The Quiet Death of Broughtonism

Abstract

With the return of Pynchon and others to England, the community they had established in New England lost its momentum. Although Pynchon and Holyoke’s books circulated for several generations, the ideals that motivated them ceased to have significance for North American religious life. And yet there was one surprising legacy of Broughtonism in the figure of the renowned Hebraist John Lightfoot. Lightfoot was inspired to learn Hebrew due to his contact with old members of the London Broughtonians, and his 1662 edition of Broughton’s works marked simultaneously the ossification of their community and their most enduring scholarly contribution. As well as surveying the quiet death of Broughtonism, this chapter highlights the importance of this book’s findings for our understanding of the intellectual dimensions of puritanism, and particularly the dynamic, mutually renewing interactions between the elite world of neo-Latin scholarship and the vernacular religious culture of lay men and women.