A quick glance in the back of this book will give the reader an instant appreciation of its scholarly quality. Appendix 2 lists the names of English Puritans who emigrated to New England and then returned from there during the two turbulent decades of 1640 to 1660. The appendix, which takes up thirty-three pages, also gives their towns of origin in England and of eventual settlement in New England (‘New England’ here meaning contemporary Massachusetts and Connecticut); the dates of their arrival and departure; and their occupations.

Appendix 3 is more focused. In fifteen pages, it lists ninety-six ministers who emigrated to New England in the 1630s and gives a thumbnail sketch of their clerical careers as well as the names of their parishes or churches in both America and England. This appendix also lists twenty students or recent graduates who later became ministers while in New England (all but two were products of Cambridge).

The notes for this slender volume cover pages 205 to 269, and they are dense. The bibliography (twenty-one pages) lists many specialised sources such as church registries and family court records, plus innumerable tracts from the deepest recesses of academe. You can almost smell the archival dust.

In short, Susan Hardman