Bradford had seen God’s mercy and power at work in the lives of the Pilgrims, as well as in his own life. In some ways, Bradford was an unexpected instrument. He had been weak, despised, and suffering before he came to strength and leadership and prominence. And yet, in these ways, God had providentially prepared him for his calling and blessed the whole colony with a wise and godly magistrate, who knew where they came from and where they intended to go.
Early Life in England
At the end of his life, he wrote a poem about his life. It begins,
From my years young in days of youth,William Bradford was born in 1590 (1589 O.S.) in Austerfield, Yorkshire, baptized on March 19th. His early years were filled with loss. In 1591, his father died. In 1594 his mother remarried and William was sent to live with his grandfather. In 1596 his grandfather died, and William returned to his mother. In 1597 his mother died and he was sent to be cared for by his uncles, Robert and Thomas. By this point, he was only 7.
God did make known to me his truth,
And call'd me from my native place
For to enjoy the means of grace
In wilderness he did me guide,
And in strange lands for me provide.
In fears and wants, through weal and woe,
As pilgrim passed I to and fro…
William was from a line of yeoman farmers, and his uncles put him to the work of herding sheep. But during this time, William was afflicted by a long sickness. He later saw this as providentially keeping him from the vanities of youth and preparing him for what was to come. It led him to read more, books like Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Erasmus’ The Praise of Folly, and the Geneva Bible.
The reading of Scripture at about 12 years of age made a strong impression on him, and he became known as a Puritan, enjoying the ministry of Richard Clifton, a Puritan minister in the established church a few miles away in Babworth. As Cotton Mather later said of Bradford: “Nor could the wrath of his uncles, nor the scoff of his neighbors, now turned upon him, as one of the Puritans, divert him from his pious inclinations” (Magnalia Christi Americana). Bradford also met William Brewster, of nearby Scrooby, who became a mentor and father figure to him (Brewster was 23 years older than Bradford).
As a teenage, Bradford studied the question of whether it was right to remain in the parish assembly or whether he should join a separatist congregation that practiced God’s ordinances in their purity. He decided that he must separate, and did so, despite the rage of his friends. Perhaps he first joined the separatist congregation in Gainsborough, but then he joined the closer one that formed in Scrooby, formally organized in 1606 with Richard Clifton as its pastor and John Robinson as its teacher (later William Brewster became its ruling elder).
This separatist congregation soon attracted the hostility of the authorities, and so they tried to leave England. Some of them were caught trying to leave in 1607 and imprisoned, including 17-year-old William Bradford. By 1608, he and the others had made it to the Netherlands.
Becoming an Adult in the Netherlands
In Amsterdam, William Bradford learned from and served a Frenchman in the working of silks. The French were rather skilled in the textile industry, and it was Huguenot refugees from France who later brought improvements to this industry to northern Ireland and elsewhere. William Bradford also enjoyed the fellowship and worship of the separatist church and moved in with the Brewster family and stayed with them until he got married in 1613.
After about two years in Amsterdam, the church moved to Leyden to avoid being drawn into conflicts in other separatist congregations. In Leyden, Bradford worked as a fustian-worker (a weaver of a heavy cotton-linen fabric used for men’s clothing). He knew many languages: English, Dutch, French, Latin, and Greek. Later in life, he also learned Hebrew to read the Old Testament in its original language.
In 1611, Bradford turned 21 and was able to receive his inheritance. He converted his estate into money and set himself up in Holland with a house and loom of his own. He also probably helped the church buy a building for a meeting space. In 1613, he married Dorothy May, the daughter of an elder of another separatist church. Their son John was born in 1617.
He and his wife joined the group that set out for the new world in 1620, leaving behind their 3-year-old son in the care of others until it was safer for him to come over.
Governor in Plymouth
When they arrived in the new land, William Bradford signed the Mayflower Compact and went on several expeditions to explore the land. On the first expedition, he was caught by a deer trap and hanged upside down until his friends were able to free him. Tragically, his first wife died by falling overboard while Bradford was away on one of these expeditions.
In that first winter he was struck with a great pain in his hip and collapsed, and it was thought he would not last the night. He was cared for by Captain Standish and Elder Brewster, two of only six or seven who remained well enough to care for the others. While Bradford was sick, the common house where he was staying caught fire, but he and the others in it escaped.
When Governor Carver died in April, the 31-year-old Bradford was unanimously chosen to be the new governor of the colony, even though he had not entirely recovered from his illness. He would be re-elected 31 times to one-year terms, serving as governor every year of his remaining life except for five. As Cotton Mather later remarked, “He had, with a laudable industry, been laying up a treasure of experiences, and he had now occasion to use it: indeed, nothing but an experienced man could have been suitable to the necessities of the people.”
Marriage and Family
In 1623, William Bradford married a second time. His second wife was a widow with two children named Alice. It appears he had courted her by letter before she arrived, so that they married soon after her arrival. Their wedding was attended by Massasoit, his queen, four other kings, and 120 of his men. These guests also brought three or four bucks and a turkey for the feast. The colonists and Indians feasted together and the Indians danced for their English friends. William and Alice went on to have two sons and a daughter.
His Time as Governor
On aspect of being governor was maintain good foreign relations with the native tribes. Several examples can be produced from just his first year in office. He sent out a party to rescue Squanto from Corbitant, a Wampanoag sachem. He sent another party to establish the fur trade with the Massachusetts. He also made a show of strength when the Narragansetts sent a threatening message of arrows tied in a snakeskin. Bradford sent back powder and balls in that snakeskin with the message: “that if they had rather have warre then peace, they might begine when they would; they had done them no wrong, neither did they fear them, or should they find them unprovided.” He also enforced a policy of only obtaining lands from the Indians by voluntary purchase.
Bradford also had to deal with debt and property. Plymouth colony was originally organized as a joint-stock company. All property belonged to the company and was held in common. The distribution of property and debts had the potential to provoke jealousy in the colony. In 1622, when new comers arrived who did not share the burden of the company, Bradford wisely came up with an arrangement to keep the peace. In 1623, he consented to a division of the land and oversaw its distribution, so that each household could work its own land and simply pay a tax. In 1627, Bradford oversaw the end of the joint-stock company by the settlers purchasing the colony from the London merchants. Each “purchaser” received shares of the debt and a certain amount of land to own. To make repaying the debt easier, a group of 11 men (including Bradford) known as the “undertakers” took on the obligation to pay the colony’s debt and received a monopoly on trade with the Indians. The undertakers were also able to arrange for the transport of the remaining Leyden separatists. It took them 14 years to be free of the debt. Further skill was required for Bradford and his assistants to oversee the distribution of land to more newcomers and eventually to turn this power over from the original purchasers to all the freemen of the colony in 1641.
There were also troublesome men who had to be dealt with. The most serious threat came early on in 1623-1624 with the arrival of two men, the hypocritical minister John Lyford and the hotheaded John Oldham. They pretended friendship, but worked secretly to pit newcomers against the established leadership, and to pit those in England against the separatists in Plymouth. Bradford intercepted their slanderous letters to England and produced copies of them at the right time so that these men were exposed. Oldham had already mistreated Captain Standish, and when the letters were produced, Lyford was silenced while Oldham tried to lead an uprising. They were banished from the colony (they later learned that Lyford had a scandalous past that further exposed his wretched character).
Religion in the colony was another important matter. William Bradford rejoiced to hear of the downfall of the bishops in England during the time of the English Civil War. Yet he was distressed to see a rise in groups that followed errors. Late in life he wrote a poem on this theme, writing against the Familists, Ranters, Seekers, Levelers, Quakers, Anabaptists, Anti-Trinitarians, Arminians, Roman Catholics, and English Bishops, with an appeal to the Presbyterians to join with the Congregationalists in opposing these errors. Some of these groups even made it to his beloved Plymouth colony. While Plymouth colony was rather moderate compared to the other Puritan colonies with respect to church-state relations and in tolerating disagreement, Bradford knew that the governor was called to be a nursing father to the church and was to support and nourish religion. He had learned from the writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli that both tables of the law were committed to his power and that he was to require the people to live well and virtuously. In 1645, a petition was presented to the General Court “To allow and maintaine full and free tolerance of religion to all men that would preserve the Civill peace”. Bradford argued against it and used his position as governor to keep the petition from coming to a vote. In 1655, he threatened to resign as governor unless the General Court took speedy action to “remedy the neglect of competent maintenance for the ministry and the failure to take measures for the suppression of error” (Langdon, Pilgrim Colony, p. 67). A law was passed that ensured a minister’s support by his congregants if they obstinately refused to fulfill their duty. In 1656, at the last General Court that Bradford attended, a Quaker was found guilty of disturbing public worship and of slander and was sentenced to be banished after the winter was over.
His Writings
Bradford had reason to be worried over the religious unity, orthodoxy, and piety of the colony, but not all his efforts were political. He also put pen to paper to leave behind a testimony for future generations.
Between 1630 and 1650, he wrote Of Plymouth Plantation. In this book, he traced the history of the colony from its beginnings in the congregation at Scrooby all the way to 1647, unto the praise of the Lord who had shown his mercy and power. This book remained unpublished, but it was used by other early historians of New England like Bradford’s nephew Nathaniel Morton, who copied portions from Bradford in his book New England’s Memorial. Bradford’s book was kept in Boston, taken by the British in 1776, and was rediscovered in London in 1855.
Bradford also wrote three “dialogues” (1648, 1652) to pass on the vision of the founders to the younger generation, as well as a number of other poems (1650-1657).
His Death
Finally, in 1657, after telling his friends of the comfort he had experienced from the Spirit, he died on May 9th, in the 69th year of his age. His He had done his part and he left the work to future generations.
We have reason to be thankful for what God did through William Bradford. We should also listen to Bradford’s history and exhortation as we press on in our day.
His will and the inventory of his belongings (including many of his books) at his death can be found here. In his will, he wrote, "In speciall I Commend to you a little booke with a blacke cover wherin there is a word to Plymouth a word to Boston and a word to New England with sundry usefull verses". Here is the word to New England that he mentioned:
A Word to New England, by William Bradford
Oh New England, thou canst not boast;
Thy former glory thou hast lost.
When Hooker, Winthrop, Cotton died,
And many precious ones beside,
Thy beauty then it did decay,
And still doth languish more away.
Love, truth, goodness, mercy and grace—
Wealth and the world have took their place.
Thy open sins none can them hide:
Fraud, drunkenness, whoredom and pride.
The great oppressors slay the poor,
But whimsy errors they kill more.
Yet some thou hast which mourn and weep,
And their garments unspotted keep;
Who seek God's honor to maintain,
That true religion may remain.
These do invite, and sweetly call,
Each to other, and say to all;
Repent, amend, and turn to God,
That we may prevent his sharp rod.
Yet time thou hast; improve it well,
That God's presence may with ye dwell.
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