Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century

By David Underdown

Book Overview

Dorchester-the west-country town immortalized by Thomas Hardy as Casterbridge-was two hundred years before Hardy's time the most fervently religious town in England. The catalyst that turned a provincial backwater into a "godly community" was a great fire in 1613 that devastated much of the town and enabled the new pastor, John White, to lead the town in a kind of spiritual mass conversion that lasted for fifty years. In this book David Underdown describes the transformation of Dorchester, placing it in the context of national events (the English Civil War, Cromwell's rule, and the restoration of the monarchy) and events across the sea (the settling of similar godly communities in New England). Portraying the everyday lives of the townspeople-both the high-minded reformers and the boisterous characters they attempted to reform-Underdown recreates a seventeenth-century English town in all its vitality and richness. Underdown describes how Dorchester became a community with advanced systems of charitable giving, education, and assistance for the sick and needy. He paints a picture of Dorchester residents: Matthew Chubb, chief representative of the jovial, paternalist town oligarchy that preceded the Puritans; Chubb's friend Roger Pouncey, "godfather to the unruly and unregenerate of the town"; diarist William Whiteway, one of a group of Puritans who earnestly tried to reform their neighbors; and many other less gentrified men and women who spent their leisure time drinking and swearing, fornicating and repenting, striving to live up to the new ideals of their community or rejecting them with bitter anger and mocking laughter. Underdown's subtle and witty exploration of these characters and events casts a refreshing new light on a bygone era.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300059906
• ISBN13: 9780300059908
• Release Date: April 1994
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Newfoundland - Life in an English Town

Interesting information especially for Genealogists, a bit slow to find items of interest but well done, well indexed

Stirring stuff

This is a remarkably readable book which explores the lives, both religious and less pious, of Dorchester personalities in the early C17th. It is a wonderful balance between thorough and wide-ranging local history and the soap opera drama of daily life. All set in the fascinating and outlandish landscape of C16th Puritanism. Highly recommended for any reader.

Excellent! Deeply satisfying local history.

This is a deeply satisfying study of Dorset, a town that contributed early settlers to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in the decades that led up to the English Civil War.