The earliest text detailing the settlement of New Plymouth is known as Mourt’s Relation or A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England (1622). Erroneously attributed to fellow settler George Morton, scholars now believe the work to be written by Edward Winslow with contributions from William Bradford. Their names are not quoted as authors to avoid the association of the new settlement with fugitive Brownist separatists – a fact that could spell trouble for the fledgling colony. The manuscript was carried out of New Plymouth by Robert Cushman, Chief Agent in London for the settlers, on board the Fortune in 1621. When Mourt’s Relation was sold in John Bellamy’s London bookshop in the 1620s its readers could have scarcely imagined this would become one of the most well-known texts in American history.
The title page of the original 1622 pamphlet – public domain