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.
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