Excerpt from The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and Their Puritan Successors Placing in the forefront of this work, what an Elizabethan writer called 'a brief ingresse to the Christian reader, ' it may be well to state that it is now more than forty years since the latest previous history of the Pilgrim Fathers, printed on this side of the Atlantic, was given to the public. Therefore as might be expected, since the appearance of Mr. Bartlett's book in 1853, important contributions have been made to the literature of the subject, which have had the effect of placing it in clearer light and giving it fuller meaning. Notably the discovery in 1855 of the original manuscript of Governor Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation may be regarded as a matter of prime importance. It was known that such a history had been written, although never published, for it was freely used by Nathaniel Morton in his New England's Memorial, published in 1669; Thomas Prince, in the preface to the first volume of his Annals, printed in 1736, had cited it as one of his manuscript authorities; and Governor Hutchinson had also used it in the preparation of the second volume of his History of Massachusetts in 1767, he being the last man who, till the present century, was known to have seen it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.