony, and was instrumental in founding a new
	settlement at Roxbury before leading a small group of eight
	families to settle a plantation 'over against Agawam' in the
	spring of 1636. The settlement was founded, in large part, to
	take advantage of fur-trading opportunities along the
	Connecticut River.

	Pynchon was not only a man of business and a magistrate. He
	was also a scholarly man, and a deeply religious one. In 1650,
	he completed a theological treatise entitled The Meritorious
	Price of our Redemption, Iustification, &c., in which he argued a
	point of Puritan doctrine that was opposed to the usual 	
	teachings of the ministers and leaders of the Bay Colony in
	Boston. The book was published in London by James Moxon
	and when it arrived in New England in the fall of that year, it
	ignited a firestorm.

	The General Court, then as now the legislative body for
	Massachusetts but also possessed of judicial powers, passed a
	Resolution condemning the book and calling upon Pynchon to
	appear before it and retract his statements.

	It was said at the time that the title page itself was sufficient to
	prove the heretical nature of the arguments expressed by
	Pynchon. The book was suppressed and copies of it ordered to
	be burned in the market place by the marshall.

	A day of 'fasting and humiliation' was also proclaimed, in order
	for the populace to consider how Satan had prevailed among
	them by 'drawing away some . . . to the profession and practize
	of straunge opinions.' According to historian Samuel Eliot
	Morison, in a paper read to the Massachusetts Historical
	Society in 1931, only four copies escaped the flames, one of
	which is in the collection of the Connecticut Valley Historical
	Museum.

	In May of 1651, Pynchon appeared before the General Court to
	answer its charges. Oddly, this was the same session which
	condemned a woman named Mary Parsons to death for
	witchcraft. Parsons was from Springfield and Pynchon had
	initially heard the case but had transferred it to Boston because
	he was not empowered to impose a death sentence. Parsons
	died in prison before the sentence could be carried out.

	After meeting with three clergymen appointed by the Court,
	Pynchon retracted some, but not all, of his statements. Because
	of his stature in the community, however, he was not then
	condemned but was sent back to Springfield in a 'hopefull way'
	to reconsider his views and make a full retraction. The case was
	continued until the next General Court, in October, 1651. One of
	the appointed clergy, Rev. John Norton of Ipswich, was paid the
	munificent sum of £20 to write a tract answering Pynchon's
	arguments, titled (in the style of the day), A Discussion of that
	Great Point in Divinity, the Suffering of Christ; and the Questions
	about his Righteousnesse (Active, Passive: and the Imputation
	thereof. Being an Answer to a Dialogue intituled The
	Meritorious Price of our Redemption, Iustification, &c.

	William Pynchon evidently did not mean to rely on the tender
	mercies of his former friends in Boston. In September he
	transferred all his lands and property in Springfield to his son
	John, and sometime in 1652 he departed for England. He
	purchased a small estate at Wraysbury, near Windsor, where
	he continued to write religious tracts, including two expanded
	editions of The Meritorious Price, as well as pamphlets on the
	Jewish Synagogue, the Jewish Sabbath, and the Covenant with
	Adam. He died there on October 29, 1662.

	His son, John Pynchon, remained at Springfield, taking on the
	magistracy which had been his father's, and continuing the
	development of the small settlement on the banks of the 	
	Connecticut River. He died in Springfield in 1702.

http://www.springfieldlibrary.org/Pynchon/pynchon.html