while as an exile in Holland, with her father. She became a woman of
devout mind and great force of character.

Alice must often have seen William Bradford in the Separatist community
at Leyden. And in her widowhood, two years after the tragic decease of
Dorothy May Bradford, she received with favor his suit for marriage,
which was happily consummated at Plymouth on August fourteen, Old Style.

She brought over considerable property with her. Dorothy Bradford's son
John, a lad under seven then, did not come till a few years later. He
himself though married died childless, after threescore years of life;
and he was given the position of Deputy to the General Court, before his
father passed away. He received a house and land from a paternal will.

Goodwife Southworth's own sons Thomas and Constant Southworth rejoined
her within seven years, meeting their half-brothers, the Plymouth family
having then been blessed with three little ones, William, Mercy and
Joseph. The Bradford household, of parents and children, therefore
comprised eight persons, residing in the Governor's assigned homestead
at the south-west corner of the square in the intersection of the two
main streets.

Mrs. Bradford engaged earnestly and long in labors for the young people
at Plymouth.

Though she survived her life-partner by nearly thirteen years, he had
the joy of knowing some of the fifteen children of his son and namesake
William, the Deputy Governor and Major, and several of his other son
Joseph's seven children. His only daughter, Mercy, married and was
living in 1650. The grandmother's name was repeated in Alice, daughter
of William Junior.

Following a long debility, on April 5, 1670, shortly before the dark
days of King Philip's war, the Governor's consort closed, at her home of
peace, her course of almost fourscore years; and a relative, Nathaniel
Morton, Secretary of Plymouth Colony, writing verses which are copied on
the first original leaf of Bradford's History, "Upon the life and death
of that godly matron Mistris Alice Bradford," said of her that after the
obsequies of her husband,

"E'r since that time in widdowhood shee hath
Lived a life in holynes and faith
In reading of God's word and contemplation."

IV

THE GOVERNOR: LATER ADMINISTRATION

_In thanking God for the mercies extended to us in the past, we
beseech Him that He may not withhold them in the future, and
that our hearts may be ro