TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been placed at the end of the book. Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book. THE PILGRIM FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND: A HISTORY. BY W. CARLOS MARTYN, AUTHOR OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN MILTON, A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PURITANS, ETC. “What sought they there, whose steps were on the dust Of the old forest lords? Not summer skies, Nor genial zephyrs, nor the amenities Of golden spoils. Their strength was in the trust That breasts all billows of the abyss of time, The ROCK OF AGES, and its hopes sublime.” AMERICAN SOUVENIR. PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 150 NASSAU-STREET, NEW YORK. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by the AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. Lord Bacon assigns the highest meed of earthly fame to the builders of states, _conditores imperiorum_. The Pilgrim Fathers were members of that guild, and their story belongs to the heroic age of America. “No other state,” remarks Stoughton, “can boast of such an origin, and adorn its earliest annals with a tale as true as it is beautiful, as authentic as it is sublime.” But aside from the honor which attends the Forefathers as the founders of empire, they march down the ages crowned with richer and more fragrant laurels; for they built not for themselves or for posterity alone, in imitation of Romulus, and Cyrus, and Cæsar, and Ottoman; they planted also for justice and for God. Therefore they are the rightful heirs of the benedictions of mankind; while to Americans they are doubly precious as “the parents of one-third of the whole white population of the Republic.”