on a Thursday night to ''the young musicians'' and that ''the singing extraordinarily excel-
∑≥∫ Notes to Pages 143–48
(February 23, 1718). I am indebted to Aaron Sprague for his graduate paper ''From Psalmody to Hymnody in Congregational Massachusetts: The Issue of Extra-Biblical Song in Public Worship'' (University of Notre Dame, 1996), for information on this topic. See also Robert Stevenson, Protestant Church Music in America: A Short Survey of Men and Movements from 1564 to the Present (New York: Norton, 1966), 1–31; Bruce C. Daniels, Puritans at Play: Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), 52–66.
35. Both quoted in Daniels, Puritans at Play, 54. 36. Cotton Mather was recommending them in the 1710s, ''Diary of Cotton Mather, 1709–1724,'' Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 7th ser., 8 (Boston, 1912), 142, 169, as cited by Sprague, ''From Psalmody to Hymnody.'' 37. Cynthia Adams Hoover, ''Epilogue to Secular Music in Early Massachusetts,'' in Music in Colonial Massachusetts, 1630–1820: Music in Homes and Churches (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1985), vol. 2, 734–53. At Harvard in 1717 a student defended the school's first thesis on music, including the proposition ''Harmony is the symmetry of well proportioned sounds.'' Edward T. Dunn, ''Musical Theses at Colonial Harvard,'' in Music in Colonial Massachusetts, vol. 2, 1162. Cf. Daniels, Puritans at Play, 60–61.
38. As early as March 1721, Samuel Sewall recorded in his diary that Mather preached on a Thursday night to ''the young musicians'' and that ''the singing extraordinarily excellent, such as has hardly been heard before in Boston.'' ''Diary of Sewall,'' 7, p. 285 (March 16, 1721). 39. Laura L. Becker, ''Ministers vs. Laymen: The Singing Controversy in Puritan New England, 1720–1740,'' New England Quarterly 55, no. 1 (March 1982): 79–96. Daniels, Puritans at Play, 55.
40. ''Diary of Cotton Mather,'' 606 (March 1721), quotation p. 626 (June 1721). 41. Henry Wilder Foote, Three Centuries of American Hymnody (Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String Press, 1961), 105–6.
42. Daniel, Puritans at Play, 61. 43. Crawford, Seasons of Grace, 68. Davis, Watts, passim. On Singer, see Davis, Watts, 55–56, and ''Benjamin Colman,'' Sibley's Harvard Graduates, 4: 122. 44. Williams diary (typescript), April 19, 1730, Storrs Library, Longmeadow, Mass., quoted in Mark Valeri, ''Preface to the Period,'' Works, 17: 19, cf. 17–28, on political context. See also Kenneth Minkema, ''Preface to the Period,'' Works, 14: 36–38.
45. Michael C. Batinski, Jonathan Belcher: Colonial Governor (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996), passim. ''Jonathan Belcher,'' Sibley's Harvard Graduates, 4: 434– 39. 46. This is the thesis of Batinski, Jonathan Belcher. 47. ''Belcher,'' Sibley's Harvard Graduates, 4: 443–44. 48. Batinski, Jonathan Belcher, 86, 88. 49. Belcher to Watts, October 30, 1732, ''The Belcher Papers,'' Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 6th ser., 6 (Boston, 1893), 205–6.
50. Batinski, Jonathan Belcher, emphasizes this theme. 51. David W. Conroy, In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 203. ''Vice and wickedness'' is from a proclamation by Belcher in 1730 and ''gaming and excessive drinking'' from proposed legislation in 1736.