GRREAT!!!!!  Thanks so much for digging out the four points that I could not
recall.

But I DID recall that the highly touted reason that the Pilgrims came to the
new world -- "religious freedom" -- was not in the top three.  So much for
another Yankee legend  :))

Randy Cabell
----- Original Message -----
From: "J. Douglas Deal" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2005 8:31 PM
Subject: Re: northern bias


>A closer reading of Bradford shows three reasons that related, in one way
> or another, to the heavy labor and hard lives they led in Holland and a
> fourth reason that did not. The quoted passages are on pp.23-25 of his OF
> PLYMOUTH PLANTATION (Morison's Modern Library edition).
>
> 1) The "great labour and hard fare, with other inconveniences which they
> underwent and were contented with" in Holland could not be endured by
> others who wanted to join them.... "But it was thought that if a better
> and easier place of living could be had, it would draw many and take away
> these discouragements. Yea, their pastor would often say that many of
> those who both wrote and preached now against them, if they were in a
> place where they might have liberty and live comfortably, they would then
> practice as they did."
>
> 2) Though people bore these difficulties cheerfully and with "resolute
> courage," "yet old age began to steal on many of them; and their great and
> continual labours, with other crosses and sorrows, hastened it before the
> time," so that "within a few years more they would be in danger to
> scatter, by necessities pressing them, or sink under their burdens or
> both."
>
> 3) Their children, it was feared, were flirting with degeneracy and
> corruption by following the "evil examples" around them "into extravagant
> and dangerous courses." This too was connected, in their parents' minds,
> with hard labor: "As necessity was a taskmaster over them so they were
> forced to be such, not only to their servants but in a sort to their
> dearest children, the which as it did not a little wound the tender hearts
> of many a loving father and mother, so it produced likewise sundry sad and
> sorrowful effects. For many of their children that were of best
> dispositions and gracious inclinations, having learned to beaar the yoke
> in their youth and willing to bear part of their parents' burden, were
> oftentimes so oppressed with their heavy labours that though their minds
> were free and willing, yet their bodies bowed under the weight of the
> same, and became decrepit in their early youth, the vigour of nature being
> consumed in the very bud as it were."
>
> 4) Last "and which was not least," they wanted to lay a foundation for or
> make some progress toward "the propagating and advancing the gospel of the
> kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world."
>
> Douglas Deal
> Professor of History and Chair of History Department
> State University of New York at Oswego
> Oswego, NY 13126
> [log in to unmask]
> (315)-312-5632
>
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