Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Nick Bunker: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World

Nick bunker worked as an investigative reporter for the Liverpool Echo and for six years he wrote for The Financial Times. He was an open scholar at King's College Cambridge where he won two university prizes. He has two graduate degrees from Columbia where he studied under the late Professor Edwards while at Columbia on his travels around the US for many years he served as a board member Treasurer and chairman of the trustees of the Freud Museum in London. He now lives in England near the villages from which the leaders of the Plymouth colony came. Mr. Bunker spoke with admiration. Bold work of revisionism says Harper's Magazine Publishers Weekly writes has succeeded in writing a major history unprecedented sweep of the Plymouth colony. Never before has such a comprehensive research study of the subject appeared. The results are stunning. Please welcome Nick bunker. Thank you. Thank you. Right thank you very much. Actually the reviews don't all ring with aberration but one of mine.

Well I'm delighted to be here. I've been in the United States for about 10 days and I'm going back out tomorrow evening hopefully as long as there are no volcanic ash clouds drifting across the British Isles. But I've been keeping in touch with things back home and the software you know this morning I spoke to my publisher in London will sulk and boldly head which is the British home of Random House. I said no he said we've got some good news we've got some bad news. I said and which would you like to hear first and I said we'll have the good news for us and he said Well the good news is that we've had a very large order for three boxes of books from the West Indies a very large order from a bookstore in Kingston Jamaica and I said That's fantastic. What's the bad news the bad news is they think you've written a biography of Bob Marley. And I said well there's always the book I should have written making history Babylon Reggae the Pilgrims and the rest of her and roots in Massachusetts the first shot the first chapter would be no woman no cry. And the second the second chapter be I short the Pilgrim now. But out of this now it's very appropriate. And from my point upsy delightful to be here at all the bookstore because I

did spend quite a lot of time in this store while I was researching the book. I made three trips to New England for research each one about three full weeks generation and what I would do is I would work over in the Massachusetts or the Boston Public Library or the Massachusetts archives down it down in the south of Boston and then I would come over here in the evening to get something to eat and have a drink and I would often come into the hall the bookstall and there was one particular section of the Harvard bookstore that I would tend to focus on and it strangely enough is right here. You see just above the book shelves there youll see environment and science I think it says or environments I think and the reason those shows are important is because those are the shelves that have on them. Material related to the coastline of Massachusetts to the wildlife and the natural history and the two books there that you'll find referred to in my notes which were particularly important enough one was a book by my uncle Mark Burton This is Professor Brown. It's what Atlantic sea shores which is a fabulous book which

I use because it refers so heavily to the salt marshes and the salt marshes of Massachusetts plan a big pause in making ice from Babylon towards the end they relates to the importance of salt marshes as a source of grazing for livestock. And the other book was specifically related to Khalid. It's called forests in time by Professor David awful story he's the editor. He's the director of the Harvard Forest overpaid Isham a massive wonderful book too because it details very scientifically and great actress in a very meticulous way the environmental changes that occurred in the last thousand years in New England. That's very important because it's from my point of view it's extremely it's essential to be able to sort of step away from impressionistic accounts of landscape and try and give them some kind of scientific grounding which is what he's done. And you'll find again in my book you'll find a match towards the end in the final in the final few chapters which is taken from that book. So that's the kind of thing I was doing and so as I say it's very appropriate for me to be here. Now what I'd like to do is to is to is to start by saying something in general terms

about what the book is and what it doesn't concern about the things the book does and those that it doesn't then I'd like to go on to give a specific example from the Book of the kind of thing that I've attempt to do by way of widening the the narrative in all kinds of sources available that's concerning a particular episode in the book concerning the original departure of the pilgrims from the coast of England in 698 and then towards the end I'd like to say something about the way the book is written the style and structure of the book which is something that's given rise to a bit of a bit of comment because in some ways is a bit unusual. Now in terms of what the book doesn't. When I was up in Maine I did a lot of work up in Maine. I met a chap called Dave Cook who was a Paul's president of the main Archeological Society. He's a great expert on the canoe trails of Maine which of the canoe carries in the on the waterways on the routes followed by the Eastern opon Aki people of mine. He said to me that you will be very careful because if this turns out to be a revisionist exercise you may make yourself

unpopular because they wouldn't really want to hear a revisionist account of the programs. And I said Well to be frank that's not really irrelevant would not be revisionist because quite frankly in the last century or so there have been great waves of interpretation and reinterpretation of already crashed over the rocks of most events in colonial history. And so it's a bit hard to say there is any longer any kind of all the dogs who would you can revise. So it's not revisionist in that sense. Secondly it's not really an attempt to try and answer any questions about modern America on the basis of what happened three or four hundred years ago. I'm not trying to say also Oscar answer the question Are Americans the way they are today or is the American psyche the way it is today because it was founded in part by Puritans. That's not the kind of thing I'm trying to do. There was a book published a year or so ago by Sarah Vowell the woody shipmates which does exactly that. And I would point anybody in the direction of it because I think it's actually great fun and also does tell quite quite nicely with what I've done here.

Nor am I trying to take sides. I mean I hope sincerely hope there is no site taking anywhere in the book in any particular chapter. In fact as I specifically say the conflicts of the 17th century are not our conflicts they are conflicts of a different era and about different issues so I don't try to take any size and I hope I've cleansed out of the book any side taking a tool. So what am I doing. In reality what I'm doing is something which I think is in a sense more humble than those things but also maybe more audacious which is theirs to try and dramatically to whiten the available source material that can be brought to bear upon these these events these critical events these events that unfolded around before during and after the arrival of the Mayflower in November 16 20 in Provincetown. When I say dramatically widen what I mean is ready in full ways now to begin with. We need to bear in mind that most history is of this period most colonial histories are written on the basis of a very narrow range of sources. In this case

in the case of the Plymouth Colony we're really talking about the narratives of William Bradford and Edward Winslow. Those are the primary sources that have always been the backbone of pretty much all narrative accounts of this period. Secondly the work of Captain John Smith because he came back from the John Smith did right enormous amount about North America including New England and his works are very important sources which are frequently used and I have to say are actually pretty low level to mock him. There are also the there's also the work of Roger Williams particular his work about Native American language and Native American customs which I frequently use sometimes the attribution of the frequently used. And finally there is the great General John Winthrop which comes a bit late so these these really all the sources which are which are provide the backbone of most material. Now as I say in the book they're not you know accurate than the fools and in very often when you check them out against all the sources they turn out to be surprisingly clear and precise. And also they they can be verified. They don't

fools but the trouble is they tend to leave a great deal out. So the aim is to find as a say these these extra sources and then they fall into four categories. The first casualty which I'll talk about in a moment. The archival traces that are still available in the United Kingdom now you know I think it's surprising that they're all sources that are still available in the United Kingdom but have not been looked at before but the reason is just chronological really what happened was that in the last part of the 19th century. Up until about 19 20 which was the time of course of the 300000 bursary of the Plymouth colony which was a very important date at that period between about 1870 and the end of the First World War. Many scholars from the United States came over to Britain and they did look as carefully as they could for everything that might be there in the form of unpublished manuscript material the most famous and the most important was a Michael Henry Martin Dexter who wrote a book published in nineteen hundred and six building and home to the Pilgrim's Way to troll through an enormous amount of material and there were all those and they looked at material not only related to the New York

the colonies in the south and so on but it really was that at that time there were large quantities of documents that were not yet available and not accessible or were just one catalogs catalogue being crucial because I'm catalogued on sort of documents are pretty useless actually. And what's happened since the Second World War is a lot more material particularly from private sources private papers also resurrect the litigation and late on papers in my case which I found particularly useful papers relating to taxes customs the sea and so on. Those have become available much more easy to get and that essentially what I've been doing. The second set of material that is immensely useful is archaeological. Now one of the difficulties of the archaeological material is that very often when it's published if it's published very often it isn't published today. It's not easy to get. For example some excellent work has been done up in Maine on the archaeology of the Kennebec River. I can only be found if you actually go to the main st. Larby no gusta. Now you look at these relatively small number of of

of documents that have been produced by archaeologists working for power companies as that big hydroelectric projects have been undertaken in Maine. So power companies been obliged by the state to conduct archaeological investigations. I have a report that it will be only one copy. Something similar happens in Britain where again because of all the development has been going on on the side of the Thames in London real estate development again developers are obliged to have archaeological surveys done they are done by the OS studies be available. So that's a second set of sources which is archaeological material. A third set of sources is the is the scientific work of the kind that I'm referring to. David Forces team doesn't have it the kind of material that you might find in paper in journals with with names like The Journal of biogeography or extra rays or that kind of general the sort of things even funny University a lot of his but are not easily available. Apart from that and the full set the force or someone which is very important indeed in making Astro Babylon is the terrain itself. I mean

anybody who picks up this book will soon see that there is a great deal of terrain in the book there was a review on WW I will not call my Laura Mila and she said that this is there's a lot of open air in the book and its history would gumboots on and that is true and that's deliberate that is absolutely crucial. On both sides of the Atlantic both along the coast of Massachusetts which I explored a story as I could and also in the areas of England not far from where I live where the lead is the Plymouth colony came from. So those of the of the of the kinds of source material one has to try to get well I'd like to do is to explain how this works in one particular instance. There is one particular chapter this book chapter nine called stunning Berea flats which contains probably the single most important archival discovery within it. This is if you would using your own strong language this is your mission last three still runs that piece of archival discovery what it is it relates to an episode that's described it William Bradford in his history of the primitive plantation. In that book

William Bradford describes an episode in 600 nights he doesn't actually give the date but it is six hundred eight on the coast of Lincolnshire when 100 old separatists people have come from villages in Lincolnshire not insurance on gathers to try and meet a Dutch ship that was going to carry them out around Saddam. This is a very famous episode you'll find in for example Nathaniel Philbrick book about the May fly you will find it referred to in a few sentences. They gather in the Shool the Dutch ship arrives but unfortunately at almost exactly the same time as the Dutch ship arrives. So to the militia the local militia under the command of their is local officials. And while some of the men folk among the separatists managed to make their escape they get out of the ship on a rowing boat. Most of them women and children especially of course on the shore and arrested by the militia. Now this is a very famous episode. It doesn't have a date and he doesn't give a precise

location he says it was between the towns of Hull and Grimsby which are on the Humber estuary on the eastern coast of England. Now when I first began work on this I was very struck by the fact that something very odd about this which is that there is no apparent archival support for this episode in the British public records you cannot find any documentary evidence from the British side of an English side road this time about what occurred or whether indeed it did occur. Now Bradford wouldn't a made up an episodic so extraordinary as this but we need to bear in mind it was very old separatism. The Creed of the pilgrims this created but one whereby you wish to separate entirely from the Church of England and form your own independent Protestant congregation was very very rare and was exceptionally rare for groups of 50 or 100 people to gather on the coast of Lincolnshire and try on sail across the North Sea on a Dutch ship. They're very rare indeed. So why does no documentary try to survive. Now I formed a hypothesis pretty early on which was this. I mean at the time the

executive government was the Privy Council the Privy Council which reported directly to the king he was normally the chair of the pretty Privy Council but normally didn't attend the meetings and he would meet every couple of weeks and Bradford refers to the fact in passing that what he called the lords of the council became involved in this affair. Now at the time. The way it worked was that in the southern part of England the Privy Council dealt with these matters. But in the north of it and they delegated the conduct of affairs to a thing called the Council of the North which was a kind of subsidiary Council based in you all whose records are all completely destroyed during the Civil War. So I assume that the reason why we can't find documentary evidence for this episode in England was because they'd all been destroyed by the council. But that really wasn't a terribly convincing explanation actually because in fact these events occurred on the south side of the Humber. In other words they would be in the south. So what I did was at a certain point I went to the National Archives in London and instead of

using the catalogue which doesn't make any reference this fat I simply went to the microfilms and trolled through them from from beginning to end through the years 69 716 which is quite a long job but not impossible. And after a three or four hours of doing this and as I'm sure you know if you've used microfilm it can be extremely tiring. A very exciting very easily missed things. Suddenly I saw a reference to a place with stunning Brown. Now this immediately caught my interest because I had already started the coastline of Lincolnshire in the area concerned in some detail and I knew there was a place with stunning Brown haven which was in pretty much the right spot and if you if you have a coffee It might ask about them. You will find the stunning red depositions. These are a set of depositions that's what I found and which are in the National Archives in London there's a little picture of them that we've actually got them only for a cloth website. If you type you don't consult Doubleday don't Coleman go from backslash making haste to Bob and you will find them

and what they are is the original depositions that were taken. It is indeed the case that militia had arrested the separatists. Exactly as William Bradford described it the militia how to write they had arrested the separatists they caught him off down the road to Grimsby which is the nearest town where they were pulled up in front of two just as the police the principal one being a Michael Thomas had cliff and he signed the depositions and the depositions recalled the interrogations of the individuals concerned. And it soon becomes clear why that not been noticed before is because the spellings of the names were so old in Jacobean Elizabeth and ng the names are often spelt in a kind of a variety of ways. In this case the key man was a Michael Thomas helpless who was one of the original Baptists because one of the interesting aspects of the story of course is that Baptists originated from the same area as the Grahams. Helis the name is used to spend h e l w y s. But in this case it had been spelt E L V I S H. So when people are rather

lazy like me initially looked at the catalog in the index they found they didn't find one hell which they found oldish and they ignored it. Now what we got them for is a set of depositions and what they give you is this they give you the dates they give you the precise locations they gave the names of the people involved. They gave you the numbers in fold and they give you pretty much everything. And the reason that's important is because once you've got that you can then move off in all directions. Once you have the date you can then consult the records of the Privy Council itself to find out what else they were doing at the time and you can find out who is responsible. And we can look at another source which is the Journal of the sessile iRobot sessile was the Lord Treasurer he was the son of the great little buddy William sessile and we actually have a journal which is also in manuscript form of his period in office and from that we can tell exactly what he was doing at the time. We can also tell exactly where the king was at this particular moment about particular weight and the instinct that all sorts of interesting things come out of it for example the thought of that week they were mainly pro-Tibet with Irish affairs as they were primarily to do with the rebellion in Ireland and

strangely often in Londonderry and abroad actually in the book side in London are evil places and we put all this together what we create is a much richer and deeper picture of exactly what was going on and exactly what the reasons were and exactly what these episodes contain. So we don't end up by if you like. Showing Brad to be role proving him to falsify something. But we do end up with something that's a far deeper richer and full fully rounded a picture of these events and not just regional section of this particular chapter of it. And this is how it opens Chapter 9 is stunning flats. I just became with the epigraph which is William Bradford's reference to the location he says between Grimsby and a hall was a large Coleman a good way distant from any town and that actually says that Iraq was a common it was a piece of common land the land along the side of the river it was used as common land full grazing she basically and that again we can tell from other records of the period and what he says is that what I

say is this. It was May 12th a cold Thursday. About four in the afternoon. The flood tide had peaked. The brown foam of the river turned to a rapid ebb and the wind had begun to blow from the higher ground upstream. The moment it come for ships bound down the rest of the estuary to slip their moorings and to look for the deep channel towards the open sea. The France is a sailing boat built to carry coal so long as her anchor in the shallows in stunning Brown haven on the south bank of the Humber. Here a stream flowed slowly down between salt marshes where sheep graze three or four of the ICA at the point where it entered the river the stream called a deep trench winding out through the mud of the haven until it merged with the breakers on the mud churned the rust kind of puddles like dung beside a couple trough. Now look I would have seen black and white wading birds picking out couples with their long beaks. Now every single detail in

that is entirely authentic. It could be taken by first of all combining William Bradford's account with the account in the depositions. That gives you the data gives the title conditions gives you the place where it could the name of the ship the boat is the Francis comes from depositions. But we can also go to one of the port books of Hull which is just up the coast which is where she was based that particular ship we could find out how big she was because what she used to do and what she did do was sail up and down the coast taking coal from you call Saddam. London had a huge demand for household coal that particular year because the winter of an extremely cold. I would also call the place itself where we can go where I've been seen many times and again we can be entirely accurate about it because even the birds the birds do indeed black and white waiting by slapping this do indeed inhabit that particular coast and they must have done for a very long time because that particular area of the coast is actually known locally as pie white

flats and PI wide is the Lincolnshire dot light wood for light for a left wing. So basically everything can be reconstruction this way and that's really what the book is really you know all about trying to do trying to reconstruct these things. It is rich in as deep as possible and make them as vivid as possible. But all in on an entirely authentic basis not on the basis of come speculation or conjecture but it's also about fitting them into a wider context. Now I mentioned a moment ago the Irish dimension of this. And that's something which I'm very enthusiastic about but nobody in Britain sort of notice very much. But maybe that is it more in this area for obvious reasons. The the the all of this things all of this happened at the same time as something else. The pilgrims we remember as radical Protestants Puritans who were fleeing from James the First. There was another group of people fleeing from James the First who were completely the opposite persuasion that is to say the Irish hills from all stuff. It is quite remarkable that the one of the most famous episode of Irish history got to say the flight of the ills

occurred exactly the same time as the plot of the programs. If you are cool and it's something which as a sage as I say the books for me the argument mostly body else there are to our shows the Torah and the other talk all and in the lot of a lot of sixteen as seven they fled from Ahmed in exactly the same way they fled from Los Willy which is in Donegal Natal on the dairy Of course they went to Rome but there is an account of the flight of the olds from Ulster which is very similar wealthy enough to the account the Bradford gives of the flight of the pilgrims from Lincolnshire. In the case of the pogroms in Lincolnshire William Bradford describes the departure and how they sailed across the North Sea how they very nearly got lost. How they were pushed off course by a storm. They thought at one stage and up in Norway. And of course they prayed for assistance they prayed for guidance they prayed for salvation until eventually the weather cleared and they finally managed to make it into Amsterdam up to two weeks. Well strange enough the account of the flight of the Archos in the Irish language is very

similar it was written by Michael Tajik a nun who was the Family's Story of them as it was published in on Maynooth in 1960 and procreate date and you know are issued sales of very similar story. In their case but in go across the North Sea they sailed off down the coast of almond and then they wandered across the pistil channel then into the Bay of Biscay and finally made the coast of France. But similarly It took them two weeks. Similarly they ended up getting lost in a storm. And of course they too resorted to religion in their case they didn't go down the knees and pray what they did was they had some holy relics and they put them out of the side of the ship and dragging behind it a rather different way of doing things as quote Catholic devotion but similar. And the point I'm making here reading the book is this that we've tended to wish to see the pogroms narrowly and their relation to its America which is understandable of course because the event was of great importance. What I try to do is to put them in the context of other flows of human beings at the time. So in the following chapter I compare the arrival of the

rituals in Rome with the arrival of the pilgrims in Amsterdam and make comparisons contrasts between them. Well it was exactly the same time something else was happening which was the expulsion of what we called the Mariska is from Spain the king of Spain expelled all of those people from andalucía from the south of Spain. That is to say Arabs who had been converted to Christianity often but had remained behind off the reconquest of Granada expelled them hundreds of thousands of them and they fled to North Africa. So I was trying to do is to put all these things together in context so that the flight of the pilgrims to America comes to be seen as part of all these much wider disposals going on of all kinds of different groups being set in motion if you like. Fundamentally the underlying theme I think had to do with tensions and crises within the state. That is to say each of the moment is up talking about India and Spain and so on had all sorts of problems of their own to deal with. One of the ways which they try to resort to solving their problems was simply by getting rid of anybody who they found they don't quit.

But I try to say in the book to put all these things together so that suddenly the the events of 16 20 decipherment Americans suddenly become part of some bigger picture so that they get a resonance which also appeals to the English or indeed the Irish in this case they can all be seen as part of a much wider passage of of a much wider process of mobilization if you like that was occurring at the time. That's fundamental what I was doing in the book. Now I just say a word about the the conclusions of the book before I talk about the structure of it. There a little lot in this book it's a long book is 400 pages and there are a lot of questions that are being asked and answered. There are two really big questions there Austin also in the book taking it very broadly. One is the question of what I call the long hesitation if you recall Columbus of course sailed across the Atlantic in 40 nights and roughly the same time the first English settlers were fishing around the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Indeed there was a British couple David Quinn who actually thought that the British should go and you flown before

Columbus got to America and it's what is conceivable. And yet it took 130 years before the English actually made a go of permanent settlements in North America. Jamestown have been found in sixteen hundred and seventy. But the fact is that it took 15 or 20 years before Jamestown actually became secure and permanent. It suffered terribly from loss of life in its early years it was shaky financially it was riven the Virginia Company at home in London was riven with all kinds of conflicts and schisms and eventually it had to be taken over by the state and dissolved and reconstituted so it took a long time. So the question is why was there this long hesitation Why did it take so long for the English to become committed to North American call isolation. And to get at that question you have to talk as I do in the book a great deal about politics about economics. You have to ask why it was that there were a whole set of incentives that suddenly came together in the 60s 20s economic incentives the fact that England was losing its competent competitive battle with the Dutch in the East Indies. That is to say the Dutch East India Company was essentially out gunning and

outmaneuvering the English the subject India Company you have to talk about for example the real estate market in England when the reality was that by far the most important form of activity for everybody was agriculture. And therefore by far the most important form of investment was speculation in land. So in a sense it was only when rents started to fold in the price of land started to level off. But people actually felt it was important to go to America. And of course also you have to talk about religion and you have to talk about a convergence of circumstances at the end of the 16 20s where were the Asian cultures came together. And this again is a major theme of the book. Religion politics came together to make New England a necessity rather than just an option. And finally you come to my favorite subjects which is one which English of yours I'm a bit baffled about which is that they have a trade which is again a major preoccupation of the book to show exactly what was of the trade of beaver skins was fundamental in the trade in beaver skins wolves if you like the fact that made New England when beaver skin when the price of beef has been shot up at the end of the 16 twenties at a time when the

Pilgrims had managed to get up into Maine and generate source of supply on the Kennebec River. That was the moment when you think of the came both possible at the same time to become essential and the second big question is how did that relate to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Because this is a course is one of the great questions that Americans often asked me what was the relationship between the two. I have tried to be lucid about as well. My feeling is that most of the accounts that have been written of this size Atlantic have not really explained properly how the two are related. What I've shown here is how the man who launched the Massachusetts Bay Colony while watching the Plymouth colony with great interest. It was when the Plymouth colony in 16 28 16 29 began to show that it was definitely going to work. But they definitely had a model that could be made to succeed. And suddenly they pursued the same model and they followed the Plymouth colony across the Atlantic. Now the reason it's important is because the tendency has been over here I think that's a good haul that actually weaponry Milla the great Harvard professor was one of the exponents of

this it's this way of thinking. The tendency has been to regard the Plymouth colony as a rather kind of quaint but relatively unimportant minor entity was what I liked was that it was the essential prototype and it was only when the Prince of Coney showed what could be done to the mast uses by columnists came flooding over in the thousands in the early sixties that is now just finally for it to questions what I'd like to talk about is the way the book is written on the structure of it. Now there are various ways you could try and write about the Plymouth colony and the early called New England. You could try to rise a very straightforward narrative history. Stop saying it. 16 16 15 where you want to start and finishing off in 16 30 0 16 40 or whatever you want to stop to stop. You could do it in terms of a blow by blow day by day all month by mouth account following strictly in chronological order. The trouble with that is you have your problem which is that the sources which I described earlier the narrative sources Winslow profit and so on leave such an enormous amount else

they just don't tell you a lot of the things you need to know things you need to know about navigation things you need to know about the beat of trade all kinds of things are simply left out often simply because they took it for granted that you know it already says to go do that. It's also important thing to bear in mind that we need to be honest about this and to recognize that there are many many big gaps which are never going to be filled and that they get the job of reconstructing the history of the period such as this is not an easy one. It has to be done piecemeal and has to be done by a semi a kind of music of fragments. Each one put alongside each other so they shed light on HLN eventually produce a much bigger picture. And if you can do that it really is a bit Spiritus to try to pretend you can just write a continuous narrative. There are periods of history which you can do that you can be David McCullough right about John Adams or whatever you can do that for the later period where the material is extremely rich in relation to Revolutionary War for example. But I think to pretend you can do of the 17th century is not really correct. So what I've

done here is something else in the book occasionally stops and goes around a bit of a circle where you deal with these these sorts of issues I'm talking about the people of the trade or whatever it starts in 16 28 with the critical turning point. That moment on the Kennebec River where they found the beaver skins they needed. But it goes back to the foundation of the actual project and to the Voyage of the Mayflower. And then it goes back even further into the deep origins of the affair the origins of the Pima County in the politics of Elizabethan England. And then from there it goes forward straight through to the the critical moment at the end of the 16th 20s when the colony became secure and when it gave birth to the bus big immigration in Massachusetts but the structure that was deliberately constructed like this you know if you like to sort of lead you into this. Complicated process of reconstruction of the historical reality so that you actually follow if you like the process by which historian writes the book. That's the intention of it. It also as a literary model actually the literary mold as Joseph Conrad which is not what Joseph Conrad used to do and the

reason why I did that was because Joseph Conrad is particularly relevant here because Conrad's books deal with so many of the same issues as you remember was rushing at the end of the 19th century about issues to imperialism and so forth about colonialism. He was right about the interplay between ideology religion history politics the sea and it seemed to me appropriate to use a kind of Conrad Ian model in writing the book. Now that's really all I was going to say except to thank the whole bookstore again and be delighted to take any questions at all. Because the cases David Hope is particularly interesting because the Virginia connections now I think quite point to recognize that the junior and I don't see the genie are in the pit with colonies being opposed to each other anyway. I mean the the Plymouth colonists wanted Virginia to succeed. The junior college wanted me to succeed because if both succeeded there was much more chance of getting out of a flourishing oceanic traffic going on because of both. Both colonies needed to have as many ships as possible visiting and the critical problem for them initially

was not enough ships were coming across the Atlantic. If you look at the English customs records which are very important for this you'll find that the number of ships coming over in 16 17 16 18 was maybe off a dozen a year because that was dangerous because if you didn't have the ships coming out then there is a danger that you would not simply be out to get supplies you need it. So I think hope can stories very well but as I say I decide not to do it because it is done if I just open as well. No I was brought up every morning Broadfoot because Bradford I mean yes that's the sum of all the Dutch sources particularly those that were found in the military records in Amsterdam which do recall the Dutch trade in great detail. There was a book written called the pre-history I think of New Netherland which was done in like the 50s which has a lot of mature on that but I was at about Radford because what happens in Bradford's narrative is when you get to a certain date 16 26 at you because you arranges the history the print on station by years and when you get sixteen twenty six sixteen twenty seven suddenly you come upon lots and

lots of reference to the people for a trade and it makes it very clear that that was the turning point. Now the problem is that in England itself the available sources about the fur trade appear to have periods to be very very limited means virtually nothing nothing has been read about it in England a lot has been written about the Netherlands because as you said about the new novel untried version nothing in the UK. Also a lot has been written about French for trade because of Champlain huge documentation Champlain. Now what happen in my case was that I was rich fortunate to find a book by French or thought Michael but I laugh. He's a French Canadian also and he wrote an excellent book about the french canadian foot trade using the notes Ferial records from Frohman's to show how the price of beautiful change so what I thought was it was well maybe there's a way we can find something similar in England. And what I did was I thought Well probably the best source would be water of a house that is to say the wardrobe accounts of the king because they would show the purchase of the bounce and we might get a chart the the movement of beautiful prices and that's what I did I see that I went from wardrobe accounts and once I had the wardrobe accounts of James the

first actually was Charles the First his son. Once I had those and we had the names of the haberdashers and some idea about how the price moved them from their rockets to reconstruct it but the trade is in England is something which brought his book is already written a tool. All the material as you rightly say has been Dutch or French and most is very rich. While I also use he was a customs recklessly the English customs records were called the port books of very very comprehensive. There are fifteen hundred of them surviving the right of James the First and this is where the first book be used in real detail for this kind of thing and they showed that the movements of beaver skins and what you do is you have to take all the things I described a match them up with what when brought it says and then you end up with something that's quite comprehensive and then you go back to the Dutch sources of the French sources and see how they compare with those two. That's quite a long process but it ended up you know it is a reason to live there but of course eventually he was out of touch but it was really around. But yes of course I mean and what the Dutch what the Dutch attempted to do basically was to fault the Plymouth CONUS

so off by feeding them a bit of the evil. But the reason why the English went up the Kennebec River was precisely because the Dutch are on the Hudson. The French are almost in Florence on the Kennebec provided a space between the two but the really big conflict was with the French not the Dutch the English really did fight a war with the French and of course between 16 29 and 16 32 the English actually occupy Quebec. So it's really the French that will eat with the with the public enemy if you like. We took a toot of an instance when I'm 16 away from a French arrangement to go to homes and then 16 20 when I go over to America in 16 18. When James the first results to give his approval he said Yes I think the reason for that was simply by that stage separatism is not really a big threatening looms. I mean separatism had had but receded out of the picture I simply wasn't a major issue this wasn't very many separatists making my control bringing in and changed US Fed resecure about that but also because there was they had a value you see 16 18 first but most of the junior colony was in trouble. Jamestown simply wasn't

performing and the number of columnists wasn't adequate and the men who run the economy the men around James down from London needed reinforcements. Second point was that in 16 18 James the First's had recently had to change his administration he had appointed a whole series of new ministers of any of 16 18 most of whom were naval lists they were men who were committed to naval ground strategy and they still in New England as far as I can see this is my top judgement it's about as likely as you can get. They saw New England as essential for naval bases after Michael soules and so quite happy to side of the pogroms and off you go. Plus of course also they have their rivals with a touch that will rivalries with the Dutch and so if the pilgrims are going to do what they originally intended which was to land on the Hudson River but it was a way if you like a stadium stadium out from the Dutch and there's a final incentive which of course is the Northwest Passage. The man who ran the Virginia Company particularly Michael said Joan Walsh from home who was one of James of us advisors honestly believed this was not unreasonable really that you could find a way to the to the

Pacific via the Hudson River and the Great Lakes. And again therefore it was important to position Englishman in what they called an old boss of a genius in order again to prevent the Dutch or the French from full stalling us. We English I would say from finding that Northwest Passage route so those are the kind of reasons but I don't think to be honest I don't think James that those would actually spend a lot of time thinking about this and he just gave it his blessing and went off to do something else. The title comes from a it's a quotation. When John Winthrop in 16 29 was deciding whether or not to go to America he took a lot of advice and consult a lot of friends of his and he had less as he received various Alexa's from from from the Puritans and this particular lesson was written by Michael Robert Rice who is a puritan in Essex and what he said was he was giving reasons to go to America he said. Cruelty in blood is in our streets. The land bound with with murderous slaughter is incessant vultures Hold'em drunkenness oppression and pride. Even the least of these is enough

and enough to make haste out of Babylon and the reason I chose it was because you just leapt out at me. Sins are sore but also because there was a sense of urgency and speed about which I wanted to get a sense of people feeling impelled to too. Travel across the Atlantic financially driven to do so whereas before it's simply been an option now become a necessity. But in fact that quotation actually buy rice rice comes actually actually come originally. He's quoting from the book of Jeremiah. He's Jemaah chapter 53 which uses the same same language of course is comparing the captivity of the Israelites Reisa centuries doing is comparing the captivity of the Israelites in Babylon to the captivity as the sort of the Puritans in England. So that's ultimately what comes from. Well yeah this is rising. It's like things that our nation is being divided by a common language in the recent but rather the beginning as old as night which explains why I use the term. If you're if you write about it in England then we think of Puritans and puritanism as being a religious movement with a political dimension that

came into being in about 15 16 years as a protest against Elizabeth the first way of running the church and then ended totally in the early 60s Sixtus. Because of defeats of Puritanism But the restoration of Charles the Second. And then in England purchase and stops at that point. Now from an English point of view Puritanism is this is to say this religious movement with political overtones and we would see separatists as being a kind of subgroup in Puritanism not America got a completely different situation where Puritanism when soem into the later in the seventies and on into the 18th century it is not really clear N to it and also it wasn't simply you know. Exactly exactly and precisely precisely and for Americans across New England it's very important tell the difference between the Plymouth calmness on the one hand of the masses by calling on the other because different things happen in each place. So for America but if you want to join the Puritans of Boston and the separate as a Plymouth where as from an English point of view we would simply see them as being the shepherds as being the kind of like cutting edge of

Puritanism a subgroup within it and just the most radical element. The trick with this is it's it's a bit hard to do use the language about if you like confusing somebody so what I've done to begin the book is explain exactly how I use the term but I know it can be confusing it.