Thomas Hutchinson, one of the most maligned men in early American history, was the last civilian royal governor of the province of Massachusetts. In the history of American literature, he is known primarily as the author of the valuable, three-volume History of Massachusetts Bay. Along with his other, more political works--some published by him, others published without his consent, still others left in manuscript--his writings illuminate the political imagination of an American loyalist in the tumultuous times of the Revolution.

The Hutchinson family had been notable in Massachusetts for four generations before Thomas was born in their Garden Court Street home in Boston. Mistress Anne Hutchinson immigrated to New England in 1634, quickly became the central figure in the Antinomian Controversy that threatened the infant Puritan theocracy, and was banished from the Bay Colony for her dangerously heretical views. Her son Edward, a merchant and representative from Boston, was...