Texas A & M University history professor John Howard Smith narrates an 85-minute video describing the history of New England and the surrounding colonies from 1609 to the end of the century. Click here to view the video.

Smith begins his lecture with Roger Williams and his iconoclastic position on paying Native people for their land and his stance against the alignment of religion and government that he outlined in his book, The Bloudy Tenant of Persecution, that he published in 1644 in England.

Smith goes on to talk about the Puritans who populated most of the Massachusetts Bay Colony starting in 1630. He then talks about Anne Hutchinson who spoke out against the religious authorities who banished her from Boston in 1638.

Smith describes the deteriorating relationship between the Indigenous people and the English colonizers that eventually led to the conflict known as Metacomet’s War in 1675-76. He then talks about the rise of hysteria in the Salem Witch Trials before ending with a description of the later years of the 17th century in New England.