Always More Pilgrim Books

Chapter 14 Always More Pilgrim Books

My study of the Pilgrims began in 1980, when I was told that further research on the Pilgrims was a waste of time – everything had already been discovered.1 Within fifteen minutes of that challenge I had found a Pilgrim document that had not been noticed – because I was aware of a series of archival records of minor court cases that had not been used for any historical research before my own earlier study of artistic activity in sixteenth-century Leiden.2 (Some of the

Figure 89 Pilgrim books (photo 2019)

1 This essay is the text of a lecture presented at the Banquet of the Triennial Meeting of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, September 13, 2011. 2 See Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, Cornelis Engebrechtsz.’s Leiden, Studies in Cultural History (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1979); Bangs, “Tapestry Weaving before the Reformation: the Leiden Studios,”

448 Chapter 14 pages were still stuck shut from drying ink on facing pages – never opened until my research.) The eventual result of my re-examination of the Leiden archives looking for Pilgrim material can be read in several articles (some of them in this book) and in my book, Strangers and Pilgrims, Travellers and So- journers, published by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants in 2009. This evening’s lecture, I’d like to lead us on a quick browse in the library, curious about when it was that we first thought we knew everything there was to know about the Pilgrims already, but also curious as to whether in fact there is more to learn. Or, to put it differently, why have we ever needed another book about the Pilgrims? Why would we ever need another one, still?

1 The Primary Sources for the Pilgrim Story

1.1 Nathaniel Morton’s New England’s Memorial Our major sources for the early years of Plymouth Colony are (1) “Mourt’s Rela- tion,” published in 1622 and containing contributions by George Morton, John Robinson, Robert Cushman, William Bradford, and Edward Winslow; (2) William Bradford’s manuscript “Of Plymouth Plantation”; and (3) Edward Win- slow’s Good Newes from New England (1624). Some further information is in- cluded in Winslow’s (4) Hypocrisie Unmasked (1646).3 Mourt’s Relation and Winslow’s Good Newes became very rare in New England, having been published in London. Bradford’s manuscript remained unpublished until the nineteenth century; but major parts were extracted by Nathaniel Morton for his New England’s Memorial (1669) and also used by Cotton Mather (Magnalia Christi Americana, 1702), Thomas Prince (A Chronological History of New Eng- land, 1736), and William Hubbard (A General History of New England, late 17th- cent. ms. published in 1815).4 Increase Mather also used Bradford’s manuscript

Renaissance en reformatie en de kunst in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, Nederlands Kunsthisto- risch Jaarboek 37 (Haarlem: Fibula – van Dishoeck, 1986), pp. 225–240. 3 Full publication information is found in the bibliography of Strangers and Pilgrims, Travellers and Sojourners – Leiden and the Foundations of Plymouth Plantation. 4 William Hubbard’s General History was published from the ms. by the Massachusetts Histori- cal Society in 1815. Hubbard also had the use of Bradford’s ms. when preparing his previous version with its more restricted topic, A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New- England: from the First Planting thereof in the year 1607. To this Present Year 1677. But chiefly of the late Troubles in the Two Last Years, 1675. And 1676.: To which is added a Discourse about the Warre with the Pequods in the year 1637 (Boston, Mass.: John Foster, 1677); reprinted several times in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.