Read The Landing of the Pilgrims Online

Authors: James Daugherty

The Landing of the Pilgrims

BOOK: The Landing of the Pilgrims
10.1Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Copyright © 1950 by James Daugherty. Copyright renewed 1978 by Charles M. Daugherty. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.randomhouse.com/teens

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Daugherty, James Henry. The landing of the pilgrims. Reprint of the 1950 edition published by Random House, New York, in series: Landmark books,
SUMMARY
: In order to escape religious persecution, a group of English Separatists set sail for America in 1620, hoping to establish a new colony. 1. Pilgrims (New Plymouth Colony)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Pilgrims (New Plymouth Colony)—Fiction. 2. Massachusetts—History—New Plymouth, 1620–1691—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.D2625Lan 1981 [Fic] 80-21430
eISBN: 978-0-307-77873-4

RANDOM HOUSE
and colophon and
LANDMARK BOOKS
and coloph on are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

v3.1

The Pilgrims had fought starvation and won
.

No Indian attacks had been made on them from the threatening forests.

For all this there was a price. Half of their company lay in unmarked graves. Each day they must labor, and watch by night against hunger and danger. Each day for a year, their tired eyes had watched the naked horizon and never a sail had come to bring them the promised supplies.

Had they been utterly forgotten? Was there still an England?

Contents
Part 1
Not As Other Men

(1607-1620)

The Boy and the Postmaster

(1607)

The blast of the courier’s horn sounded gaily across the fields. The post riders were nearing the town of Scrooby on the great North Road from London. The dogs barked, and children ran out shouting. A few villagers hurried toward the big house called the Manor. All were eager to see the post riders change horses in the Manor courtyard.

Young Will Bradford heard the noise and broke into a run. If he hurried now he would be just in time to see the riders gallop in. As Will came panting into the courtyard, the stable boys led out the two fresh horses. The animals were saddled and all ready to be mounted by the post riders who were about to arrive.

In a few moments the horn sounded again. The two riders came pounding over the drawbridge on
their lathering horses, and through the gate to the Manor courtyard.

The post rider in his high boots and scarlet coat leaped from his horse and quickly unstrapped the two leather mail bags.

At that moment, William Brewster, the Postmaster of Scrooby, came down the stone steps of the Manor to receive the mail. While Brewster entered the contents of the post bags in his books of registry, the post rider and his bugler were guzzling their dinner of cold mutton and beer. In fifteen minutes they must be riding their fresh mounts north on the road toward York.

Having finished the meal, they swung into the saddle and were off. The gay notes of the postman’s horn faded sweetly into the distance. The village again settled back into the drowsy dullness of a long afternoon.

Not so William Brewster, who, with his many duties, found little time for idleness. Brewster, as Postmaster at Scrooby, was the great man of the countryside. He was Steward of the Manor and collected the rents from the tenants of the wide domain of the Archbishop of York. He was the administrator of law and justice for the district. A man of learning, Brewster had attended Cambridge in his youth, where he had studied Greek and Latin.

Later, in the service of Queen Elizabeth, he had accompanied one of her ambassadors on an important
mission to the Low Countries. He had seen the great world, yet he had come back to this remote corner of England to be Postmaster at Scrooby where his father had held the same office.

Although Brewster had moved among the great ones of his day, he was neither proud nor vain. He was respected by his neighbors for his wisdom and godliness. When a neighbor was sick or in trouble and needed the help of a friend, he knew that he could find it at the hands of the Postmaster of Scrooby Manor.

No one had felt the warmth of Master Brewster’s kindness more than young Will Bradford, who looked to him almost as a father. When the boy had been left an orphan and was long ill, Master Brewster had often traveled the two miles from Scrooby to Austerfield, to visit him and bring presents. As young Will slowly recovered, his friend had helped him in his studies and had given him a copy of the Bible printed in English at Geneva. This Geneva Bible was still a new and rare book in that part of England. Will spent happy hours absorbed in its wondrous pages. He and the Postmaster often talked together of its beauty and meaning. In hours of loneliness and pain the book had brought the boy a marvelous comfort and peace.

Later when Will had visited Master Brewster at the Manor, he had heard him tell brave tales of the great world of London and of the brilliant court of
Queen Bess. The lad thrilled to hear the story of how, in 1588, the year before he was born, the terrible Armada of King Philip, with all the might of Spain, had sailed against England; and of how Sir Francis Drake and his fearless sea dogs had sallied forth against the great array.

Will felt as if he himself had been upon the English decks in all the flame and thunder of the fierce encounter. In the night, Drake had loosed the terrible fire ships blazing among the Spanish fleet. Cutting their cables, the Spaniards had put to sea, and a great wind had blown them toward the coast of Holland. There the English gunners hammered the enemy to pieces as the great hulks of Spain’s proudest ships went up in smoke and flame.

In his imagination young Will pictured himself as a sea captain capturing treasure ships on the Spanish Main. When I become a man, he thought, I shall sail a ship across the wide ocean sea and go adventuring in wild America.

Now he was in his teens and had never even seen the sea, although the coast was but fifty miles from where he lived. Perhaps he never would see it, for his uncles planned, very sensibly, that he should be a farmer and cultivate the goodly lands his father had left him.

How Will Made a Great Decision

For some time Will had heard people talking about a preacher at Babsworth who spoke of the Bible with great power. Because Will read and loved the Bible, he decided to hear this man. It was a twenty-mile walk to Babsworth and back, but Mr. Richard Clyfton’s preaching was worth all the trouble.

After that first trip, Will often walked there to hear Mr. Clyfton read and expound the Scriptures. The boy seldom missed a Sunday, even if his uncles did not approve of reformist preachers.

BOOK: The Landing of the Pilgrims
10.1Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

American Dream Machine by Specktor, Matthew
A New Haven Christmas by Angelique Voisen
Jodi Thomas - WM 1 by Texas Rain
A Sniper in the Tower by Gary M. Lavergne
Immoral by Brian Freeman
Firebase Freedom by William W. Johnstone
Archer's Angels by Tina Leonard
Desire of the Soul by Topakian, Alana
Songs in Ordinary Time by Mary Mcgarry Morris