Show valuable document the telegraph announced a few days ago the surrender to the united states by the bishop of london of an old document A history of plymouth plantation it is not gen ally known what that document is though england is being highly praised for the courtesy shown alie united states the st louis globe demo crat tells all there is to be told about the manuscript william bradford came over in the mayflower was the first governor of the plymouth colony elected igl and was elected reelected re thirty times in as many consecutive years he left A history of plymouth plantation in manuscript jt was regarded by later historian the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the highest authority and they made large use of it some time in the eighteenth century the bev thomas prince minister of the old south church boston which is now the chief colonial show place of new england deposited the manuscript in the new england library which was kept in that building in course of time the revolutionary war came on and the british army took possession of the old donth sonth only a dissenters church and tearing out the pews used it for a riding school when the british were induced by alie erection of a battery on dorchester heights to evacuate boston the manuscript was found to have disappeared and was supposed to have been destroyed the history of alie finding of this most valuable historical relic is sim ale but interesting in 1855 eighty years after alie british cavalry horses and their riders had outraged the feelings of the bostonians and all their sympathizers by the desecration of the old south the bev john S barry in writing A history of massachusetts consulted a history of the protestant episcopal church in america by samuel wilberforce late bishop of oxford mr barry found in this work a number of passages resembling sem bling portions of bradfordt Brad fords history as he had seen them quoted in histories written late in the seventeenth and early in the eighteenth century wilberforce refers to the fact that he had quoted certain documents found in the library of the bishop of london barry followed up this duo and found the manuscript in the library at fulham but no one has ever found how it came there or anything of its history after its disappearance from old south church the massachusetts historical society was permitted to copy it and that copy was published in 1856 the surrender of the stolen manuscript is a courtesy that should not fail of due appreciation |