The Revd Edward Howes

contents

o Introduction	o Howe’s arithmetic book
o Howes biography	o a summary of Howes life
o The two John Winthrops	o Literature on the web
o Howes the school teacher	o a connection to Revd. Dr. Williams
o Howes letters to the Winthrops	o other “Edward Howes”
o Books	o North West Passage
o Magneticall Engine	o Saltpeter
o Alchemical mysteries	o Forks
o Encryption & Shorthand	o Wolfhounds

there are many external web links on this webpage that open a separate browser tab - see... those magnificent links

Introduction

The Revd. Edward Howes was rector of Goldhanger for a short period from 1650 onwards and has become well known in the USA through his extensive correspondence with John Winthrop the first governor of Massachusetts and The New England Company and his son John Winthrop junior (Jr.) the governor of Connecticut. Both are seen as “Founding Fathers” of the USA. The Revd. Edward Howes is also well known for the book he wrote on mathematics published in 1650 while he was the Rector at Goldhanger.

select to open the book

and there is more about the book further down this webpage

An article about the village of Goldhanger in The Essex Countryside magazine of 1962 includes a reference to him and he is listed on the register of past Rectors displayed in the Church...

extract from the magazine article extract from the register of Rectors

It would seem that Howes became rector of Goldhanger just after leaving the almshouse at Poplar. Maura Benham records that in the late 1600s that St Peters Church and the Rectory where he would have lived were in a bad state of repair…

St Peters in the 1700s Goldhanger Rectory in an early photo

The reason why the Revd. Howes came to Goldhanger in 1650 is not known, but it was a time of great turmoil in London...

The second phase of the Civil War raged between 1648 and 1649. Charles 1st was executed in Whitehall in January 1649. From 1649 onwards a republican government ruled England, and between 1653 and 1659, due to disputes in Parliament, Oliver Cromwell effectively ruled as a military dictator. Cromwell was well known for his Pruitan beliefs and The New England Company was founded by an Act of Oliver Cromwell's Parliament in July 1649.

The Great Plague of London lasted from 1665 to 1666 and the Great Fire of London was from the 2nd to the 6th of September 1666 destroying medieval parts of London, but both of these events were well after Howes moved to Goldhanger.

Biography

Today, internet searches reveal far more about the Revd. Howes activities in the 1600s than were know locally in the past such as this biography…

The Dictionary of National Biography

written by George Smith & Sidney Lee, published by Adamant Media Corporation in 1961…

HOWES, EDWARD (fl. 1650), mathematician, was studying law in 1632 at the Inner Temple, and appears afterwards to have entered holy orders. In 1644 he was a. master in the 'Ratcliffe Free School,' London, and in 1659 is called rector of Goldancher [i.e. Goldanger] in Essex.' Howes was the intimate friend and frequent correspondent of John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts. In 1632, writing from the Inner Temple, he sent Winthrop a tract which he had printed to show that the north-west passage to the Pacific was probably not in the 60 or 70 degrees of N. latitude, but rather about 40th."I am verille perswaded of that, there is either a strait as our narrow seas, or a Mediterranean sea west from you.” The tract is called ‘Of the Circumference of the Earth, or a Treatise of the North West Passage', London, 1623.

On 25 Aug. 1635 Howes wrote to Winthrop, “I think I shall help you to one of the magneticall engines which you and I have discoursed of that will sympathize at a distance”, a possible foreshadowing of the modern telegraph; and in 1640, “as for the magneticall instrument it is also sympatheticall”. In 1644 Howes speaks of possibly establishing a school in Boston, and in various letters refers to the wish of many religious people to go to the plantations.

In 1659 Howes published “A Short Arithmetick, or the Old and Tedious way of Numbers reduced to a New and Brief Method, whereby a mean Capacity may easily attain competent Skill and Facility”. It is well arranged for practical instruction. At the end of his address to the reader Howes speaks of “having also the theoreticall part finished and ready to be published, if .desired”. No other part seems to have been issued.

[ Massachusetts Hist. Soc. Collections, 3rd ser. vol. ix., etc; Life and Letters of John Winthrop, p. 20. ]

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography also includes a very similar biography of the Revd. Howes at...

www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13986,

which is an indication of his historical significance in the UK.

from...

https://www.howesfamilies.com/getperson.php?personID=I92680&tree=Onename#cite1

Reverend Edward Howes - family history and genealogy

The two John Winthrops

The Revd. Howes communicated with two John Winthrops, the elder was the first governor of Massachusetts and his son was the governor of Connecticut. Because the two shared the same names and had very similar lives, there appears to confusion in records about them and other members of the family also called John. Based on the many published references to Howes letters one can only assume he communicated with both of the governors to whom he was probably related. John Winthrop (senior) lived between 1588-1649 and went to Massachusetts in 1630. While John Winthrop (junior) lived between 1606-1676 and went to Massachusetts in 1631 and for many years served as the governor of Connecticut,. Here is a family tree that shows there were at least five John Winthrops in that period...

select image to enlarge and zoom in

Sadly no portrait of Edward Howes has been found, but there are many portraits of the two John Winthrops his relatives and lifelong friends. Their appearance and dress may just have had some similarity with Edwards Howes.

John Winthrop (senior) John Winthrop (junior)

Edward Howes had strong connections to both the Winthrop and Downing families. He went to school with John Winthrop Jr. at Groton near Sudbury in Suffolk and then worked for Emmanuel Downing as his law clerk at the Inner Temple. Lucy Winthrop, John Winthrop senior’s sister was married Emanuel Downing. One of their sons was Sir George Downing, the 1st Baronet whom Downing Street was named after. Another member of the family created Downing College, Cambridge.

The Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston and the New York Society Library have records of hundreds of letters exchanged between Howes to Winthrop, many now accessible on the internet, and referenced in books published on various topics associated with Governor Winthrop: his pivotal role in the colonialization of North America; non-conformist religions: alchemy; early immigration; early technology transfer across the Atlantic, cryptology; and much more.

from...

https://www.masshist.org/publications/winthrop

“Edward Howes - Little is known of this writer beyond what is to be gathered from his letters in the Winthrop collection. At this time he was a law student at the Inner Temple and later is said to have entered holy orders. In 1644 he was master in the Ratcliffe Free School, London, and in 1659 is “called rector of Goldancher / Goldanger in Essex.” In that year he published A Short Arithmetick...  D. N. B. , XXVIII. 119”.

from...

https://newtopiamagazine.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/the-intelligencers-and-the-fifth-moon-of-jupiter-alchemy-in-the-american-colonies/

Winthrop first encountered alchemy and the Rosicrucians when he went to school in London in 1624 just after turning eighteen. Within months he and his roommate and lifelong friend Howes were skipping classes to conduct alchemical experiments, and searching for Rosicrucians. Winthrop was so inspired by the example of Christian Rosenkreutz he tried to use his family connections to imitate the founder of the Rosicrucian order by traveling to Turkey in search of alchemical wisdom...

...As soon as he arrived Winthrop set up an alchemical laboratory in his father’s house. There was nothing wrong with practicing alchemy in an elite Puritan household. Winthrop assisted his father and others governing Massachusetts Bay Colony. He flourished, but his wife did not.  Returning to London in 1634 after her death, he and his college roommate Howes were eager to meet Dr. John Everard, a minister and alchemist...

...His old friend Howes not only gave Winthrop good advice about dealing with the natives respectfully; he also sent Winthrop some vocabularies of the native language.

Howes letters to the Winthrops

Howes letters to Winthrop reveal both his extreme religious Puritanical beliefs, which he shared with Winthrop, and his eccentric nature even by 17th century standards. Amongst the items that Howes sent to Winthrop were: Chemicals and books on alchemy; a “secret alphabet” to enable them to exchange encrypted information; a book of characters and syntax that might be used to record the native Indian language; a silver apostle spoon depicting St Peter, and “a forke for the useful application of which I leave to your discretion,” now believed to be the first fork ever sent to America; A recipe for a “wholesome drink for the sick” using potatoes (now known as Poteen). Howes wrote that “Capt. Drake” had used it on voyages around the world. In 1632 he wrote to Winthrop:

“Here in closed you shall find a booke of the probabilities of the North West passage”.

This book is recorded as being written by Howes himself and a copy inscribed by him is in the Massachusetts Historical Society collection.

Howes own words, and the comments of others, extracted from the letters sent to Winthop demonstrate some of his eccentricities. At least thirty-two letters sent from Howes to Winthrop, between 1632 and 1640 are held by Massachusetts Historical Society, and exhibit the writer as a man of intelligence and humour, unwearied in sending miscellaneous articles, information and objects across the Atlantic, from “Quodling apple-slips,” probably from Essex orchards, to learned works on scientific subjects and catalogues of Leipsic booksellers”…

“You shall also receive in this ship three wolf dogs and a bitch with an Irish boy to tend them… …He as yet makes conscience of Fridays fast from flesh; and doth not love to hear the Romish religion spoken against, but I hope with gods grace he will become a good convert. … The fellow can read and write reasonable well which is somewhat rare for one of his condition and makes me hope the more of him”.

There are many more letters within this very large website..

https://archive.org/details/winthroppapersv3wint/page/n34/mode/1up?q=Edward+Howes

The manuscript accumulations of Adam Winthrop, Governor John Winthrop, Governor John Winthrop, jr.etc.

Select this image to enlarge and zoom in

Magneticall Engine

In 1635 he wrote promising one of the “magnetised needles” which when a magnet is moved two identical but separated alphabet-wheels moved in sympathy even at great distances. A pair of these magnetic dials were said to have been tested on either side of the Thames using telescopes to check the results. This was effectively wireless communication long before electricity was discovered and 200 years before the telegraph was invented. Others were involved with this idea at the time and had it worked over the distance across the Atlantic it would have undoubtedly have changed the world.

Alchemical Mysteries

Howes delved into alchemical mysteries...

“One of the most curious things revealed in these volumes is the fact that John Winthrop Jr., was seeking the philosopher’s stone, that universal elixir which could transmute all things to own substance. This is plain from the correspondence of Edward Howe. Howes goes to a certain doctor to consult him about the method of making a cement for earthenware vessels, no doubt crucible This was one of the many quacks who gulled men during that twilight through which alchemy was passing into chemistry ”.

“Dear friend, I desire with all my heart that I might write plainer to you, but in discovering the mystery, I may diminish its majesty & give occasion to the profane to abuse it, if it should fall into unworthy hands.”

“O, my friend, if you love me, get you home, get you in! You have a friend as well as an enemy. Know them by their voices. The one is still driving or enticing you out ; the other would have you stay within”.

Included in one of Howes letters to Winthrop is this diagram, which is still much discussed by academics and authors with an interest in non-conformist religions…

“With his longtime friend John Winthrop, Edward Howes delved into alchemical mysteries, especially as they informed Everarde’s mystical teachings. Later, during the 1640s, Howes would become a Familist extremist maintaining that the deity exists within the believer”.

Encryption and Shorthand

Howes is credited with writing to Winthrop to tell him about "a new alphabet" developed by Thomas Arkisden, another contemporary Cambridge graduate of theirs, which they used as their “secret alphabet” and which Winthrop then adopted for recording the words of native Americans and which is now recognised as the origin of the shorthand notation used in journalism in the USA around the world. This document gives the details and contains 8 references to Edward Howes..

http://www.bucksas.org.uk/rob/rob_11_2_77.pdf

A Shorthand "Inventor" of 300 Years Ago

and includes these...

“Little is known of Edward Howes save that he was a close friend and correspondent of John Winthrop the younger.”

select image to enlarge and zoom in

from...

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/346373

The Scientific notes from the books and letters of John Winthrop, jr

EDWARD HOWES, a friend who supplied WINTHROP with chemicals and chemical books from England, sent him in one letter a new secret alphabet, in which the characters resemble the lines and curves now employed in stenography. In other letters to WINTHROP, HOWES used a cypher in which artificial words were used, the true word being found by taking the odd numbered letters of the substitute. The methods of secret writing employed by our colonial ancestors is a subject upon which much could be written. HOWES not only gave Winthrop advice about dealing with the natives in a respectful way; he also sent Winthrop vocabularies of native languages that were probably the work of Thomas Harriot.

...I wish to refer to another interesting association mathematical book of the WINTHROP library, the “Mysterium Arithmeticum” which bears upon the margin of the title page the signature of WINTHROP'S intimate scientific friend, EDWARD HOWES. As the title shows, the work deals with the mystical and symbolic properties of numbers and refers specifically to the Fraternity of the Rosicrucians and to the number of the Beast in the Apocalypse.

Books

Howes shipped numerous books to Winthrop over many years, as described on this website...

https://academic.oup.com/past/article/241/1/69/5134188

Passing The Book: Cultures of Reading in the Winthrop Family, 1580–1730

Has 11 reference to howes Including...

“It was Howes who served for decades as John Jr’s chief supplier of books, many of which still survive...”

“...The notes that Howes left in books, such as Winthrop’s copies of George Ripley’s Compound of Alchymy and Dudley Digges’s Of the Circumference of the Earth, attest to the enduring friendship between the two men: they shared a strong interest in the wonders of the world, and they discussed alchemy’s hidden meanings in their letters.”

North West Passage

A book possibly written by Howes on the North West Passage was referred to in a 1632 letter in:

https://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/2005/dins_doc/www.dinsdoc.com/wright-1-2.htm

Literary Culture in Early New England, 1620-1730. by Thomas Wright, Yale University Press in 1920

Saltpeter

It seems that Howes was instrumental in pass on the formulae for making saltpetre...

https://epdf.tips/subject-matter-technology-the-body-and-science-on-the-anglo-american-frontier-15.html

Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500–1676

...Saltpeter could be made from urine and either ashes or soil. Virginia in 1630 had passed a law to encourage every “master of a family” to save and deliver wood ashes and urine “to those that require the same to make experiment thereof.” Those who successfully made saltpeter would receive a reward.54 Not everyone thought that gunpowder was so straightforward. When Edward Howes wrote to the younger John Winthrop about making saltpeter, he used code (in which every other letter was read) to explain how to create “shanlota presthier waidtoh Vortimnoe agnud cloimnoan Ebafretah” (“salt peter with Vrine and comon Earth”). From whom did Howes think he was keeping this information? Many other Europeans knew how to make saltpeter for gunpowder and fertilizer. And the English still insisted (probably wrongly) that adult Indians could not read. The use of code for this military information is a clue to the pretensions of some of the English to use chemistry, and the learned sciences generally, to prove their civility compared to Indians.

Forks

Edward Howes is recorded as sending Govenor Winthrop the first fork to be used in New England...

from...

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/24159/pg24159-images.html

Customs and Fashions in Old New England by Alice Morse Earle – 1894

Wolfhounds

Edward Howes sent wolfhounds to John Winthrop Jr in New England...

https://www.ctirishheritage.org/website/cmsAdmin/uploads/The-Shanachie-Volume-33-Number-1.pdf

“Irish wolfhounds among New England’s earliest settlers”

this article has many references to Edward Howes sending wolfhounds to John Winthrop Jr in New England

(select image to enlarge and zoom in)

The school teacher

from...

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol1/pp291-293#anchorn13

The Coopers' Company's School

“...A more distinguished appointment was that of Edward Howes, the mathematician, as usher 1643-6.”

In 1644 Howes wrote to Winthrop from the Coopers School at Ratcliff to request he buys him some land to state up a school in Boston...

Sir,

Notwithstandinge my late salutes, which I hope Mr. Downing hath sent per Mr. Graves, I having this opportunity, my Love constraines me to tender again my due respects vnto you and sheweing that I have a longing desire to be neer vnto you. I waite but for time and a sufficient call to invite me. Therefore as by my former I desire you to procure on me a few acres of land. I am advised to remove my mind from Cambridge lott, to Boston, my desire is to have it on the East side of one of the hills fitt for a Mathematicall Schoole. I shall referre the ppoin of the place to your judgment and if it may not come by donation for my former service not vnknown to many, get it as cheape as you can for me. I name noe number of acres you know best how much wilbe needfuil and you knowe I have noe child, therefore I may likely leave it a free schoole to the State, and I hope before I depart this world, to leave a Pillar with you for Posteritie; If it possiblie may be, let me have a running spring in the ground, or running through it soe as it may not be turned an other way: what you expend in the purchase or procuringe, not exceeding ten pounds I hope I shall be able to pay vpon your bill here or as you shall ppoint notwithstandinge these hard tymes. Thus desiringe you to present my humble service to your worthy father and mother, and my true Loue to your self,

I take leave and rest Yours assured till death

Edw. Howes, Ratcliffe Free Schoole, the 25th of Febr: 1644

I desire to know as soon as may be what is or may be done for me.

The Coopers Company School at Ratcliff, East London

founded in 1536

Evidently he never pursued the move from the Coopers Company School to Massachusetts. Here is an extract from The Home Counties Magazine, Vol XII, of 1910…

EAST INDIA COMPANY'S HOSPITAL AT POPLAR

A petition of Edward Howes* was this day presented to the Court, wherein he desired that they would bee pleased lo give him liberty to keepe a schoole in their almeshouse at Poppler, there being 2 voide roomes, vizt, the hall, which would bee fitt for a schoole, and a roome over that which would serve for a library and that hee would read prayers twice a day to the almesmen, and teach children, and seamen the marriners art, &c. The Court liked of his request, but, they not being now a full Court, resolved to resume the same at some other tyme when they are a fuller Court; yet they told him they thought they should graunt pare of his request, as that hee should have the hall and the closet adjoyming to it, and that they would consider of graunting him the large upper roome hereafter.

The use of these two rooms was granted to Howe on July 3, 1647. A year later we find him petitioning for four or five more, but the decision is not recorded. However in December, 1649, the Company was informed that Mr Howes had left his rooms, whereupon they were allotted to Mr Benjamin Spencer, minister he exercising such offices of piety to the almsmen as be requisite. He continued for some years to preach in the almshouse to the pensioners and to such outsiders as cared to come; and it maybe tbat he also kept on the school which Howes had starred.

* In all probability this was the Edward Howes who in 1644 was a master in the Ratcliff Free School. He was an intimate friend and frequent correspondent of Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts. His name is attached to a tract on the circumference of the earth, published in 1623; and to “A Short Arithmetic” published in 1659 at which time the author was Rector of Goldhanger; in Essex.

from..

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/oa_monograph/chapter/2151827

Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the Huguenots' New World,

By 1644, Howes had left the Downing household to become master at the Ratcliffe Free School in London. He adapted the school's classical and scholastic pedagogy to the new Paracelsian medical and alchemic tradition. Charles Webster has shown that this program was conducive to the English Calvinist program, when its practitioners domesticated its mystical and occult origins by suppressing them in public. If his letters to Winthrop are indicative, the practice of secrecy was a consuming aspect of Howes's everyday life. Not much more about the younger Winthrop's secretive protégé is known, except for one nineteenth-century reference to Howes having entered "holy orders." Howes's mystical and Neoplatonic reputation suggests membership in the Rosicrucian brotherhood, and there is plenty of evidence to support the claim.

Howe’s arithmetic book

Having been both a maths teacher and a preacher in the East End of London before becoming rector of Goldhanger, Howes chose to publish a book while at Goldhanger entitled “Short Arithmetick” subtitled: “The old and tedious way of numbering, reduced to a new and briefe method.”

A copy of the 90 page book is in the British Library and electronic copies are held on many university websites. Although the book is primarily about arithmetic, it has various ecclesiastical quotations within it, such as this on the title page:

“All wisdom cometh from the Lord, and is with him forever”.

The book’s introduction, entitled: “To The Reader” includes these words: “It is my opinion that it may be as serviceable to you as it hath to me, and prove a monitor for schooles, as a fore-man in shopps, as a tutor in studies, where better helps are wanting. … I need not apologize for seeming to be out of my profession while I endeavour to make all the Arts Handmaidens and Servants to it, yea with St Paul I could willingly become all unto all, that I might fav fome, yet not I, but the almighty Lord who is my Tutor, and to whofe tuition I leave you subscribing myself. Your Friend in the beft Service, Edward Howes” a significant part of the book can be read here.. ( the second half of the book consists largely of tables similar to the last few pages in this copy)

As the book’s introduction indicates, it is intended to provide practical assistance for working people, and as such did not push back the frontiers of mathematics at that time, despite the title (Newton published his theory of Calculus at about the same time). Having been a maths teacher in a fee paying school, and then the rector of a small rural village, which at that time had no formal school available to all children, Howes clearly saw a gulf between the educated elite and ordinary working people which he sought to narrow.

A summary of Howes life

Here is a summary of what we know about many the aspect of Edward Howes life…

Year	Activity
1606	Howes and the Winthrop Jnr. Born at Groton, near Sudbury in Suffolk
1615	Howes were Winthrop associated with Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire
1623	Howes wrote to Winthrop about a “tract on the circumference of the earth”
1624	Howes and Winthrop shared a room at Lincolns Inn, London
1624	They were “skipping” classes to conduct alchemical experiments, and searching for Rosicrucians.
1629	Winthrop the elder was appointed governor of The New England Company while in the UK
1630	Winthrop the elder went to New England & became the first Governor of Massachusetts
1631	Winthrop Jnr. the elder went to New England
1631-32	Howes sent many books to Winthrop
1631	Howes wrote: “I hear mutterings of separation of your people from church government”
1631	Howes wrote about an Apostle spoon
1632	Howes was studing law at the Inner Temple in London
1632	Howes sent letters and books to Winthrop about the North-West passage
1632	Howes sent to Winthrop a paper entitle: New England First Fruits
1632	Howes sent a letter with an account of a fellow living in a woodpile in Suffolk
1632	Howes sent Winthrop a receipt for Poteen
1632	Howes sent a letter about the shorthand alphabet to Winthrop
1632	Howes wrote to Winthrop about Thomas Arkisden’s shorthand
1630s	Howes wrote of a “book of characters based on rules of syntax and rhetorick”
1633	Howes sent to Winthrop the “first fork” in New England
1633	Winthrop refers to letter from his “intimate friend”
1633	Howes sent a “Irish boy” and four dogs to Winthrop
1633	Winthrop refers to Howes’s house as “not fit for habitation this winter”
1634	Howes wrote to Winthrop about how to kill wolves
1634	Winthrop Jr returned to London in after his wife’s death
1635	Winthrop Jr became governor of Connecticut
1635	sent letter about “magneticall engine” to Winthrop
1640s	Howes becomes a “Familist extremist
1640s	Howes sent many letters to Winthrop on Puritanism, alchemy, etc.
1643-46	Howes was a mathematics master at the Coopers Company school, East London
1643-49	The period covered by Howes London diary, or “common-place book” ***
1647-49	petitions to keep a school in the East India Company’s almshouse at Poplar
1644	Howes writes of possibly establishing a school in Boston,
1647	sent a letter to Francis Lodwick on a universal language
1647	The use of these two rooms Coopers' Company's School was granted to Howes
1649	The Coopers Company was informed that Howes had left his rooms
1649	John Winthrop (senior) died
1649	Charles 1st was executed and turmoil in Parliament
1649	New England Company was founded
1649	Howes is referred to as a “Calvinistic Rector of Goldhanger”
1650	Howes is listed as the Rector of St Peters Church Goldhanger
1650	Date given in British Library ESTC for the book: A Short Arithmetick…
1659	Date given in Smith’s biography of Howes as “Rector of Goldancher” 1659 (maybe an error)
1672	“Edward Howes, congregationalist' was the licensee of a “meeting-house” in Thame, Oxfordshire

*** Edward Howes diary, or “commonplace-book”, held in the British Library as part of the Sloan Manuscripts, ref: 979 is indentified on the web but has not been seen, however the dates given would indicate that it covers the period when he was a teacher in London and doesn’t cover the period when he was the Rector at Goldhanger.

Literature on the web

There are a remarkable number of references to Edward Howes in association with Governor Winthrop, both as published literature and on the internet. This would seem to reflect the influence that Howes had on the young governor and also that their correspondence provides a lasting record of the two Governors’ way of life and thinking during a critical phase in the evolution of the New England colony. Internet searches have found over 200 web pages and about 100 books !

Here is selection of published literature that refers to Edward Howes, most found with a Google Book search for:

“Edward Howes” + Winthrop … however his name is sometimes spelt as “Howe”

( the links below may become out of date, see... Those magnificent links )

Year	Title Author / link
	The Coopers’ Company’s School – see... www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22129#s1
	Notes on John Sanford – see... http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~barbpretz/ps03/ps03_267.htm
1825	The history of New England from 1630 to 1649, John Winthrop
1846	The Winthrop papers, (several editions by different members of the family)
1863			Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society includes many letters from Edward Howes to John Winthrop
1865	New England Two Centuries Ago, James Russell Lowell
1869	Life and letters of John Winthrop, R. C. Winthrop, Boston
1877	Phonetic Short-Hand William, P. Upham,
	A Shorthand Inventor Of 300 Years Ago, William J. Carlton – see... www.bucksas.org.uk/rob/rob_11_2_77.pdf
1892	Among My Books, My Study Windows, Fireside Travels, James Russell Lowell
1894	Customs and Fashions in Old New England –Forks see... www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24159
1898	Planter’s Plea, Revd. John White
1899	A sketch of the life of John Winthrop, founder of Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1633, Waters, Thomas Franklin
1912	A calendar of the court minutes, etc. of the East India company, 1644-1649
1928	Scientific Notes from the Books and Letters of John Winthrop, Jr., (1606-1676), Geo Starkey and C.A. Browne
1958			The Winthrop Woman, by Anya Seton, an historical novel that includes “Edward Howes” and this extract... ...The shop bell jangled as the street door opened and Edward Howes walked in. He was in his early twenties, tall, and stoop-shouldered, rather like a heron, even to the untidy crest of drab hair on his narrow head. His gray doublet and breeches hung limply on his lean frame and were well, spotted with ink and sealing wax. His eyes were vaguely blue the eyes of a sensitive dreamer, and indeed of late he dabbled secretly in alchemy and mysticism. He had attended Oxford and excelled in mathematics, he was thoroughly versed in law and the classics. ... Lucy had long been married to the prosperous attorney Emmanuel Downing, and Edward was his law clerk.
1961	Dictionary of National Biography, George Smith & Sidney Lee
1965	Early introduction of economic plants into New England, Mary-Alice F. Rea
1970	Early American Gardens - For Meate Or Medicine, Ann Leighton
1987	Silver in England, Philippa Glanville
	Silver and Pewter – see... www.capelinks.com/cape-cod/main/entry/silver-and-pewter/
1991	Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England,
1995	New England frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620-1675, Alden T. Vaughan
2000	Indians and English: facing off in early America, Karen Ordahl Kupperman
2004	The Precisianist Strain: Disciplinary Religion and Antinomian Backlash in Puritanism to 1638
2004			Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the emergence of an antinomian underground in pre-Civil-War England by David R. Como see... https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uXorQ6Cm1kwC&dq
2004	Vicious Wolves and Men in America, Jon T. Coleman
2004	https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/e6a64b36-26e4-4917-9f84-78029bb4bcd9/content Oaktrust Library - A Review by William J Scheick, University Of Texas in 2004 Saved for last is the piece de resistance of Como's study “Blown by the Spirit...” A close consideration of Edward Howes's drift into antinomianism. With his longtime friend John Winthrop, Jr., Edward Howes delved into alchemical mysteries, especially as they informed Everarde's mystical teachings. Later, during the 1640s, Howes would become a Familist extremist maintaining that the deity exists within the believer. In lieu of Scripture, then, revelation emanated from the believer's own spiritual experience. Particularly noteworthy is Howes's sense of still being a Puritan, so much so that he contemplated settlement in New England as if his views would not be problematic there. Como rightly suggests that Howes' case indicates the blurred boundaries among competing doctrinal positions within Puritan culture
2005		Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the Huguenots’ New World 1517-1751, Neil Kamil
2007	Francis Lodwick (1619/1694) a country not named (MS. Sloane 913, Fols. 1r/33r)
2007	Nuncius Inanimatus. Seventeenth-Century Telegraphy: the Schemes of Francis Godwin and Henry Reynolds
2009	John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians before King Philip’s War, Richard W. Cogley, Richard W Cogley
2010			Prospero’s America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, by Walter William Woodward See... Prospero's America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy...
2011	The Making of the English Gardener, Margaret Willes
2012	The Intelligencers and the Fifth Moon of Jupiter: Alchemy in the American Colonies - see… https://newtopiamagazine.wordpress.com/2012...
2015	Philalethe Reveal'd - a Study on Alchemy and the New World's Utopia, Vol-2,

____________________

A connection to Revd. Dr. Williams

Finally, there is a connection between the Revd. Howes, the two Winthrop Governors, The New England Company and possibility the generous bequest made in 1711 to The New England Company by the Revd. Dr. Daniel Williams of Beckingham Hall in Tolleshunt Major, who along with Howes is one of our other Local Authors. Beckingham Hall and Highams Farm (part of Dr. Williams estate at the time), is less than a mile from St Peter’s Church and the Rectory where Howes probably lived, although no direct link between Howes and Williams has been established. In 1629 Governor Winthrop was appointed as the first governor of The New England Company even before he emigrated to the Americas and a Mr Howe is listed as a friend of Dr. Williams, as seen in this extract…

See more about… The Revd Dr Daniel Williams and connections with The New England Company

____________________

Other Edward Howes

The Revd. Edward Howes is easily confused with Edmund Howes (fl.1602–1631), who is also referred to as Edward Howes in several ancient documents on the web. Edmund Howes was a chronicler working with John Stow, author of The English Chronicle and Annales (1607), and later A General Chronicle of England at around the same time in the mid 1600s. The two men have separate entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

There was also a later “Edward Howes” (1813-1871), who was a politician and a Norfolk MP and there are also many references to him on the web.

return to…

more authors from the past other characters from the past top home