Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/258

 176 STATESMEN AND SAGES Plantations" a detailed chronicle of the history of the Pilgrims from 1608 to 1646. Carried away from the old South Church by British soldiers, it was com- pletely lost, until almost providentially discovered, though partially destroyed, in the shop of a Halifax grocer, and to-day it tells us almost all that we know of the Plymouth settlers, from the day when they left Lincolnshire till they became a prosperous commonwealth in America. Of this important contribution to American history, Mr. Doyle, the English historian, says : " Gratitude is quickened when we compare the simple, vigorous, and picturesque chronicle set before us by Bradford, with the tedious and pedan- tic writings from which so much of the later history of New England has to be extracted. . . . His work is in the true sense scholarly. The language is like the language of Bunyan, that of a man who trained himself not merely to speak but to think in the words of Scripture. Every expression is simple and effective, never far-fetched, never mean nor common. The substance is worthy of the style. Faults no doubt there are. . . yet with all its defects Brad- ford's writings still remain the worthy first-fruits of Puritan literature in its new home. They are the work of a wise and good man, who tells with a right under- standing the great things that he and his brethren have done." The wise governor was loyal to his colony to the last. He resisted the am- bition to take larger holdings of land and become great estate owners that influ- enced Standish and Brewster, Alden and Winslow, and other of his Mayflower companions, drawing them away from Plymouth to the broader acres at Duxbury and Scituate and Marshfield. The governor deplored this withdrawal as a deser- tion on the part of his old friends, and a menace to the welfare of the colony. He lived on in Plymouth, where his home on Leyden Street, still standing, grad- ually outgrew its early primitive dimensions as became the house of the gover- nor of Plymouth. Here he died on May 9, 1657, " lamented by all the colonists of New England as a common blessing and father to them all," and the only special memorial that tangibly recalls his fame is the unpretentious obelisk on Burial Hill. As Miles Standish and John Alden had a romance in their lives that has made them historic, so this Puritan governor of Plymouth had his. His first wife, gen- tle Dorothy May, was drowned in Cape Cod harbor while her husband was away exploring the new-found coast. He had married her in Leyden in 1613 and less than three years after her death, on August 14, 1623, he married Mistress Alice Carpenter Southworth, who in earlier-days, it is alleged, had been young William Bradford's " dearest love." She came across the sea at his call a widow, to marry the widowed governor of Plymouth and thus complete the unwritten ro- mance begun in his earlier years. A self-made man, a scholar of repute, a writer of renown, an upright and fear- less magistrate, a model citizen, a courageous leader, gentle, just and generous, practical and wise, William Bradford stands in history as the essence and ex- ponent of what was best in the Puritanism of his day, the architect and builder of a God-fearing, independent, and progressive community that, throughout the