No edition of Governor Winthrop's Journal can present the text of the manuscript exactly as he wrote it. The author's handwriting is notoriously difficult, compared even with that of his contemporaries, and large sections written with inferior ink have almost completely faded. Certain pages can be deciphered only with the aid of the photostat. The task of transcription is often double: first, one must identify the word itself, and second, one must decide just how Winthrop chose to spell that word on that occasion. Cancellations, additions, and retracings, sometimes add to the confusion. In reproducing the twenty-fifth page of the Journal (see page 264), the object has been to represent graphically the perils and pitfalls of the manuscript as well as the ample opportunity for differences of opinion in special cases of minute interpretation. A study of this page may partly explain why former editors of the Journal decided to simplify their task by modernizing the spelling, capitatization, and punctuation.

The following text has been established directly from the original manuscript in the possession of the Society. It represents the results of collations by several persons. In many instances one can do no better than guess whether Winthrop meant to use a final “e” or not, or a capital or small letter. It is impossible to establish a text to which no exception will be taken. Further, the reader is reminded that in accordance with the editorial rules established by the Committee of Publication for this series, common abbreviations have been expanded, superior letters have been brought down to line, and the tilde has been replaced with the letter it represents.

In addition, difficulties arise with the chronology of the Journal. Winthrop's records were often scanty and detached, and his sense of proportion may seem odd to readers with an altered point of view. But even a casual examination of the original manuscript raises doubts as to the correctness of some of his dates. Apparently Winthrop intended to edit his Journal at some future time, using it, perhaps, as the basis of “The History of New England,” which it has often been inaccurately called — a title suggested by the words which Winthrop wrote on the cover of the third volume of the manuscript, at the top: “3: Vol Booke written in above of the Annalls of N: England.” A little above the center of the cover is printed, in a later hand: “Vol. III.”, below which is written: “à Sept. 17. 1644 — to Jan. 1648/49.” Possibly he may have undertaken this task of editing before he 235died, for the underscorings, in a pale brown ink, conceivably of a later date, are probably his own, the ink being of the same color as some of the entries in Winthrop's hand. These underscorings are represented by italics in this text. Certain it is that Winthrop not infrequently turned back and at a later date wrote into spaces he had left blank (by accident or intention) names, sentences, and paragraphs based on information he had come by subsequently. Some of these entries were made in such a way as to confuse even the omniscience of James Savage, as a comparison of his edition of 1853 with the Records of Massachusetts, published the same year, will show. Again, as in the account of the threatened resignation of Governor Vane in 1636, Winthrop gives information as to a General Court the meeting of which was deliberately omitted from the Records. Sometimes Winthrop himself seems to have been careless or become confused in making these additions.

In regard to Winthrop's plan for preparing a history, Thomas Shepard wrote him from Cambridge, January 27, 1639/40:

The history of the manuscript of Winthrop's Journal is almost as curious as that of Bradford's Plimmoth Plantation. The original consisted of three volumes of unequal size, bound in vellum, the first (from which the following text is taken) being of the dimensions of a small quarto, measuring 7¼ by 2365¾ inches and containing 190 pages. Several historians of New England, among others, Hubbard, Cotton Mather, and Prince, had made use of these volumes; “Hutchinson, we know,” says Savage, “did not enjoy the use of them.” In 1790, there was published at Hartford, Connecticut, from a manuscript copy made previously for Governor Trumbull, an edition of the Journal through 1644. This edition was prepared from the first two volumes of Winthrop's manuscript then in the possession of his descendants, the third volume having been lost. Governor Trumbull was dead by the time the book was issued, but his secretary, John Porter, had transcribed much of the manuscript for him, and Noah Webster was responsible for most of the editing.

In 1816, the third manuscript volume was found among the collections of the Reverend Thomas Prince deposited in the Old South Church in Boston,2 where it had lain unnoticed for sixty years. Working with all three manuscript volumes, James Savage prepared his first edition of the Journal, which he called The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, in two volumes (Boston, 1825), publishing the third volume for the first time and correcting many errors in the transcription of the first and second. His second edition (Boston, 1853) was the more famous, for his notes are numerous, lengthy, and packed with prejudice and the pride of many opinions. The less valuable side of the great work of Savage is ably presented in the blunt review of the second edition published by S. G. Drake in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register (Boston, 1854). But in spite of the liberties he took with spelling, punctuation, and space, any one who has worked over the handwriting of John Winthrop for any length of time must respect the patience, the industry, and the ingenuity of James Savage.3 While Savage was preparing his first edition, the second volume of the original, together with Savage's copy containing the results of three collations, was destroyed by a fire in his Boston office on November 10, 1825. The extent of this loss can be roughly calculated on the basis of the Savage Edition of 1853, which contains 811 pages of text and footnotes. Of these, 411 represent the contents of the burned volume. Of the portion lost, Savage had corrected as much as is contained in 180 pages (Savage, 1853: I. 235–401; II. 3–15). Thus, out of a total of 811 pages, 230, in 1825, were not yet corrected from the text of the Porter-Webster Edition (Hartford, 1790). This far from perfect first printing of the Journal must, therefore, always 237remain the basis for rather more than a quarter of the whole Journal. The volume burned was apparently the largest of the three.

Since the appearance of the second edition of Savage, in 1853, the Journal of John Winthrop has appeared in the Original Narratives Series, for which James Kendall Hosmer prepared an edition issued in two volumes (New York, 1908). Hosmer followed Savage's text, making one or two deletions, which were duly indicated.

The two charts included in the following text were first reproduced in Proceedings LXII. 351 and 361, and a portion of that volume published separately under the title of The Founding of Massachusetts (Boston, 1930), 127 and 137. Savage first published a transcription of the writing on the second in 1853 (II. “Addenda,” 418.), calling attention to the first with a footnote (I. 29, note 2.) but not troubling to put the legends on this first chart into print. At the end of the following text of the Journal will be found three illustrations of four pages of drawings at the back of the first manuscript volume. So far as is known, these drawings have not hitherto been reproduced. All the miscellaneous notes in the first manuscript volume of the Journal are printed in the following pages.

Two accounts of the voyage of the Arbella, with maps, are to be found in the Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, the first by Horace E. Ware, “Winthrop's Course across the Atlantic,” XII. 191–203 (see the revised chart in XX. 278); and the second by S. E. Morison, “The Arbella's Course across the Gulf of Maine,” with charts of the concluding part of her voyage, which will appear in Volume XXVII. The list of passengers was printed, probably for the first time, by Charles E. Banks, with much other matter appertaining to the voyage, in his The Winthrop Fleet of 1630 (Boston, 1930).