Author: Weymouth Weymouth

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-07

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 9781330915653

Excerpt from Proceedings on the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Permanent Settlement of Weymouth, 1874 The thirty years war in Germany was just commenced, and the youthful Gustavus Adolphus had yet to win his spurs. The blood of St. Bartholomew was but half a century old, and the murder of Henry IV. was as near to the men of 1622 as is that of Abraham Lincoln to us. The great Cardinal-Duke was then organizing modern France; Charles I. had not yet ascended the English throne; Hampden was a young country gentleman, and Oliver Cromwell an unpretending English squire. While men still believed that the sun moved round the earth, Galileo and Kepler were gradually ascertaining those laws which guide the planets in their paths; Bacon was meditating his philosophy; Don Quixote was a newly published work, with a local reputation; and Milton, not yet a Cambridge pensioner, was making his first essays at verse. Shakespeare had died but six years before, and, indeed, the first edition of his plays did not appear until the very year in which Weymouth was settled. Thus, in 1622, our world of literature, of science, almost of history, was yet to be created. Hardly a single volume of our current English literature was then in existence, and people might well con their Bibles, for, in the English tongue, there was little else to read. Meanwhile the North American continent was an unbroken wilderness, with here and there, few and far between, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, scattered specks of struggling civilization, hundreds of leagues apart, dotting the skirts of the green, primeval forest. It was at not the least famous of these scattered specks, - at the neighboring town of Plymouth, - that the history of Weymouth opened on a day towards the latter part of the month of May, in the year 1622. The little colony had then been established in its new home some seventeen months. They had just struggled through their second winter, and now, sadly reduced in number, with supplies wholly exhausted, and sorely distressed in spirit, the Pilgrims were anxiously looking for the arrival of some ship from England. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.