The standard authority on the subjects treated in the volume is J. G. Palfrey, _History of New England_, 5 vols. (1858-1864, 1875-1890), a work of broad scholarship and written in a not uninteresting style, but indiscriminating in its defense of Massachusetts and without any understanding of the purpose and attitude of the English authorities. In somewhat the same class are G. E. Ellis, _The Puritan Age_ (1888), a dry book but less given to special pleading, and Justin Winsor, _The Memorial History of Boston_, 4 vols. (1880-1882), a series of essays with elaborate notes and bibliographies, presenting in a fragmentary way the conventional view of the period. Less frankly favorable to New England is J. A. Doyle, _English Colonies in America: The Puritan Colonies_, 2 vols. (1887), a work of value, but diffuse in style and often confused in treatment, and, though written by an Englishman, displaying little interest in the English side of the story. The chapters in Edward Channing, _History of the United States_, vol. i (1905), that relate to the subject, are scholarly and always interesting; while those in H. L. Osgood, _The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century_, 3 vols. (1904-1907), contain the ablest accounts we have of the institutional characteristics of the period. There are few good histories of the individual colonies. Those deserving of mention are: Thomas Hutchinson, _History of Massachusetts Bay_, 2 vols. (1764-1767); S. G. Arnold, _History of the State of Rhode Island_, 2 vols. (4th ed. 1894); Irving B. Richman, _Rhode Island_ (1904, American Commonwealth Series); B. Trumbull, _Complete History of Connecticut_, 2 vols. (new ed. 1898); A. Johnson, _Connecticut_ (2d ed. 1903, American Commonwealth Series); E. Atwater, _History of the Colony of New Haven_ (1881); W. H. Fry, _New Hampshire as a Royal Province_ (1908); W. D. Williamson, _History of the State of Maine_ (1832); H. S. Burrage, _The Beginnings of Colonial Maine_ (1914). Hutchinson and Trumbull are classics; Arnold is one of the best of the state histories; Richman and Johnson are short and readable; Fry deals with the institutional life of the colony; Williamson is old-fashioned and poor; but Burrage is authoritative.