Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

In 1881, at the time of the death of President Garfield, Benjamin Scott, Chamberlain of London, proposed again in the newspapers that the restitution should be made. But nothing came of it.

When I went abroad I determined to visit the locality on the borders of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, from which Bradford and Brewster and Robinson, the three leaders of the Pilgrims, came, and where their first church was formed, and the places in Amsterdam and Leyden where the emigrants spent thirteen years. But I longed especially to see the manuscript of Bradford at Fulham, which then seemed to me, as it now seems to me, the most precious manuscript on earth, unless we could recover one of the four gospels as it came in the beginning from the pen of the Evangelist.

The desire to get it back grew and grew during the voyage across the Atlantic. I did not know how such a proposition would be received in England. A few days after I landed I made a call on John Morley. I asked him whether he thought the thing could be done. He inquired carefully into the story, took down from his shelf the excellent though brief life of Bradford in Leslie Stephen's "Biographical Dictionary," and told me he thought the book ought to come back to us, and that he should be glad to do anything in his power to help. It was my fortune, a week or two after, to sit next to Mr. Bayard at a dinner given to Mr. Collins, by the American consuls in Great Britain. I took occasion to tell him the story, and he gave me the assurance, which he afterward so abundantly and successfully fulfilled, of his powerful aid. I was compelled, by the health of one of the party with whom I was travelling, to go to the Continent almost immediately, and was disappointed in the hope of an early return to England.

After looking at the volume and reading the records on the flyleaf, I said: "My Lord, I am going to say something which you may think rather audacious. I think this book ought to go back to Massachusetts. Nobody knows how it got over here. Some people think it was carried off by Governor Hutchinson, the Tory Governor; other people think it was carried off by British soldiers when Boston was evacuated; but in either case the property would not have changed. Or, if you treat it as booty, in which last case, I suppose, by the law of nations ordinary property does change, no civilized nation in modern times applies that principle to the property of libraries and institutions of learning."

The Bishop said: "I did not know you cared anything about it."

"Why," said I, "if there were in existence in England a history of King Alfred's reign for thirty years, written by his own hand, it would not be more precious in the eyes of Englishmen than this manuscript is to us."

"Well," said he, "I think myself that it ought to go back, and if it depended on me it would have gone back before this. But many of the Americans who have been here have been commercial people, and did not seem to care much about it except as a curiosity. I suppose I ought not to give it up on my own authority. It belongs to me in my official capacity, and not as private or personal property. I think I ought to consult the Archbishop of Canterbury. And, indeed," he added, "I think I ought to speak to the Queen about it. We should not do such a thing behind Her Majesty's back."

I said: "Very well, when I go home I will have a proper application made from some of our literary societies, and ask you to give it consideration."

I saw Mr. Bayard again and told him the story. He was at the train when I left London for the steamer at Southampton. He entered with great interest into the matter, and told me again he would do anything in his power to forward it.

When I got home I communicated with Secretary Olney about it, who took a kindly interest in the matter, and wrote to Mr. Bayard that the Administration desired he should do everything in his power to promote the application. The matter was then brought to the attention of the Council of the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth and the New England Society of New York. These bodies appointed committees to unite in the application. Governor Wolcott was also consulted, who gave his hearty approbation to the movement, and a letter was despatched through Mr. Bayard.