During most of the period covered by this book, the English began the calendar year on March 25. Because the remainder of Europe had already adopted the Gregorian calendar, the English regularly followed a practice of dual dating for the period from 1 January through 24 March. What we would consider 1 March 1660, they thought of as 1 March 1659/60. Their practice of providing both years has been utilized here for the sake of clarity. In addition, most early New Englanders avoided the use of month names – which they considered pagan – and instead numbered the months. They would have rendered 1 March 1659/60 as 1st day 1st month 1659/60. To avoid confusion, all months have been given their “pagan” names.

Quotations from colonial sources have been left as in the original except that the letters of the alphabet have been changed as necessary to follow modern usage. Seventeenth-century publications typically had extremely long titles. The ends of these have regularly been lopped off without the insertion of ellipses.

Where Knowledge of a woman's family history is needed to follow a discussion, the full name — including any maiden name or previous married names — is provided. For those cases in which a name is not known, brackets, [ ], indicate the omission.

While working on this project, I have incurred many debts. The American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities provided leave from teaching duties with the Fellowship for Recent Recipients of the Ph.D. An exchange program between the Huntington Library and the British Academy made a research trip to London possible.