Letters which have survived over three hundred years, escaping the
ravages of fire, water, vermin, and people who wanted to wrap fish, have
a claim to our respect. All the more so if they shed light on a subject
of as widespread interest as early Plymouth. As editor of the letters
presented here, therefore, I had better explain what has happened to
them in my hands and make it known that my intentions were honorable. In
order to win as many readers for these letters as possible, I have put
them into modern style in certain respects. To those written originally
in English, the letters by Emmanuel Altham and John Pory, I have given
modern spelling without changing the words, and punctuation to make them
into sentences and paragraphs in twentieth-century fashion as much as
possible. I have followed the general approach described by Samuel Eliot
Morison in the preface to his edition of William Bradford’s _Of Plymouth
Plantation_ (New York, 1952), pp. vii-ix. I have also followed his
example in many details, such as spellings. However, anything Pory or
Altham wrote which is acceptable to modern usage has been left alone,
regardless of consistency within this book. I have standardized proper
names ruthlessly, except for some which have no modern or official form,
as is the case with most old Dutch place names. Since Isaack De
Rasieres’ Dutch has been translated directly into modern English, it has
not needed the same treatment.
Footnotes have been supplied mainly to give information useful for an
understanding of the letters, not exhaustive comparisons with other
documents. Some notes give original spellings which others may not wish
to modernize as I have done it in the text. Bibliographical information
in the footnotes is supplemented by the bibliographical note at the end
of the book.
The dates used in the letters are reproduced exactly. This means that
they are of the Julian Calendar or Old Style, used by Englishmen until
September 1752. In the biographical sketches of the letter writers,
also, the old dating system has been followed. Not only was the day of
the month different from the modern calendar (during the 1600’s Old
Style dates ran ten days behind New Style, so that December 11, O.S.,
was December 21, N.S.) but the beginning of the year was reckoned from
March 25, although all of March was called the first month of the year.
This confused even the users of the Julian Calendar, who frequently
tried to prevent mistakes by giving both the outgoing and the incoming
year numbers to dates in March before the 25th—for example, March 9,
1629/1630. Hoping to minimize confusion for the modern reader, I have
adopted a rarer version of this practice, giving two year numbers to all
dates from January 1 to March 24.