Thomas Shepard II, whom Samuel Eliot Morison called the "beloved son of a beloved father," in many ways fulfills the popular ideal of the second-generation New England Puritan minister. Pious, learned, intelligent, and urbane, he was a gifted preacher who stirred his audiences, but whose life was shadowed by the specter of early death. Though few of his writings have been published, the handful that are available testify to the range of his mind and abilities. And, though little is known of his personal life, evidence of his character and personality is conveyed through the genuine grief of An Elegie upon the Death of the Reverend Mr. Thomas Shepard (1677) by his good friend Urian Oakes, then acting president of Harvard College.

The second Thomas Shepard was born in London six months before his father, Thomas Shepard I, immigrated to New England with his wife, Margaret Tauteville Shepard, a...