t was ordered that "Trimountaine shall be called Boston," after the
borough of that name in Lincolnshire, England, of which several of the
leading settlers had formerly been prominent citizens.[4]

For several years it was uncertain whether Cambridge, Charlestown or
Boston should be the capital of the colony, but in 1632 the General
Court agreed "by general consent, that Boston is the fittest place for
public meetings of any place in the Bay." It rapidly became the
wealthiest and most populous. Throughout the 17th century its history is
so largely that of Massachusetts generally that they are inseparable.
Theological systems were largely concerned. The chief features of this
epoch --the Antinomian dissensions, the Quaker and Baptist persecutions,
the witchcraft delusion (four witches were executed in Boston, in 1648,
1651, 1656, 1688) &c.--are referred to in the article MASSACHUSETTS
(q.v.). In 1692 the first permanent and successful printing press was
established; in 1704 the first newspaper in America, the _Boston
News-Letter_, which was published weekly until 1776. Puritanism steadily
mellowed under many influences. By the turn of the first century bigotry
was distinctly weakened. Among the marks of the second half of the 17th
century was growing material prosperity, and there were those who
thought their fellows unduly willing to relax church tests of fellowship
when good trade was in question. There was an unpleasant Englishman who
declared in 1699 that he found "Money Their God, and Large Possessions
the only Heaven they Covet." Prices were low, foreign commerce was
already large, business thriving; wealth gave social status; the
official British class lent a lustre to society; and Boston "town" was
drawing society from the "country." Of the two-score or so of families
most prominent in the first century hardly one retained place in the
similar list for the early years of the second. Boston was a prosperous,
thrifty, English country town, one traveller thought. Another, Daniel
Neal, in 1720, found Boston conversation "as polite as in most of the
cities and towns in England, many of their merchants having the
advantage of a free conversation with travellers; so that a gentleman
from London would almost think himself at home at Boston, when he
observes the number of people, their houses, their furniture, their
tables, their dress and conversation, which perhaps is as splendid and
showy as that of the most considerabl