Born into a Yorkshire family of yeoman farmers, William Bradford’s early misfortune must have made him more receptive to the religious fervor and sense of community that Puritanism later provided. By the age of seven, Bradford was orphaned of both parents and a grandfather, and soon was sent to live with his uncles, who raised him as a farmer. His fragile health and sense of isolation allowed him plenty of time to read his Bible, and when at the age of twelve he heard the sermons of Richard Clyfton, a nonconformist minister, Bradford felt spiritually moved. Despite the scorn of family and friends, Bradford in 1606 became a member of this group of Separatists who had formed their own congregation in the village of Scrooby under the direction of Clyfton, John Robinson, his later successor to the pulpit, and William Brewster, the group’s pre-eminent elder. Because of pressure to conform to the hierarchy of the Anglican Church, the Scrooby group in 1608 fled to Holland and eventually settled in Leyden. After one disastrous business venture, William Bradford became a weaver.

In 1620 part of the Leyden congregation, along with an assortment of less pious emigrants, departed on the Mayflower to establish a settlement where they could maintain a church of “ancient purity” freed from European entanglements. In November they arrived off the shores of what is now Cape Cod, Massachusetts (somewhat farther north than they had intended), and in December disembarked at Plymouth. Since John Robinson had stayed behind in Leyden, William Brewster became the settlers’ spiritual leader, preaching regularly on Sundays; because of the Separatist emphasis upon spontaneity, other members gave short, impromptu sermons as they wished. When Plymouth’s first governor, John Carver, died in 1621, Bradford was elected to take his place. The governor wielded extensive powers by contemporary standards: chief judge and jury, superintendent of agriculture and trade, and secretary of state. During his lifetime Bradford was re-elected to the position thirty times, serving almost continuously, for a total term of thirty-three years until his death in 1657.

In 1630 William Bradford wrote the first book of his history, Of Plymouth Plantation. Perhaps the settlement that year of a much larger, and potentially overshadowing, Puritan colony at Massachusetts Bay prompted Bradford to begin his history. He put aside the manuscript until 1644, when he finished the eleventh chapter, and, between 1646 and 1650, he brought the account of the colony’s struggles and achievements through the year 1646.

Surprisingly, Bradford’s unfinished manuscript was not published until 1856. It had remained in the Bradford family until 1728, when Reverend Thomas Prince placed it in his personal library in Boston’s Old South Church. During the American Revolution, the manuscript was lost, presumably stolen by a British soldier during the British occupation of Boston  (1775–1776). In 1855, scholars intrigued by references to Bradford in two books on the history of the Episcopal Church in America (both written in England) located the manuscript in the bishop of London’s library at Lambeth Palace. In 1897, after a protracted legal battle, Of Plymouth Plantation was returned to Massachusetts. The unfinished manuscript of Of Plymouth Plantation is not Bradford’s only literary effort—he wrote a journal of Plymouth’s first year, some poems, and  a series of dialogues—but it constitutes his greatest literary achievement. For Bradford the  history of the Plymouth settlers closely followed the plot of the Old Testament. The Puritans’ journey to the New World indicated a covenanted relationship with God for which God’s relationship with the Israelites provided a model and a guide. This interpretive strategy, known as typology, influenced a number of later New England historians such as Nathaniel Morton, Cotton Mather, and Thomas Prince.

The way in which Bradford composed Of Plymouth Plantation should remind us that his history is not a yearly chronicle of events but a retrospective attempt to interpret God’s design for his “saints,” that exclusive group of believers predestined for eternal salvation. Like the Puritan journal, the genre of Puritan history served a distinctly useful purpose in enhancing spiritual life. Bradford hoped to demonstrate the workings of divine providence for the edification of future generations, and since all temporal events theoretically conveyed divine meaning, the texture of Bradford’s writing is as rich in historical detail as it is patterned on the language of the Geneva Bible. The word choice and cadence of Bradford’s prose manifested a constant reminder of the biblical precedent for Puritan history. Yet a major tension in his narrative involves the difficulty in interpreting the providential will. As Bradford repeatedly encounters human wickedness and duplicity, Of Plymouth Plantation increasingly reveals its author’s perplexity over the apparent ambiguity of divine providence. Bradford maintains his piety, but he is forced to acknowledge his perception of an infinite gulf between man and God. Such an acknowledgment amplifies the narrative’s tone of humility, established at the outset, in Bradford’s declaration that he shall write in the Puritan “plain style” of Biblical simplicity and concrete image, and tell the “simple truth” as well as his “slender judgment” would permit.

Many readers have noted the elegiac note of sadness on which Of Plymouth Plantation ends. If Bradford’s realization that “so uncertain are the mutable things of this unstable world” dictates his humility throughout, his final entries particularly pronounce a sense of loss. In the eulogy to William Brewster Bradford lamented, most of all, the disappearance of a communitarian vision embodied by the first-generation founders like Brewster and John Robinson. To Bradford, those first emigrants whom he called “Pilgrims” exemplified the value of community and sense of purpose that were presumably waning in the 1640s as second-generation inhabitants and new immigrants looked for better farmland. Of Plymouth Plantation thus speaks a message characteristic of much of the literature of immigration: the paradoxical nature of prosperity and success, the sense that, in this case, the founding of the first successful British settlement in New England led only to fragmentation and dispersal.

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American Writers: A Journey Through History
(http://www.americanwriters.org/writers/bradford.asp)
Biographical sketch, links, and information about a video history of Bradford.

Bradford's Grave
(http://www.findagrave.com/pictures/124.html)
Morbid but fascinating site offering photos of Bradford's grave in Plymouth, MA.

Modern History SourceBook
(http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1650bradford.html)
Digitized selections from History of Plymouth Plantation, c. 1650.

William Bradford
(http://members.aol.com/calebj/bradford.html)
Site offers a biography, ancestral summary, and selected secondary resources.

David Cressy, Coming Over, 1987

Robert Daly, "William Bradford's Vision of History," American Literature, 44, 1973

Alan B. Howard, "Art and History in Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 28, 1971

David Levin, "William Bradford: The Value of Puritan Historiography," in Everett H. Emerson's Major Writers of Early American Literature, 1972

Bradford, Smith, Bradford of Plymouth, 1951

Walter P. Wenska, "Bradford's Two Histories," Early American Literature, 8, 1978