A Tale of Two Bostons reconstructs the transatlantic origins of Boston, Massachusetts by grounding its story in the English market town of Boston, Lincolnshire. Rather than beginning in America, this study follows the clergy, merchants, magistrates, and families whose decisions in early seventeenth-century England shaped the political, religious, and institutional foundations of New England.

Drawing on parish registers, legal charters, wills, shipping lists, and reconstructed migration tables, Barry Arthur Cotton identifies the interconnected networks that produced the governing elite later known as the “Boston Men.” These individuals carried English social structures, religious ideals, and patterns of governance across the Atlantic during the Stuart period, laying the groundwork for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

As the first volume in the New England Origins series, this book restores the English context that made New England possible. It will be of interest to historians of early modern Britain, colonial America, religious history, and readers seeking a deeper understanding of how local English communities shaped the Atlantic world.