With William Bradford, the eldest of the New England governors, we are already acquainted. Born in 1588, he had come to America in the prime of his life, and devoted himself to God and the common weal. He was “looked on as a common blessing and father to all,” and he lived long enough to see those high hopes with which he had embarked in the “Mayflower” more than realized; for the wilderness refuge was thronged and prosperous beyond his wildest dreams.[1030] He was fully appreciated at Plymouth; and with the exception of five years’ respite, when he “got off” by his “importunity,” he was reëlected governor with annual regularity until death promoted him to a higher station.[1031]
Bradford’s administration of affairs as connected with the many vexatious questions arising from the difficulty with the Merchant-adventurers and with the English partners of the “Undertakers,” was a model of firmness, wisdom, patience, forbearance, and energy. So also in his benevolent determination to bring over the rest of the Leyden exiles at whatever cost, he showed the fineness and beauty of his character. “Under the pressure of misfortune, his example was a star of hope, for he never yielded to despondency; and while, with Brewster, he threw the Pilgrims upon God for support and provision, he never neglected to set in motion every possible instrumentality for procuring supplies.”[1032] Patient, sagacious, devout, heroic, he was the very ideal of a Christian ruler.
We are assured by Cotton Mather that Bradford was “a person for study as well as for action; and hence, notwithstanding the difficulties through which he passed in his boyhood, he attained a notable skill in languages. The Dutch tongue was almost as vernacular to him as the English; the French he could also manage; the Latin and the Greek he had mastered; but the Hebrew he most of all studied, ‘Because,’ he said, ‘I would see with my own eyes the ancient oracles of God in their native beauty.’ He was also well skilled in history, in antiquity, and in philosophy; and for theology, he became so versed in it, that he was an irrefragable disputant.”[1033]
But the crown of his shining life was not his genius in executive affairs, or the journal which he has bequeathed to us as a record of the cost at which he built at Plymouth Rock; it was “his holy, prayerful, fruitful walk with God,” and this made him, in a better sense than Plato meant,
“The shepherd-guardian of his human fold.”
Bradford’s immediate successors at Plymouth were Edward Winslow and Thomas Prince, men of the same mould, and whose lives exhaled the self-same fragrance. “Where the rulers are Christians the state prospers,” was the old proverb, and in their case it was once more verified.
John Winthrop was the foremost man in Massachusetts. He was educated, he was gentlemanly, and he had been rich, but he spent his fortune “in the furtherance of God’s work,” bidding his son not mourn for it, but “certainly expect a liberal portion in the prosperity and blessing of the future.”[1034] He was a man of much gentleness and amiability; and “his private life was charming” as it crops out in his exquisite letters to his wife, who remained for a time in England.[1035]
He carried his admirable temper into public life. He had always an open hand of charity. When Roger Williams was banished, he wrote him privately to sustain and encourage him, and even suggested Narragansett Bay as a safe asylum.[1036] He was always inclined to lenient ways; and when in his later days he was asked to sign an order for the banishment of an offending minister, he declined, remarking: “No, I have done too much of that already.”[1037] With this natural bent towards liberality, it was only with extreme reluctance that he yielded to the imperious spirit of intolerance which then reigned.
As governor, he was prudent, patient, courageous, and energetic—traits which made him the successful pilot of the ship of state in the unchartered waters on which he floated.
Winthrop never disdained to share equally with his brother Pilgrims. It is related of him that once, in a famine, he divided his last peck of meal with a hungry man, and was only not gnawed by hunger himself, because a ship entered Salem harbor ere night with a well-stocked larder, and changed the fast which had been appointed for the next day into a thanksgiving.[1038]