itten by a number
of authors and each writer uses their own spellings and
abbreviations, which was common for the time in which they
were written.

Spelling is inconsistent and is left unchanged from the original
printing of this book.

BRADFORD'S HISTORY
"OF PLIMOTH PLANTATION."

From the Original Manuscript.

With a Report of the Proceedings Incident
to the Return of the Manuscript
to Massachusetts.

Printed Under the Direction of the Secretary of the
Commonwealth,
by Order of the General Court.

Boston:
Wright & Potter Printing Co., State Printers,
18 Post Office Square.
1898.

INTRODUCTION.

To many people the return of the Bradford Manuscript is a fresh
discovery of colonial history. By very many it has been called,
incorrectly, the log of the "Mayflower." Indeed, that is the title by
which it is described in the decree of the Consistorial Court of London.
The fact is, however, that Governor Bradford undertook its preparation
long after the arrival of the Pilgrims, and it cannot be properly
considered as in any sense a log or daily journal of the voyage of the
"Mayflower." It is, in point of fact, a history of the Plymouth Colony,
chiefly in the form of annals, extending from the inception of the
colony down to the year 1647. The matter has been in print since 1856,
put forth through the public spirit of the Massachusetts Historical
Society, which secured a transcript of the document from London, and
printed it in the society's proceedings of the above-named year. As thus
presented, it had copious notes, prepared with great care by the late
Charles Deane; but these are not given in the present volume, wherein
only such comments as seem indispensable to a proper understanding of
the story have been made, leaving whatever elaboration may seem
desirable to some future private enterprise.

It is a matter of regret that no picture of Governor Bradford exists.
Only Edward Winslow of the Mayflower Company left an authenticated
portrait of himself, and that, painted in England, is reproduced in this
volume. In those early days Plymouth would have been a poor field for
portrait painters. The people were struggling for their daily bread
rather than for to-morrow's fame through the transmission of their
features to posterity.

The volume of the original manuscript, as it was presented to the
Governor of the Commonwealth and is now deposited in the St