William Bradford of Plymouth

by Albert Hale Plumb

Austerfield itself, though having less than three hundred residents, was the scene of a great session in 702, when the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of almost all England met with King Aldfrid to hear the complaint of Wilfred the Bishop of York, who was so ardent a Romanist that the former king had deposed him. The English under Aldfrid won against the papal party, but before the venerable Wilfred died he was restored to office and canonized, and the first Puritan assembly after coming to Scrooby gathered awhile in a stone church named for him.

Bradford's native town also, despite its quiet rural beauty, lay upon the Great Northern Road to Scotland, as now on the railroad named after it the express comes thundering by from the grimy granite houses of Edinboro, bound for the mighty metropolis before midnight of the afternoon it started. But the old dirt road was only a few feet wide, almost a stranger to horse-drawn vehicles, especially pleasure carriages, even the ladies of the Elizabethan era using mostly their mounts, as those in America later rode on their pillions.

More agreeable, locally, were the meadow paths along the Idle, and other leisurely streams of this boy's neighborhood. His family name was originally applied to those who lived at some convenient Broad Ford, many desirable crossings having some descriptive or defining term, like Ox Ford and Cam Bridge.

His taste for Latin might well have been intensified by the very name of his Austerfield, which, earlier than the Anglo-Saxon localities, was probably named for the imperial Roman commander Ostorius, who had a defensive earthwork at his station near here. Its remains attested its military importance. And though the northern peasantry in young William's time were so untutored or morally lax, or both, that they were unacquainted with even their English Bible, it is not strange if these historical associations induced the more intelligent and refined yeomen to possess Latin books. It has been supposed that his own family owned them, with English works, all of which were rare and costly; and in addition to this likelihood, it is known that Rev. Mr. Silvester of Alkly had a classical collection in his own library. As this clergyman was a family friend and the guardian of William's cousins, the Austerfield boy would naturally become a visitor at the neighboring parsonage.

Wills and records indicate that the Bradfords in general were of good repute and moved in the best society of that too decadent period. The Austerfield branch were yeomen, once so important in the English commons that they ranked next to the gentry.

At the north end of the village the house still stands which tradition claims as our Bradford's birthplace. It is of substantial brick, exceedingly rare in his day and a sign of social distinction. Many houses of the time were quite attractive in appearance with their red roofs, green shutters and yellow doorsteps. This is a ruddy cottage from fluted tiling down to the grass, and sufficiently large to comprise two tenements now.

The boy's grandfather William and maternal grandfather John Hanson were the only mentioned owners of property in their small town in 1575, and he inherited in time a good patrimony. His father William died in 1591, his mother Alice soon after, and the paternal grandfather, in whose care he was left, expired not until January of 1596, the only ancestor the third William would be likely to remember. Then the simple life and talk of the farm ceased, on the part of those who would converse with the lad on their common interests and show the most of natural affection toward him. The charge over his life by his uncles Thomas and Robert was one of legal imposition rather than a matter of love. Robert naturally wished him to be a farmer, but permitted him to study when he proved not very rugged at first.

Before he was twelve, an illness of long continuance coming upon him, youthful intelligence and spiritual sensitiveness were developed in him untroubled by temptations more liable in physical vigor. Denied the warmth of family affection, and for a season the wholesome sports of youth, while naturally made more serious also as an orphan, the boy delighted in the contemplation of religious truth, particularly in Bible study; and this became with him a lifelong habit.

Over the line in Nottinghamshire a few miles away, lay another small town, Scrooby, where one William Brewster was postmaster, well qualified as a collegiate and public official, to teach history and civil government. He occupied an ancient manor and commodious hostelry which royalty had twice coveted. Within its spacious halls were wont to gather a few earnest souls who were discontented with the empty formalism so common in religious profession at that time, and they were restive under the super-abundant authority of the state in church matters. They insisted on freedom of the individual conscience, from either civil or ecclesiastical domination, and were also convinced that genuine Christianity called for a Christlike life. This was nothing less than Puritanism, which as a term was originally coined by its foes in contempt, but later became a name of honor and glory. Though long in preparing, since Wycliffe gave to the English people the Holy Scriptures in their own familiar speech, this movement was only now coming to its full fruition; and the group of earnest worshipers in Scrooby, who had first organized at Gainsboro in 1602, composed the earliest Puritan church to stand and prosper, others following in a multitude as the cause gained momentum.

Brewster was made Elder at Scrooby, and the boy Bradford was one of the charter members. He accepted the instruction of kind friends who were glad to satisfy his eager thirst for spiritual knowledge. Conspicuous among these was Rev. Richard Clyfton of Babworth, who ministered to the new church for a short time until their permanent pastor was secured, the devout and learned John Robinson. But before the church was formed in Gainsboro and Scrooby, when Bradford was hardly twelve he walked every Sunday over the fields to Babworth, six or seven miles from Austerfield, joining Brewster at Scrooby on the way. The Elder was made Postmaster in the year his future Governor was born, and the two Williams were lifelong intimates. Religiously he was like a father to the boy.