Of Plymouth Plantation. William Bradford

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      ADDRESS OF SENATOR HOAR.

       Table of Contents

       The first American Ambassador to Great Britain, at the end of his official service, comes to Massachusetts on an interesting errand. He comes to deliver to the lineal successor of Governor Bradford, in the presence of the representatives and rulers of the body politic formed by the compact on board the "Mayflower," Nov. 11, 1620, the only authentic history of the founding of their Commonwealth; the only authentic history of what we have a right to consider the most important political transaction that has ever taken place on the face of the earth.

      Mr. Bayard has sought to represent to the mother country, not so much the diplomacy as the good-will of the American people. If in this anybody be tempted to judge him severely, let us remember what his great predecessor, John Adams, the first minister at the same court, representing more than any other man, embodying more than any other man, the spirit of Massachusetts, said to George III., on the first day of June, 1785, after the close of our long and bitter struggle for independence: "I shall esteem myself the happiest of men if I can be instrumental in restoring an entire esteem, confidence and affection, or, in better words, the old good-nature and the old good-humor between people who, though separated by an ocean and under different governments, have the same language, a similar religion and kindred blood."

      And let us remember, too, the answer of the old monarch, who, with all his faults, must have had something of a noble and royal nature stirring in his bosom, when he replied: "Let the circumstances of language, religion and blood have their natural and full effect."

      It has long been well known that Governor Bradford wrote and left behind him a history of the settlement of Plymouth. It was quoted by early chroniclers. There are extracts from it in the records at Plymouth. Thomas Prince used it when he compiled his annals. Hubbard depended on it when he wrote his "History of New England." Cotton Mather had read it, or a copy of a portion of it, when he wrote his "Magnalia." Governor Hutchinson had it when he published the second volume of his history in 1767. From that time it disappeared from the knowledge of everybody on this side of the water. All our historians speak of it as lost, and can only guess what had been its fate. Some persons suspected that it was destroyed when Governor Hutchinson's house was sacked in 1765, others that it was carried off by some officer or soldier when Boston was evacuated by the British army in 1776.

      In 1844 Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, afterward Bishop of Winchester, one of the brightest of men, published one of the dullest and stupidest of books. It is entitled "The History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America." It contained extracts from manuscripts which he said he had discovered in the library of the Bishop of London at Fulham. The book attracted no attention here until, about twelve years later, in 1855, John Wingate Thornton, whom many of us remember as an accomplished antiquary and a delightful gentleman, happened to pick up a copy of it while he was lounging in Burnham's book store. He read the bishop's quotations, and carried the book to his office, where he left it for his friend, Mr. Barry, who was then writing his "History of Massachusetts," with passages marked, and with a note which is not preserved, but which, according to his memory, suggested that the passages must have come from Bradford's long-lost history. That is the claim for Mr. Thornton. On the other hand, it is claimed by Mr. Barry that there was nothing of that kind expressed in Mr. Thornton's note, but in reading the book when he got it an hour or so later, the thought struck him for the first time that the clew had been found to the precious book which had been lost so long. He at once repaired to Charles Deane, then and ever since, down to his death, as President Eliot felicitously styled him, "the master of historical investigators in this country." Mr. Deane saw the importance of the discovery. He communicated at once with Joseph Hunter, an eminent English scholar. Hunter was high authority on all matters connected with the settlement of New England. He visited the palace at Fulham, and established beyond question the identity of the manuscript with Governor Bradford's history, an original letter of Governor Bradford having been sent over for comparison of handwriting.

      How the manuscript got to Fulham nobody knows. Whether it was carried over by Governor Hutchinson in 1774; whether it was taken as spoil from the tower of the Old South Church in 1775; whether, with other manuscripts, it was sent to Fulham at the time of the attempts of the Episcopal churches in America, just before the revolution, to establish an episcopate here,—nobody knows. It would seem that Hutchinson would have sent it to the colonial office; that an officer would naturally have sent it to the war office; and a private would have sent it to the war office, unless he had carried it off as mere private booty and plunder,—in which case it would have been unlikely that it would have reached a public place of custody. But we find it in the possession of the church and of the church official having, until independence was declared, special jurisdiction over Episcopal interests in Massachusetts and Plymouth. This may seem to point to a transfer for some ecclesiastical purpose.

      The bishop's chancellor conjectures that it was sent to Fulham because of the record annexed to it of the early births, marriages and deaths, such records being in England always in ecclesiastical custody. But this is merely conjecture.

      I know of no incident like this in history, unless it be the discovery in a chest in the castle of Edinburgh, where they had been lost for one hundred and eleven years, of the ancient regalia of Scotland,—the crown of Bruce, the sceptre and sword of state. The lovers of Walter Scott, who was one of the commissioners who made the search, remember his intense emotion, as described by his daughter, when the lid was removed. Her feelings were worked up to such a pitch that she nearly fainted, and drew back from the circle.

      As she was retiring she was startled by his voice exclaiming, in a tone of the deepest emotion, "something between anger and despair," as she expressed it: "By God, no!" One of the commissioners, not quite entering into the solemnity with which Scott regarded this business, had, it seems, made a sort of motion as if he meant to put the crown on the head of one of the young ladies near him, but the voice and the aspect of the poet were more than sufficient to make this worthy gentleman understand his error; and, respecting the enthusiasm with which he had not been taught to sympathize, he laid down the ancient diadem with an air of painful embarrassment. Scott whispered, "Pray forgive СКАЧАТЬ