History of American Literature | Page 8

rank of poor creatures below them, detest work, for fear it
should make them look like slaves."
WILLIAM BRADFORD, 1590-1657
William Bradford was born in 1590 in the Pilgrim district of England,
in the Yorkshire village of Austerfield, two miles north of Scrooby.
While a child, he attended the religious meetings of the Puritans. At the
age of eighteen he gave up a good position in the post service of
England, and crossed to Holland to escape religious persecution. His
History of Plymouth Plantation is not a record of the Puritans as a
whole, but only of that branch known as the Pilgrims, who left England
for Holland in 1607 and 1608, and who, after remaining there for
nearly twelve years, had the initiative to be the first of their band to
come to the New World, and to settle at Plymouth in 1620.
For more than thirty years he was governor of the Plymouth colony,
and he managed its affairs with the discretion of a Washington and the
zeal of a Cromwell. His History tells the story of the Pilgrim Fathers
from the time of the formation of their two congregations in England,
until 1647.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF FIRST PARAGRAPH OF
BRADFORD'S "HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION"]
In 1897 the United States for the first time came into possession of the
manuscript of this famous History of Plymouth Plantation, which had
in some mysterious manner been taken from Boston in colonial times
and had found its way into the library of the Lord Bishop of London.
Few of the English seem to have read it. Even its custodian miscalled it

The Log of the Mayflower, although after the ship finally cleared from
England, only five incidents of the voyage are briefly mentioned: the
death of a young seaman who cursed the Pilgrims on the voyage and
made sport of their misery; the cracking of one of the main beams of
the ship; the washing overboard in a storm of a good young man who
was providentially saved; the death of a servant; and the sight of Cape
Cod. On petition, the Lord Bishop of London generously gave this
manuscript of 270 pages to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In a
speech at the time of its formal reception, Senator Hoar eloquently
summed up the subject matter of the volume as follows:--
"I do not think many Americans will gaze upon it without a little
trembling of the lips and a little gathering of mist in the eyes, as they
think of the story of suffering, of sorrow, of peril, of exile, of death, and
of lofty triumph which that book tells,--which the hand of the great
leader and founder of America has traced on those pages. There is
nothing like it in human annals since the story of Bethlehem. These
Englishmen and English women going out from their homes in
beautiful Lincoln and York, wife separated from husband and mother
from child in that hurried embarkation for Holland, pursued to the
beach by English horsemen; the thirteen years of exile; the life at
Amsterdam, 'in alley foul and lane obscure'; the dwelling at Leyden; the
embarkation at Delfthaven; the farewell of Robinson; the terrible
voyage across the Atlantic; the compact in the harbor; the landing on
the rock; the dreadful first winter; the death roll of more than half the
number; the days of suffering and of famine; the wakeful night,
listening for the yell of wild beast and the war whoop of the savage; the
building of the State on those sure foundations which no wave or
tempest has ever shaken; the breaking of the new light; the dawning of
the new day; the beginning of the new life; the enjoyment of peace with
liberty,--of all these things this is the original record by the hand of our
beloved father and founder."
In addition to giving matter of unique historical importance, Bradford
entertains his readers with an account of Squanto, the Pilgrims' tame
Indian, of Miles Standish capturing the "lord of misrule" at
Merrymount, and of the failure of an experiment in tilling the soil in

common. Bradford says that there was immediate improvement when
each family received the full returns from working its own individual
plot of ground. He thus philosophizes about this social experiment of
the Pilgrims:--
"The experience that was had in this common course and condition,
tried sundry years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well
evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients,
applauded by some of later times;----that the taking away of property
and bringing in community into a common wealth would make them
happy and flourishing.... Let none object this is men's corruption, and
nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this
corruption in them, God