Of Plymouth Plantation

Bradford wrote the first book, in ten chapters, on the congregation’s beginnings in England, its years in Holland and the voyage; the second book goes on year by year from 1620; the introduction to this edition says that the annals extend to 1647. He was not writing a diary. In the passage on the peace with Massasoit he remarks that it “hath now continued this 24 years”, and elsewhere he mentions the year 1646, so that much of the work was written a generation after the first events. He copies in many letters and documents, among them the agreement signed at Cape Cod and letters from John Robinson.

He was a participant and a leader, and he tells the story as the working of God’s providence for his people. For the native people he is a witness from the other side: he records what the English did and understood, including the corn they took, the peace they made and the killings of 1623, together with Robinson’s rebuke. The date given above for the writing rests on those internal marks and is approximate. The manuscript was returned from London to Massachusetts in 1897, as the papers printed at the front of this edition relate.