Profane, the Civil, and the Godly

Richard P. Gildrie is Professor of History at Austin Peay State University and author of Salem, Massachusetts, 1626–1683: A Covenant Community (1975).

“Richard Gildrie has given us an original, provocative, and well-written account of the Puritan ‘Reformation of Manners’ and its intersection with the newly invigorated English folkways of late seventeenth-century New England. Students will like it for its engaging vignettes of New England life as well as for the clarity of its argument. The title, drawn from the reformers’ typology, conveys the dynamic quality of the New England Gildrie portrays. This is not a rigid ‘Puritan’ world but a world in tension between different, but equally colorful and distinct views of the world.”—Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, author of A Midwife's Tale