ABSTRACT
In its first decade, the legal system established in the colony seemed consistent with John Winthrop's view of a proper theocracy. The charter established the basic structures of the colony's government. It required that the colony have a governor, deputy governor, and governing board composed of eighteen individuals known as assistants, and provided that those officers had to be elected annually by the stockholders from among their own number. But the law itself undermined that tendency, and threatened the authority of the leadership. In the 1630s, substantive law tended to be diffuse and ad hoc, in part because in that first decade the General Court passed few laws. Before 1641, law in practice did not actually conform to Winthrop's ideal. While the lack of written laws or settled precedents gave judges the sort of discretion Winthrop desired, his debate with John Haynes demonstrated there were differences within the colonial leadership about how decisions about law should be made.
