Project Gutenberg's William Bradford of Plymouth, by Albert Hale Plumb

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Title: William Bradford of Plymouth

Author: Albert Hale Plumb

Release Date: September 20, 2010 [EBook #33776]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM BRADFORD OF PLYMOUTH ***

Produced by Roberta Staehlin and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

[Illustration: Copyright by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth, Mass.
BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM BRADFORD. AUSTERFIELD, ENGLAND.]

WILLIAM BRADFORD
OF PLYMOUTH

BY

ALBERT H. PLUMB

[Illustration]

BOSTON
RICHARD G. BADGER
THE GORHAM PRESS

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY RICHARD G. BADGER

All Rights Reserved

Made in the United States of America

The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.

TO ALL DESCENDANTS OF

WILLIAM BRADFORD

AND TO ALL WHO ADMIRE THIS LEADER OF NEW ENGLAND'S FOUNDERS THIS CONCISE
AND UNPRETENTIOUS RECORD OF HIS LIFE AND ACTS IS

DEDICATED

IN THE HOPE THAT BY HIS EXAMPLE WE MAY BE INSPIRED AND STRENGTHENED, THE
BETTER TO DO OUR OWN PART IN NOBLE LIVING AND IN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC
ACHIEVEMENTS

PREFACE

It is a pleasing task to record afresh the life course of one of those
whom the poet Whittier characterized as "the noblest ancestry that ever
a people looked back to with love and reverence."

The leading authorities, particularly the Pilgrim narrators themselves
and those more nearly contemporary with them, have contributed to this
biography. Though early Plymouth events and the career of Bradford are
inseparably connected, the colonial history is here limited and made
subservient to the personal consideration, with regret that there do not
appear more obtainable data of this nature. Undoubtedly the Governor's
modest reticence largely accounts for this. We can only be thankful that
we have what we have.

ALBERT H. PLUMB.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I
THE BOY