“I Ame as Jephthah”

Abstract Focuses on the military captain and religious dissenter John Underhill. It shows that Underhill, who played a major role in the Pequot War, associated himself with the antinomian party in the 1630s because it was consistent with the honor culture to which he aspired. After being forced out of Massachusetts, Underhill moved to New Netherland, where he first exercised a military role but then allied himself with figures in Massachusetts. These figures, despite the majority's desire to stay out of the Anglo‐Dutch war, wished to precipitate conflict between the English and Dutch colonies. Ultimately, Underhill, not unlike Henry Vane, came to conceive of himself as a transatlantic actor whose life's ambitions had been thwarted and destroyed by sanctimonious provincials who put their own well‐being above that of the Commonwealth.