This account of the life of Governor Bradford by Mather gives us a good understanding of the state of the times in Europe during the 1500's and New England in the 1600's. England during the rule of Queen Mary(Bloody Mary) was a dark time for the country with the great reformation in progress and many churches being molested and peoples persecuted. The separatists felt a strong desire to leave England to various countries below. Leaving their native land brought on tough times, and it was William Bradford's ancestors who were apart of these people fleeing on a ship-captained by a Dutchman- that attempted to lead them to Holland. After being captured before reaching Holland and then let go, many men ended up in Norway after a a storm led them there, where they started there life as pilgrims.
From these pilgrims, William Bradford was born in Ansterfield, and at twelve he started to become very studious of the scriptures with the help of Mr. Richard Clifton. He eventually went on his own into solitary to study the scriptures and left to Holland being captured, which eventually led him to Amsterdam. And finally after Amsterdam, he made it to Holland where he eventually left for New England to become Govenor William Bradford.
The Govenor led the Plymouth Colony for thirty seven years. Much of the success of the colony is owed to him before the rulership of the colony was given over to the supreme legislative body of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He kept the colony intact through out the many years of affairs with his great wisdom, knowledge, History, Philosopy, and theology learned thoughout his years in Europe. Bradford set up the foundation of religion in the New World.
This account greatly helps with the understanding of the transition of peoples due to religion from Europe to the New World. Bradford is compared to Moses for his great leader ship skills when running the Colony. And he is described as, "Men are but flocks: Bradford beheld their need, And long did them at once both rule and feed( Plato)."
I find this reading about Bradford so important because it was based on his beliefs that the colony was runned, greatly influencing how we got to where we did today.
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Bradford was seen as the Moses because he was leading the people out of captivity just like Moses. Bradford began to share the same ideas of separating from the official Church of England, which was such a dangerous decision because Separatist leaders were hunted down and imprisoned. Led by his strong faith, Bradford and the people that shared his same belief lived in exile worshipping according to their beliefs and trusted in God to prove. This was interesting to read and I learned that if you do good things and are true to God, you get rewarded.
ReplyDeleteI’m very interested in the Tudor dynasty and the way they changed the church. These changes greatly affected the people we are reading about now. King Henry the eighth obviously split from the Roman Catholic church. Then Edward took the throne in 1547 and once again changed the Church. He was greatly sympathetic to the Protestant cause and tried to turn the church around with the help of his late father’s advisor Thomas Cramner. He repealed his fathers Six Articles which called for acceptance of transubstantiation, called communion unnecessary, denied the right for priests to marry, ordered for both sexes to uphold vows of chastity, allowed private mass, and stressed the importance of confession. Edward also turned the Church into an extremely strict place of worship and stripped the alter of almost all imagery. When Edward died, Mary, a devout Catholic, took the throne. The return to Catholicism made many English happy but it did not last long. When Mary died, Elizabeth was left to take the throne but could only do so as a Protestant. Elizabeth would have been considered a bastard in the Catholic church and thus unable to take the throne. While she did not go back to the rigid religion of Edward, Elizabeth created a blend of the two religions. As a result of the religious chaos, Many people wanted to purify the church, the Puritans, while some wanted to completely separate, the separatists.
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