NOW FIRST COLLECTED FROM ORIGINAL RECORDS AND CONTEMPORANEOUS BY ALEXANDER YOUNG. Sicut patribus, sit Deus nobis. BOSTON: CHARLES C. LITTLE AND JAMES BROWN. MDCCCXLVI. 549. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by ALEXANDER YOUNG, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. ΤΟ THE HONORABLE LEMUEL SHAW, LL. D. CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS, THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED BY HIS FRIEND AND PASTOR. PREFACE. THE unexpected favor with which the publication of the "Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth," was received, whilst it furnished gratifying proof of a growing interest in the early annals of New-England, encouraged the editor to enter into the collateral but broader field of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and to gather up here the scattered sheaves of a no less abundant harvest. The present volume, it is believed, will be found to contain every authentic document relating to the planting of the Colony of Massachusetts, from its first faint dawnings in 1623 to the full sunrise of 1636, with the single exception of Winthrop's History, to which it may be considered an introduction or supplement. Its chief and peculiar value, as well as that of its predecessor, consists in the fact that it imbodies the earliest materials for the History of our Commonwealth, written by men who lived at the time, on the spot, and were personally engaged in |
