The next quarter of a century added nothing to the existing stock of knowledge, unless by the publication in 1815 of the General History of New England to 1680, by the Rev. William Hubbard (born 1621, died 1704), which, so far as Plymouth was concerned, was little more than a compilation from sources already named. But with the issue, in 1826, of a new edition of Morton, and in 1830 of An Historical Memoir of the Colony of New Plymouth, by the Hon. Francis Baylies,[508] and in 1832 of a History of the Town of Plymouth, by Dr. James Thacher, was introduced the new era of modern research.[509]
FIRST PAGE, PLYMOUTH RECORDS.
[This is in the handwriting of Governor Bradford; it is also in Hazard, i. 100, and in the State edition, xii. 2. It is not clear when the entry was made. Pulsifer, Records, xii. p. iv., holds it was written in 1620; Shurtleff, Ibid., i. Introd., says that all entries dated before 1627 were made in this last year. Beside the account of the records in this introduction, there is another in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., ii. Also see N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1858, p. 358. The State edition is in twelve volumes, usually bound in ten; and was originally sold for $75, but is now obtainable at a much less price.
The patents under which the colony governed itself have been defined in the preceding narrative, and in a note the first one is traced. (Cf. also Neill’s notes on it in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1876, p. 413, and Poor’s Vindication of Gorges.) The second patent, of April 20, 1622, is not extant. The third, of Jan. 13, 1629-30, is at Plymouth in the Registry of Deeds, and is printed in Brigham’s edition of the Laws, Hazard’s Collections, etc. Cf. Mass. Archives, Miscellanies, i. 123.—Ed.]
The Legislature of Massachusetts gave fresh impulse to this spirit of investigation by publishing in 1836, under the editorship of Mr. William Brigham, the Laws passed in Plymouth Colony from 1623 to 1691, with a selection of other permanent documents. In 1841 the Rev. Alexander Young[510] collected, under the title of Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers from 1602 to 1625, the principal writings of that period, and, enriching them with a body of useful notes, made a volume which still retains a distinct value. In 1846 and 1851 a local antiquary, Mr. William S. Russell,[511] brought out two small volumes,—A Guide to Plymouth and Pilgrim Memorials,—which are not yet superseded; Mr. William H. Bartlett’s Pilgrim Fathers[512] (1853) added something to these local touches. Between 1855 and 1861 the Records of the Colony of New Plymouth were printed in extenso, by order of the State Legislature, under the editorship of Dr. N. B. Shurtleff[513] and Mr. David Pulsifer.
The year 1856 was made memorable by the printing of Bradford’s manuscript, and two years later appeared the initial volume of Dr. John G. Palfrey’s History of New England, which comprehends by far the best of modern narratives of the complete career of Plymouth Colony. Only in subsidiary literature have the more recent years added anything. Valuable bibliographical notes on Pilgrim history, by the editor of the present volume, were printed in the Harvard College Library Bulletin for 1878, nos. 7 and 8; and the “Collections toward a Bibliography of Congregationalism,” appended to Dr. H. M. Dexter’s Congregationalism as seen in its Literature (1880), are indispensable to future students. In 1881 General E. W. Peirce published a useful volume of Civil, Military, and Professional Lists of Plymouth and Rhode Island Colonies to 1700.