William Bradford of Plymouth

Earth's transitory things decay,

Its pomps, its pleasures pass away;

But the sweet memory of the good

Survives in the vicissitude.

J. Bowring.

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THE world has nothing more worthy of our regard than its unconscious heroes. Though many can discern their own true importance, a peculiar charm invests such as do not realize it, even if they are told. They seem to think others would have done better in their place, and they lightly estimate their services, at less than their fellow-men accredit them. His ideal of duty captivates the doer more than his own agency therein. The noblest men are made by the contemplation of their models. Like the great Apostle, they are not disobedient unto the heavenly vision. Among earth's worthies, modest and unconscious of greatness, there stands the figure of William Bradford.

We find him first as a native of Austerfield, England, on the south border of Yorkshire. There is no official record of his birth. But in addition to his own declaration of age when first married, the clearly legible record of his baptism, March 19, 1589, would indicate that by the modern calendar he was born in 1590. The garments worn by him at the chapel March 19–29, being a short white linen covering and mitts which came for exhibition to Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts, are the apparel of a small babe.

The affirmation of Bradford, as a man thoroughly established in his integrity and his accuracy of statement, this declaration in the important matter of his marriage contract when he was required to subscribe his own signature, must be accepted as more weighty than the opinions given by others regarding his age in later years of his life, and the posthumous inscription placed long afterward on his monument. It is unlikely that he was consulted about his age, for any future epitaph, since even the necessary making of his will was deferred to the day of his death. Not long before his nuptials on December 10–20, 1613, he averred that he was twenty-three; and, supposing an error of his quite improbable here, our conclusion appears justified that he was born in 1590 by the Gregorian calendar. We also have no reason to doubt an old claim that his natal month was the same as his baptismal, March. Besides, the rule existed then, that the rite should be administered one week after birth. If this contemporary custom was followed, William saw the light of day March 12, 1589, by Old Style, or March 22, 1590, New Style.

It is unfortunate that the baptismal font, despite efforts to purchase it back, has not yet, to our knowledge, been yielded by the Methodist church in Lound, Nottinghamshire, and restored to its proper place at Saint Helen's in Austerfield. The Austerfield font at present we do not accept as the genuine original. That original one at Saint Helen's about the time of our Civil War seems to have been a victim to the generally weaker antiquarian interest then, and it was replaced by a high basin. It came back soon but evidently was unused, lying upon the floor aside. Then a sexton was ordered to take out and sell superfluous articles. After resting on an estate as a garden stone, it was given to a lady from Austerfield, who loaned it indefinitely to the church mentioned. It is a large Norman bowl, rough-hewn and of ancient aspect, which when in use was for convenience set upon a wooden block.

When the tolling bells above the small stone chapel summoned the Bradford family and friends to the solemn service, little did they discern, with all their natural affection, any unusual significance in that consecration of a life to be expended far from the quiet hamlet of old England in a growing community of New England.

As the child came to an age of sufficient understanding, how strongly must this humble shrine have appealed to him, with the development of his proclivities guided by one circumstance after another! It was erected during the twelfth century, in the centre of the village, when the rustic parish was presented by a person of rank for the support of a chaplain. Doubtless the lad's eyes often scrutinized the zigzag Norse symbol of lightning, and other ornamentation, carved upon the double arch under which he was wont to enter.

The whole region was rich in historic interest to any reflective mind. It was the battle ground of Briton, Roman and Anglo-Saxon. It formed the heart of the Danish territory, opposite their native continental shores. The Robin Hood marauders operated through this sparsely settled North of England, where the last of several uprisings against the South was attempted only about a score of years before Bradford's birth. The people were comparatively rude and uneducated, with few schools; and papal influence yielded more slowly away from the governmental headquarters. If Mary Queen of Scots had not been executed shortly before the Puritan churches arose, it is difficult to see how or when they could have lived so near her seat of power. But Elizabeth, in her laudable aim to uplift the nation by improving the people and repressing the nobles, encouraged the incoming of tens of thousands of Dutch, of whom many flocked to the fair lowlands east and north, imparting their tolerant ideas, bestowing names upon numerous localities, and producing a marked effect in the speech and blood of the inhabitants. The Queen required every family of Hollanders to take an English apprentice in their imported arts and crafts. Thus England changed rapidly from a country merely agricultural to one also manufacturing, where industry was pursued in weaving cloth and in glass, pottery, iron and various metals, wrought not in factories at first but in private houses as once was commonly done in New England.

The religious effect of this immigration was not in the royal reckoning; for much as Elizabeth hated the papacy, she despised its counterpart, as quite too good for her liking, namely, the body of her subjects which represented an intelligent faith, and holy practice according to the accepted dictates of a revered, studied and intensely cherished Sacred Scripture. Though she could do no more than patronize, from political motives, any order of spiritual devotion as long as she herself would not learn to love devoutly, she failed to realize that the infusion of the virile Puritan element, regardless of racial strain, in the field of religion saved her authorized church from relapsing into Romanism. Her successor, James, was a fit son of Mary of Scotland, in his intolerance towards Puritans, Protestants though they were.

Austerfield itself, though having less than three hundred residents, was the scene of a great session in 702, when the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of almost all England met with King Aldfrid to hear the complaint of Wilfred the Bishop of York, who was so ardent a Romanist that the former king had deposed him. The English under Aldfrid won against the papal party, but before the venerable Wilfred died he was restored to office and canonized, and the first Puritan assembly after coming to Scrooby gathered awhile in a stone church named for him.

Bradford's native town also, despite its quiet rural beauty, lay upon the Great Northern Road to Scotland, as now on the railroad named after it the express comes thundering by from the grimy granite houses of Edinboro, bound for the mighty metropolis before midnight of the afternoon it started. But the old dirt road was only a few feet wide, almost a stranger to horse-drawn vehicles, especially pleasure carriages, even the ladies of the Elizabethan era using mostly their mounts, as those in America later rode on their pillions.

More agreeable, locally, were the meadow paths along the Idle, and other leisurely streams of this boy's neighborhood. His family name was originally applied to those who lived at some convenient Broad Ford, many desirable crossings having some descriptive or defining term, like Ox Ford and Cam Bridge.

His taste for Latin might well have been intensified by the very name of his Austerfield, which, earlier than the Anglo-Saxon localities, was probably named for the imperial Roman commander Ostorius, who had a defensive earthwork at his station near here. Its remains attested its military importance. And though the northern peasantry in young William's time were so untutored or morally lax, or both, that they were unacquainted with even their English Bible, it is not strange if these historical associations induced the more intelligent and refined yeomen to possess Latin books. It has been supposed that his own family owned them, with English works, all of which were rare and costly; and in addition to this likelihood, it is known that Rev. Mr. Silvester of Alkly had a classical collection in his own library. As this clergyman was a family friend and the guardian of William's cousins, the Austerfield boy would naturally become a visitor at the neighboring parsonage.

Wills and records indicate that the Bradfords in general were of good repute and moved in the best society of that too decadent period. The Austerfield branch were yeomen, once so important in the English commons that they ranked next to the gentry.

At the north end of the village the house still stands which tradition claims as our Bradford's birthplace. It is of substantial brick, exceedingly rare in his day and a sign of social distinction. Many houses of the time were quite attractive in appearance with their red roofs, green shutters and yellow doorsteps. This is a ruddy cottage from fluted tiling down to the grass, and sufficiently large to comprise two tenements now.

The boy's grandfather William and maternal grandfather John Hanson were the only mentioned owners of property in their small town in 1575, and he inherited in time a good patrimony. His father William died in 1591, his mother Alice soon after, and the paternal grandfather, in whose care he was left, expired not until January of 1596, the only ancestor the third William would be likely to remember. Then the simple life and talk of the farm ceased, on the part of those who would converse with the lad on their common interests and show the most of natural affection toward him. The charge over his life by his uncles Thomas and Robert was one of legal imposition rather than a matter of love. Robert naturally wished him to be a farmer, but permitted him to study when he proved not very rugged at first.

Before he was twelve, an illness of long continuance coming upon him, youthful intelligence and spiritual sensitiveness were developed in him untroubled by temptations more liable in physical vigor. Denied the warmth of family affection, and for a season the wholesome sports of youth, while naturally made more serious also as an orphan, the boy delighted in the contemplation of religious truth, particularly in Bible study; and this became with him a lifelong habit.

Over the line in Nottinghamshire a few miles away, lay another small town, Scrooby, where one William Brewster was postmaster, well qualified as a collegiate and public official, to teach history and civil government. He occupied an ancient manor and commodious hostelry which royalty had twice coveted. Within its spacious halls were wont to gather a few earnest souls who were discontented with the empty formalism so common in religious profession at that time, and they were restive under the super-abundant authority of the state in church matters. They insisted on freedom of the individual conscience, from either civil or ecclesiastical domination, and were also convinced that genuine Christianity called for a Christlike life. This was nothing less than Puritanism, which as a term was originally coined by its foes in contempt, but later became a name of honor and glory. Though long in preparing, since Wycliffe gave to the English people the Holy Scriptures in their own familiar speech, this movement was only now coming to its full fruition; and the group of earnest worshipers in Scrooby, who had first organized at Gainsboro in 1602, composed the earliest Puritan church to stand and prosper, others following in a multitude as the cause gained momentum.

Brewster was made Elder at Scrooby, and the boy Bradford was one of the charter members. He accepted the instruction of kind friends who were glad to satisfy his eager thirst for spiritual knowledge. Conspicuous among these was Rev. Richard Clyfton of Babworth, who ministered to the new church for a short time until their permanent pastor was secured, the devout and learned John Robinson. But before the church was formed in Gainsboro and Scrooby, when Bradford was hardly twelve he walked every Sunday over the fields to Babworth, six or seven miles from Austerfield, joining Brewster at Scrooby on the way. The Elder was made Postmaster in the year his future Governor was born, and the two Williams were lifelong intimates. Religiously he was like a father to the boy.

With this unchecked expansion of his soul, young William's intellect was also awakened. Though at first forbidden advanced schooling, he became a self-taught man, a thoughtful student of history, philosophy and theology, proficient also in linguistics, as the classic Latin and Greek, and late in life, the original Hebrew of the Old Testament.

His joining with the Separatists from the Established State Church of England was an act which offended his relatives and early acquaintances, who tried in vain to make him abandon his stand; for he could not, consistently with his convictions, comply with their desires. It was observed that "neither could the wrath of his uncles, nor the scoff of his neighbors, now turned upon him as one of the Puritans, divert him from his pious inclinations". Thus he answered them, "To keep a good conscience and walk in such a way as God has prescribed in his word is a thing which I shall prefer above you all, and above life itself."

Government officers soon discovered this company of Dissenters, stopped their meetings, and proceeded to make arrests. In the autumn of 1607 when seventeen years of age, Bradford and his associates endeavored to go over to Holland, where religious liberty was allowed. He was one of the chief advocates of this measure. But the ship master that was to take them betrayed their plan to the authorities, who sent the Puritans into prison at Boston in Lincolnshire. Next spring the same attempt was made, unsuccessfully again; for their rulers neither granted them freedom at home nor emigration abroad. But before that year of 1608 passed, the victims of persecution escaped one after another, by various means, across the water to Amsterdam. Bradford's ship encountered a seven days' storm and was driven out of its course hundreds of miles, close to Norway, even the mariners giving up in despair. The Pilgrims remained calm, though unused to the sea; and our hero was heard to repeat in prayer, with his companions, "Yet, Lord, thou canst save."

On reaching Holland, an envious passenger accused him as having fled from England as a culprit, and he was taken before the magistrates, who, however, willingly released him when the truth was known.

Leyden was the Pilgrims' rendezvous. The place was congenial to the ardent spirit of this youth, and he became a student at the University there. He must have heard in England as a boy, how the martyr John Bradford, chaplain to Edward VI and one of the most acceptable preachers in the realm, because of his religious principles had been burned to death, in the reign of Bloody Mary. And the people of Leyden could recite for sympathetic ears, the tales of heroic and successful resistance against King Philip of Spain only thirty years before these Puritan refugees from intolerance arrived.

William now went about to earn a living. As an apprentice to a French Protestant, he learned the trade of dying silk, and doubtless, beside his Dutch, acquired here his thorough familiarity with the French language so widely used even in those days.

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