4 Much, perhaps too much, has been made of differences between towns in 17th-century Massachusetts—between covenanted and uncovenanted towns, seed towns and satellite towns, communal towns and nucleated towns. All of these distinctions existed within a very narrow range, by contrast with other types of local communities in the Western world. Strong similarities sprang from common purposes and common experiences, and also from the laws of the Bay Colony, which strictly regulated many institutions—political, religious, educational, familial and economic.