P.G. Ingram
Ashgate Dartmouth
Hardback
152
2000
In the tight frame of its first twenty years Massachusetts Bay dramatically altered its constitutional order from a theocracy to an oligarchy led by magistrates who created their own authority and defined the limits on their almost unlimited power. Debating-and Creating-Authority examines this shift in constitutional order at various levels and looks in particular at the efforts to create the theocracy and its subsequent collapse in terms of a fundamental 'democratical' flaw at the centre of the theocratic ideal.
Ashgate Dartmouth
Hardback
152
2000
In the tight frame of its first twenty years Massachusetts Bay dramatically altered its constitutional order from a theocracy to an oligarchy led by magistrates who created their own authority and defined the limits on their almost unlimited power. Debating-and Creating-Authority examines this shift in constitutional order at various levels and looks in particular at the efforts to create the theocracy and its subsequent collapse in terms of a fundamental 'democratical' flaw at the centre of the theocratic ideal.