dings of land and become great estate owners
that influenced 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 desertion 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, gradually outgrew its early primitive
dimensions as became the house of the governor 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, gentle 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 romance begun in
his earlier years.

A self-made man, a scholar of repute, a writer of renown, an upright and
fearless magistrate, a model citizen, a courageous leader, gentle, just
and generous, practical and wise, William Bradford stands in history as
the essence and exponent 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 ages, remains the most notable because
the most typical of the foundation-stones that underlie the mighty
structure of the Republic of the United States of America.

[Signature of the author.]

CHARLES I. OF ENGLAND

By F. HINDES GROOME

(1600-1649)

[Illustration: Charles I. [TN]]

Charles I. was born at Dunfermline, November 19, 1600, was a sickly
child, unable to speak till his fifth year, and so weak in the ankles
that till his seventh he had to crawl upon his hands and knees. Except
for a stammer, he outgrew both defects, and became a skilled tilter and
marksman, as well as an accomplished scholar and a diligent student of