• A NEW HISTORY OF THE PILGRIM REPUBLIC.* THE readability,
accuracy, and unpretentiousness of this book—at once the most complete and the most popular History of the Pilgrim Republic that has yet been published, even in America—make one desire, in the first place, to know a little more of its author. Mr. John A. Goodwin, who died in 1884, very shortly after completing the writing of this book, was a typical American, not of the present generation—it would not be easy to give the name of such an American—but certainly of the preceding one. He expended his energy in a variety of activities ; he led what Americans themselves are now in the habit of describing as a " full " life. In his early years he was a teacher, a sailor, and a traveller ; latterly, we are informed, he was better known to "the generality of persons as a public speaker and official, a parliamentarian and a journalist." But there was Pilgrim blood in his veins, he seems to have devoted his leisure to making himself an authority on Pilgrim history, and his editor tells us that the final strength of his life was expended in a last visit to "that green Plymouth mount where sleep so many of his ancestors, and where associations dearest to his heart were most thickly clustered." Mr. Goodwin is an American of the sort whose biography ought to be written.
Considering how glibly every one that mentions the name of America talks of the Pilgrim Fathers, it is marvellous how little there has been published about them of the nature of accurate history, as distinguished from oratorical eulogium romance, and myth. Mr. Goodwin is a modest writer, and styles his work a "historical review." But as a simple matter of fact, it is only within the past thirty years that any one since the days of persons who knew either the Pilgrims or their descendants could have written about their life in England or Holland, or the difficulties that attended the departure of the Mayflower.' Bancroft's great work was published before these discoveries. The manuscripts of William Bradford, the truly great Governor of New Ply- mouth, which are the mine of information par excellence on the Pilgrim period, have suffered, indeed, at the hands of time and compilers, misfortunes as curious as they are unique.
The manuscript of this History, which extends from 1606 to 1646, and which gives a notice of each of the 102 passengers of the Mayflower,' was, after having been used by various writers, deposited in the New England Library at Boston. This building was occupied, about the beginning of the American Revolution, by the British troops, and the precious document disappeared, along with Bradford's letter-book and several small volumes written by him, and a pencil-book kept by his son, who was Deputy-Governor. About the end of last century, the remains of the letter-book were found in a baker's shop in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where 338 of its leaves had been used as wrapping-paper. Next,— " In 1855, Mr. J. W. Thornton lent to Mr. Barry a small his- torical volume by the Lord Bishop of Oxford (Wilberforce), which contained various extracts known to be from Bradford, but credited to a 'MS. History of the Plantation of Plymouth
in the Fulham Library.' Various other quotations from the same source were made, but they were not recognised as any portion of the Governor's known works. Dr. Drake and other antiquaries inferring that this manuscript must be Bradford's long-lost history, Charles Deane, the enthusiastic secretary of the
• The Pilgrim Republic an Historical Review of the Colony of Nei. Plymouth. By John A. Goodwin. Boston, U.S.A.: Ticknor and Co. 1889.
Massachusetts Historical Society, at once communicated with the Rev. Joseph Hunter, of London, and soon obtained and caused to be printed a verbatim copy of this invaluable work."
Then it was not till 1841 that Dr. Young, the author of The Chronicles of the Pilgrim. Fathers, reprinted in full what is popularly known as Mould's Relation, but is in reality, to a large extent, a daily journal of Governor Bradford, extending from the discovery of land by the 'Mayflower' on November 20th, 1620, till 1621. In short, historical and antiquarian research has been chiefly engaged within the last half-century or so in Massachusetts in bringing together the scattered literary remains of Bradford. Mr. Goodwin has himself made no important discovery, although he is willing to believe that "in neglected places are still resting Pilgrim letters, records, legal papers, and account-books, which would connect in a chain various detached links of history." But he has made a careful study and comparison of all accessible authorities, and verified—or refuted—every historical statement made at second-hand. How necessary this verification is, not for the sake of Dryasdust accuracy, but with a view to ascertaining the true character of the settlement at New Plymouth, may be gathered from a comparison of certain facts with this short statement of them which is taken (by us, not by Mr. Goodwin) from a popular and reliable English encyclopmdia :—" In 1620 the Mayflower,' 180 tons, sailed from Southampton with 102 Puritan settlers, and landed at Plymouth, M., Decem- ber 22nd." The number of the 'Mayflower's' passengers is (for a wonder) correct, and so is her tonnage, although her 180 tons are equal to about 120 of the present rating. Then, she arrived at Plymouth on December 21st, not on Decem- ber 22nd. Finally, the passengers were not Puritans, and were not even styled Puritans by themselves or by their contemporaries. They were Separatists or Brownists, and in time became Independents and Congregationalists, and, as such, were actually oppressed by the Puritans. Captain Myles Standish, the most picturesque figure in the New Plymouth settlement, and who with Bradford and Winslow constituted the triumvirate of the little Republic there, was not a member of the Pilgrim Church, but belonged to a dis- tinguished English family, which included in its genealogy a Roman Catholic Bishop.
A perusal of Mr. Goodwin's volume leaves one, above all things, with the impression that William Bradford, the historian of New Plymouth, and elected its Governor thirty- one times, was the leading spirit of the Pilgrim Republic in its early struggles and best days. He was in a sense a Washington before his time. Although he did not possess the social advantages of his colleague, Winslow, he was a man of culture and liberal sympathies. He knew Dutch almost as well as he knew English ; he could read French ; he had mastered Latin, Greek, and even Hebrew. He had strong opinions on religious and ecclesiastical questions—although, as Mr. Goodwin says in the beginning of his book, dealing with the theological persecution that led to the 'Mayflower' adventure, had the Church of England been in his day what it is now, Bradford would never have left it—but he was eminently tolerant. When Druilette, a French Jesuit, spent a day at Plymouth in 1650, he was hospitably entertained by the Governor, who, the day being a Friday, gave him a dinner of fish. All the world was superstitious then, yet Bradford "never renounced the names of the days and months ; he declined to express an opinion to the effect that the great eclipse of 1635 had any connection with the preceding storm ; he never mentioned the comets which so generally alarmed even the educated people of that century ; nor has he even alluded to witchcraft, over which princes, ecclesiastics, universities, and magistrates of the highest standing in Europe and America were then as mad as their most ignorant neighbours." Standish, whose courage was only equalled by his good fortune, was no doubt invaluable to New Plymouth. But it would hardly have been consolidated, it would not have stood the storms of adversity which beat upon it, but for Bradford. Mr. Goodwin's judgment as a historian is espe- cially shown in his making this earlier Washington the true centre of his book.
Mr. Goodwin is not, of course, always engaged in correcting the blunders of other historians, and of necessity travels over ground (such as the troubles of the Separatists in England and Holland) familiar to every well-read man, either in America or in England. It remains, therefore, but to note the especial excellences of those portions of the book which cannot be said to be strictly original. The chapters which treat of the dealings of the Pilgrims with the aborigines, and "the great Indian conspiracy," are in every respect admirable. Mr. Goodwin does not enter into Indian life and sympathise with the Indian nature to the extent that Mr. Parkman has done. But his tenth chapter is perhaps the beat group-photograph of the American aborigines that has yet appeared. The material vicissitudes of New Plymouth are narrated with patient care and great minuteness in detail; and the contrast between the comparative liberalism of New Plymouth when under its original triumvirs, and the comparative (if not positive) illiberalism of the neighbouring Puritanic colony of Massachusetts Bay, is brought into bold relief. It is positively with regret that one reads of its being merged in 1691—it was then a colony of seventeen towns and thirteen thousand inhabitants—along with "the Bay" in the State of Massachusetts. For had the Pilgrim Fathers deserted Plymouth in 1621 or 1622, as well they might have done, there would have been no Massachusetts, England would not have secured Canada, and France and Spain might have divided, the New World between them.
Previous page
