Began to be Transcribed by Msc Clenis Velásquez on June,

Monday,5th,2018.

THE PILGRIMS AND PLYMOUTH COLONY

By The editors of AMERICAN HERITAGE

THE MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Narrative by

FREENIE ZINER

In consultation with

GEORGE F. WILLISON

author of Saints and Strangers

PERENNIAL LIBRARY

Harper – Row, Publishers

NEW YORK 1961

 FOREWORD

Who were the Pilgrims?What kind of people were they?what did they
stand for?what adventurous travels through a sea of troubles led them
across the Atlantic to establish at Plymouth in 1620 the first permanent
English settlement in New England? Once “planted” on our shores, what
did they do?Why is the Pilgrims story so essential a part of our American
heritage?

Answers to these and other questions appear in this book which

highlights in authentic form and graphic detail the major events in the
lives of the Pilgrims Fathers and their families. Not once, but many times,
the Pilgrims launched themselves upon the most dangerous of
adventures, and no matter what the odds against them, nothing could
stop them or divert them from their course.

Theirs is a story of great courage and deep conviction.In an age of royal

tyranny, they stood steadfast in their belief and desire that there should
be a more democratic order of things.They stood ready to sacrifice their
lives – as many of them did – to carry out their ideals.

Among other things, the Pilgrims demanded the right to “Freedom of

Conscience”, which is one aspect of the still larger right to freedom of
thought and speech. The Pilgrims were saying that they wished to worship
as they pleased and intended to do so.

This was a very dangerous position to take at a time when English law
required everyone to attend Church of English serives – and no other.
Steady refusal to attend such services could bring a heavy fine, or
hanging, or even burning at the stake. But the Pilgrims were not dismayed
and went on holding their secret and highly illegal religious meetings at
the risk of life and limb.

Harried by church and state aouthorities, the Pilgrims escaped from

England and took refuge in Holland, where they lived as exiles for some
dozen years – first in Amsterdam, later in Leyden. They were fairly happy
there, for holland had granted religious toleration for all sects, being the
only country in Europe at the time to be so enlightened.

It was their growing poverty that decided the Pilgrims to seek their
fortunes in the New World. Like the many millions who in time followed
them across the Athlantic, the Pilgrims were seeking a chance to better
their worldly lot.Let it never be forgotten that our country was founded
and largely built by “foreigners” of many different nationalities, religions
and ways of life.

In September, 1620, the Mayflower set sail on her historic voyage,

having on board about forty Pilgrims (“Saints”) from Leyden and even
more “Strangers” recruited by the London Merchant Adventurers financing
the enterprise.

What happened on the voyage and after the landing at Plymouth is

well told in this book:the threatened mutiny on the Mayflower; the signing
of the Mayflower Compact, one of the great democratic document in
American History;the General Sickness during which half the Mayflower
company died within three or four months;the very helpful friendships
made with such Indians as Samoset, Squanto and Massasoit;the struggle
to grow or find enough to eat in the early years;the first American
Thanksgiving; the clash with Thomas Morton of Merry Mount;and other
main adventures in the Pilgrims'always eventful lives.

This, above all, should be remembered about the Pilgrims: though they
suffered greatly for their beliefs, they came through to triumph because
they had the courage of their convictions. Such courage in priceless – and
few people have possessed it in any age, including our own.

George F.Willison.

Trancribed and translated By Msc. Clenis Rafael Velásquez González.

__________________________________________________________________________

Introduction :
THE REFORMATION
___________________________________________________________________________

THE PILGRIMS WERE rebels born in an age turmoil.When they sail on

the Mayflower in 1620, bound for the New World, they left behind them an
Old World which had been torn by religious wars and revolutions for more
than a century, and an England which would struggle for full civil and
religious freedom for another two centuries.
Ever since the countries of western Europe had adopted Christianity,
they had been served by one church alone – the Roman Catholic Church.
The Pope, as head of the Church, appointed all bishops.The power of the
Pope was often greater than that of Kings and emperors. Over the slow
centuries of the Middle Ages the church grew in riches until it owned
one-third of all the property in Europe.Most of the common people labored
on lands belonging to the lord of the castle. Few lords and fewer serfs
could read.No serf could leave the land and take up a trade in town
without his lord 's permission. No serf had any voice in choosing his priest,
his bishop, his lord or his king.All were taught to believe that
Pope,ting,lord , and bishop had been set over them by the will of God.
One of the first and most important men to demand religious reform
was the English scholar priest, Jhon Wyclif (1328 – 1384). H e spoke out
against the iron authority of the Church.Wyclif believed that the Church
had grown too wealthy, and that men were bound to obey neither priests
nor bishops. He and his black-robed followers taught, instead , that all
men had the right to read the Bible and to decide for themselves the way
they wished to worship God.For this reason, he and two other scholars
made the fisrt complete English translation of the Vulgate (as the Latin
Bible, them used by all Catholic Churches in Europe, is known).
Wyclif was persecuted in England, but his ideas lived on. A century
after his death. Martin Luther (1483 – 1546 ) was born i, in Germany. In
Wyclif ' s footsteps, he taught that men had no need of priests or bishops
in obtaining God's grace. Like Wiclif, too, he translated the Bible – into his
native German – and urged men to follow only its teachings. When a
number of German princes who supported Luther were ordered to return
to the Catholic Church in 1529, they protested against the
ruling, and the word “Protestant” was born.When Luther wrote that a
“common reformation should be undertaken”, he gave the Protestant
Reformation its name. As early as 1536 there was no church but the
Lutheran also gained many supporters in northern and central Germany ,
but at the price of terrible wars which would continue between Lutherans
and Catholics until 1648.
The religious reforms of the Frenchman Jhon Calvin (1509 – 1564) were
as important as those of Luther.Calvin left Catholic France, and in 1536 he
went to Geneva, Switzerland, which had recently become a Protestant city.
there he spread his revolutionary ideas – including the belief that it was
more important to obey the laws of the Bible than to obey the laws of
Popes and bishops and kings. Calvin also taught his followers to be
hardworking, sober, and thrifty, and to name their children after the men
and women of the Old Testament.He sternly forbade them to go to play
cards or to gamble, to read Catholic books, or to wear lace and jewels.
Calvinists soon set up Reformed Churches in parts of Germany and
Switzerland. The Scottish religous reformer Jhon Knox came to Geneva in
1554 to study under Calvin. Six years later, after a year of civil war, Knox's
Presbyterian Church had driven the Catholic Church from Scotland.
Reformed churches sprang up in Holland, then ruled by the devout
Catholic Philip II of Spain. Some of Calvin's followers began looting
Catholic property in the Netherlands, smashing windows and statues in
Catholic cathedrals. To stamp out Calvinism and to suppress rebellion,
Philip sent an army to the Low Countries in 1567. Many towns were
besieged, and 18,000 Protestant Dutch were executed by the
Spanish.Fighting continued at various periods during the next eighty
years, until Holland finally won complete freedom as a Protestant nation,
in 1648.
The Huguenots (as the French Calvinists were known) set up a
Reformed Church in France in 1559. Eight civil wars – the Wars of Religion
– were fought between Catholics and Huguenots in France. In 1598, when
peace came – for a time – King Henry IV granted Huguenots partial
religious freedom.
In England, the history of the first hundred years of the Reformation
was not as bloody as it had been in Holland,France,and Germany. King
Henry VIII's decision to break with the Catholic Church and to make
himself supreme head of the Protestant Church of England, 1534, was
largely political. Once he had done so, he sold off the great landholdings
which had belonged to the Catholic monasteries , and placed English
Bibles in all the churches in the land. In order to study the Bible for
themselves, many people began learning to read. Later, when Henry's
Protestant son, Edward VI, came to the throne, the ideas of Luther and
Calvin began to take stronger hold in England. After Edward died, his half
sister Mary became queen and forced England to return to Catholicism.
Because her five-year rule saw 300 Protestant martyrs burned at the
stake, she was called “Bloody Mary”.When her half sister, Elizabeth,
began her forty-five year reign in 1558, England returned to
Protestantism.
So it is in the age of Elizabeth that the Pilgrim story begins. For it was
while she ruled as queen(1558 – 1603) that many of those who later
boarded the Mayflower began to live their lives.
___________________________________________________________________________
[I]

MERRIE ENGLAND

WILLIAM BREWSTER, organizer of the Pilgrim Church and its ruling

elder in Plymouth, Massachtts, was born in 1566, in the early year of
Queen Elizabeth's reign. The Queen was then a spinster of thirty – three,
and William Shakespeare – the greatest poet of her splendid age – was
only two year old.
No picture of William Brewster has been discovered , nor is there any
record of his birthplace.His father , William, and his mother, Prudence ,
were well-to-do but not prominent people. In 1575 the Brewsters took
their nine-year-old son to the “meane townlet” of Scrooby,
Nottinghamshire, about one hundred and fifty miles north of London on
the Great North Road.
There William Brewster senior began work as bailiff and receiver of
Scrooby manor – a large landholding belonging to the Archbishop of York.
Brewster collected rents from hundreds of farms and villages on the
manor. In return, he received just over three pounds per year, plus the
right to use he buildings and grounds of the manor house irself.In 1576,
Edwin Sandys became Archbishop of York and continued Brewster in his
post. He and his sons, Edwin and Samuel, were to help the Brewster on a
number of occasions in the future. After 1588, Brewster also earned thirty
pounds a year ( a very good salary , in that century) for his additional job
as postmaster.
Young William learned to read and write, and even studied Latin during
the next five years.This was remarkable in itself, for in the England of
Brewster's day, not one child in ten received schooling of any kind. In
December, 1580, at the age of fourteen, William Brewster set off for
Cambridge University. Cambridge and Oxford then functioned only as
training schools for ministers of the Church of England.By order of Queen
Elizabeth, that Church was Protestant. But for many years, radical
churchmen – stirred by what they read in their Bibles or influenced from
abroad by the ideas of Luthera and Calvin – had been arguing that the
Church was not Protestant enough.
 Forty Years earlier in 1539, when Elizabeth's father King Henry VIII Had
ruled that every church must set forth copies of the English Bible( not only
on the altar, but also in the back of the church, for the common

The month of april in the poet Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calender

was illustrated in 1611 with this picture of ladies playing lutes,
flutes,harps, and viols.The lady at center may be Queen Elizabeth.

People to read) he never imagined how much strunggle and bloodshed

those Bibles would cause. A Church of England historian writes that when
six copies were set up in St. Paul's in London, “people crowded eagerly
into the cathedral all day long to listen to any who could and would read
with an audible voice”.
One of Henry's noblemen, the Duke of Norfolk, disliked this remarkable
new interest in the Bible, saying, “I never read the Scriptures, nor never
will read it.It was merry in England afore the new learning came up;yea, I
would all things were as hath been in time past”. King Henry himself grew
displeased with the religious disputes that began to arise.He regretted
that that “most precious jewel the word of God” was “disputed,rhymed,
sung and jangled in every alehouse and tavern.”He had not wanted the
people to read the Bible too deligently. When Henry had made himself
head of the Church of England, he had changed few of the Catholic forms
of worship, for he hoped Englishmen would continue to attend services in
the Church of England just as they had attended Mass when the Church
was Catholic.
Henry forced all his subjects to attend his Church and conform to its
beliefs. He did not want English Protestants to beging wrangling among
themselves – as the Protestant in Europe were begining to do.He was
fearful of the power of Catholic Spain, and needed a unified England
standing squarely behind him.
Many years later, when Elizabeth became queen , she did much as her
father had done.She too forced all her subjects to attend church. Those
who refused were sent to jail, without bail, until they promised to mend
their ways.No books could be printed without her permission.Her bishops
had the power to question, imprison, hang, or burn at the stake anyone
holding dangerous religious views.And many religious radical in
Elizabeth's day held dangerous views indeed.
Even the mildest critics felt that the Church of England did not
practice the Christian faith as simply as it should. In reading their Bibles,
they discovered no mention of many of the rituals they saw perfomed in
church on Sunday.In 1578, Dr. Laurence Chaderton (who later helped
translate the King James Version of the Bible spoke of the Church and its
traditions as a “huge masse of old and stinkinge workes.”Because he and
similar critics followed the word of the Bible so closely, bishops of the
Church mocked them as “precise men”.But the “precise men” would not
be silenced. They spoke of the Church as a “pache of popery and a puddle
of corruption,” and warned that Christianity must be restored to its
“ancient purity”.From such words as these, those who hoped to reform the
Church from within were sneered at , and called Puritans.
Other reformers held ideas that were still more radical and dangerous .
Two years before William Brewster began studying at Cambridge, Robert
Browne had preached such violent sermons there that he was forced to
leave the university. He taught his followers (later called Brownists, or
Separatits) that all worthy men,”were they ever so few,”should separate
from the church of England and form congregations in which to worship as
they chose.He told them that St. Paul himself had said, “come out from
among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the
unclean thing”.
“Troublechurch” Browne, as he was known, was sent to jail soon after.
Upon his release, he and his followers fled to Protestant Holland, where
freedom of worship was permitted.
 Since the Cambridge of the 1580's remained a strong center of Puritan
thought, William Brewster must have listened to many sermons there
which were almost as rousing as those of “Troublesome” Browne. For it
was at Cambridge that he was “first seasoned with ye seeds of grace and
vertue.”And it was there that he began to believe that Christianity should
be returned to its “primative order,libertie & bewtie”, and to think
seriously of becoming a Separatist himself.
Queen Elizabeth I' s gorguesly dressed courtiers are shown carrying their
unmarried ruler to the wedding of Anne Russell, one of the Queen's maids
of honor. The scene was painted by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger in
1600.

In Cambrigde, too, Brewster may have known Christopher Marlowe

( who was later to write two famous plays, Tamburlaine the Great and Dr.
Faustus) for Marlowe was just two years ahead of him in school. It is
almost certain that he knew John Penry (who was hanged thirteen years
later, for printing pamphlets which attacked the Church) for he and Penry
enrolled in the same college on the same day.Perhaps he also met Penry's
friend John Greenwood, a Separatist hanged for his beliefs in 1593.
Nothing certain is known of the friends he made, but it is recorded that
during his two years at college he gained “knowledge of ye Latine tongue
& some insight in ye Greeke.”
 Brewster did not finish his studies at Cambridge. In 1582 – probably
through the good will of Archbishop Sandys – sixteen-years-old Brewster
went to London to begin work as valet and confidential messenger for one
of Queen Elizabeth's trusted diplomats, Sir William Davison. Since Davison
as a Puritan, he was drawn to Brewster 's “wisdom and godliness.”He
treated the boy more like “ a sonne than a servante” and soon “trusted
him above all others that were aboute him.”
In this position, young Brewster may have glimpsed such brilliant
figures at the Court of Queen Elizabeth as Sir Walter Raleigh; Sir Francisb
Drake;Robert Devereoux, Earl of Essex; and Robert Dudley, Earl of
Leicester.
In 1585, to give aid to the Dutch Protestant, Elizabeth sent an army of
6,000 men under Leicester to the Low Countries, then struggling to win
their independence to the Dutch took Sir William Davison to Holland that
same year, William Brewster traveled with him.They returned to England
in 1586, when Davinson's mission was completed.
Brewster might never have left the exciting life he led in Davinson's
service had it not been for the beautiful Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary was a
Catholic , a cousin of Queen Elizabeth, and heir to the throne of
England.After many unhappy events in Scotland, she had given up her
throne to her son, James. When she fled to England , in 1568, Elizabeth
suspected that Mary was urging Catholic Spain to invade England , so
Mary could become queen. When an attempt was made to assassinate
Elizabeth in 1586, men whispered that Mary was behind it. Rightly or
wrongly, Elizabeth believed them.
Mary was tried and jugded guilty in October of that year. Elizabeth
signed Mary's death warrant and gave it to Sir William Davinson, telling
him to guard it carefully and not to use it without her express permission.
When Davinson later allowed the warrant to be into effect, Mary was
beheade on Fabruary 8th, 1587.
This seventeenth – century print shows Cambridge University 's beautiful
spires and steepled towers.

Elizabeth had wanted Mary killed , but she had no wish to be resposible
for the execution. So, saying that Davison had not followed her orders to
the letter, Elizabeth sent him to prison in the Tower of London. Though
Davinson was now in disgrace, for a year or more William Brewster
continued to serve him.
That year – 1588 – was a year of turmoil in England. For when King
Philp of Spain had learned of Mary's death, he sent his great fleet – the
Spanish Armada – to attack the Protestant English and Dutch and to
invade England. With the rest of his conutrymen, Brewster must have
rejoiced when Sir Francis Drake's ships won their great victory over the
Spanish in the English Channel.
The following year, in 1589, Brewster learned that his father was ill. He
was needed at home.Leaving the great world of Queen Elizabeth and
William Shakespeare behind him forever, William Brewster turned his back
on the busy city of London and started up the Great North Road for the
tiny village of Scrooby.
___________________________________________________________________________
[II]

THE SCROOBY SEPARATISTS

___________________________________________________________________________

Upon William Brewster's return to Scrooby he found that his father had
grown too feeble to attend to his many duties. So the son took over his
father 's work , collecting rents from the farms of the manor and
managing the post house.Archbishop Sandys had died the year before,
leaving his lands at Scrooby manor to one of his sons, Sir Samuel Sandys.
A year after Brewster's return, in 1590, his own father died, and Sir
Samuel asked William – now twenty-four years old – to continue
permanently in the positions that Brewster senior had held.
Young Brewster accepted.
By this date, Brewster must also have known Sir Samuel 's brother ,
Edwin, who was to be of help to the Pilgrims more than thirty years later,
when they were making their arrangement to come to America.
Toward the end of 1591 or early in 1592 William Brewster was married
to Mary.Almost nothing is known of his wife except that her last name may
have been Wentworth and that she was several years younger than he.
Mary was later to sail on the Mayflower with her husband and two of their
sons and spend the rest of her life in the New World. But at the time of
their marriage, the Brewsters could never have imagined that so great an
adventure lay ahead of them.
As postmaster of the little country town of Scrooby, it was part of
Brewster's job to be always on the alert for travelers or royal couriers(mail
carriers) passing up and down the Great North Road. He was required by
law to keep three “good and sufficient” horses, together with
saddles,bridles and post bags for the use of the post riders, who carried
only royal and official mail.He was also expected to keep an inn or tavern
for the riders, as well as stables for their horses. So Brewster set aside the
largest room in Scrooby manor, to serve as the tavern. He also supervised
a bake house and a brew house where bread and beer were made for use
in the tavern.

Far from the excitement of London life, Brewster kept in touch with the
world by talking with travelers passing through Scrooby. In 1593, Mary
bore him a son, Jonathan and later a daughter, named Patience. Life was
secure, peaceful, uneventftul.
Or at least it felt that way in Scrooby.Elsewhere the battle between the
bishops and their opponets went on.Separatists and Puritans continued
their violent protests. They so much disliked the embroidered vestments
of the bishops that they spoke of them as the “rags of Rome”.They
despised the Church of England.”Bishop”, they said, “were not lords over
God's creation, as if the Church could not be without them.”
Suddenly, short tracts ( or pamphlets) ridiculing the bishops began
flooding England. People read them and passed them from hand to hand.
Written by one who signed himself “Martin Mar-Prelate,”they were printed
and circulated in secrecy. The name of the person who wrote them is still
not known for certain. But in 1593 – the same year that Brewster's son
Jonathan was born – the bishops had a man arrested, accused and sent to
trial for having operated the press where the tracts were printed. He was
Brewster's old classmate at Cambridge, Jhon Penry. That same year, Penry
was hanged in London. For his writings against the Church, Penry's friend
Jhon Greenwood had also been hangeda few months earlier.
When Brewster heard the news of their tragic fate he must have
thought of the fiery sermons against the Church he had once heard at
Cambridge. He must also have shivered to think of the terrible power that
the Queen and her bishops held over him and his fellow believers.
Perhaps Brewster spoke of the deaths of Penry and Greenwood with
Richard Clyfton was rector ( or minister) of the Church of Babworth , not
fra from Scrooby , where William and Mary Brewster worshiped.
Although a minister of the Church needed to be reformed. His Puritan
turn of mind was so strong that people called him a “forward” preacher, as
growing numbers of radical churchmen were then known.
Clyfton, who had a “great hite beard” had studied at Cambridge and
had been the “grave & reverend” rector at Babworth since 1586. Each
Sunday the Brewsters – together with their children Jhonathan and
Patience- walked six miles across the Nothinghamshire country- aside to
hear Clyfton's “forward” Puritan sermons.
Many humble folk in the Scrooby district were converted to Clyfton's
dangerous religious views. By 1602 there were several other churches in
the nearby country-side which had begun to take on a Puritan
character.One Congregation of about 100 people met at Workshop, near
Babworth. Another more radical group was to be found at Gainsborough,
eight miles east of Scrooby.
 One Sabbath day in 1602, at Clyfton's church in Babworth,Brewster met
a twelve-year-old boy named William Bradford. He was son of William and
Alice Bradford and he had been born in the nearby Yorkshire village of
Austerfield. Bradford was later to become the most outstanding man in
Plymouth Colony and would serve it as governor for more than thirty
years. But when Brewster first met him, he was a rather sickly,intelligent
boy who spent perhaps too much time discussing religion and reading his
Bible.
Bradford was an orphan , for his father had died just after he was born
and his mother was dead by the time he was eight. For about three years
he stayed with his grandfather (also named William Bradford) until the old
man died in 1596. When Brewster met him, Bradford was living in the
home of his uncles, Robert and Thomas Bradford, both of whom were
farmers.
A young friend of Bradford's uncles to Clyfton's Puritan services at
Babworth. Bradford'd uncles strongly objected to the radical ideas their
nephew was listening to and to the “fantasticall” radical friends he made
there.They were afraid that the boy might lose the lands he had inherited
and find himself in serious troubles with the authorities if he continued
hearing such dangerous sermons. But Bradford was now “one of the
Puritans”, and neither the “wrath of his uncles, nor the scoff of his
neighbors” could change him.
Bradford told his uncles that “ since it is for a good Cause that I am
likely to suffer the disasters which you lay before me, you have no cause
to be angry with me or sorry for me. Yea, I am not only willing to part with
everything that is dear to me in this world for this Cause but I am also
thankful that God hath given me a heart so to do and will accept me so to
suffer for Him”.
William Brewster was soon as fond of Bradford as if the boy had been
his own son. In later years, in Holland, Bradford lived in William and Mary
Brewster's house-hold up until the time he married. And nearly thirty
years later, in his famous history of the Pilgrims, Of Plymouth Plantation,
Bradford wrote affectionately of “Mr. William Brewster a reverent man,
who afterwards was chosen elder of the church and lived with them till old
age”.They were lifetime friends.
A year after Bradford began attending Clyfton's church in 1603( when
Bradford was thirteen and Brewster was thirty-seven) Queen Elizabeth
died. Both Brewster and Bradford may have stood beside the gates of
Scrooby manor to watch the new king of England and his party of
horsemen come trooping down the Great North Road.
 He was James VI, King of Scotland, Son of Mary, Queen of Scots. N ow
that Elizabeth was dead, he was journeying from Scotland to London,
where he would be crowned James I of England. Once he was upon the
throne, the two nations would be united as one.
English Separatists and Puritans had some reason to hope that the New
king would support their desire to reform the Church of England. For James
I had been brought up a Protestant in Scotland – and Scotland had been a
Protestant Presbyterian nation for more than forty years.
But Puritans hopes in England were short-lived indeed.James I proved to
be sickly, temperamental king. His politics seemed always to favor
Catholic Spain, and his view of religion was even more strongly Church of
England than Elizabeth's had been.
Soon after his coronation, eight hundred Puritan ministers put their
names to petition calling for a number of reforms in the Church. Known as
the Millenary Petition, it asked that churchmen give up the use of ornate
robes and begged the King to see to it that all preachers be well-educated
and hardworking – for some were ignorant, and many pariches went
without services for long periods of time. They also asked that the
Sabbath be more strictly kept.
For the past time years Puritans had been complaining about the gay
and lighthearted way in which other Englishmen were used to spending
their Sundays and church holidays. In his splendid history of the Pilgrims,
Saints and Strangers, George Willinson says:”The Puritans first attacked
the time-honored way in which the English celebrated certain religious
festivals, notably Whitsuntide [a week of holidays begining on the seventh
Sunday after Easter], at which time the wardens of the parish brewed ale
to be sold in the church to raise money for various purposes”.
“At these Whitsun-ales it was usual for the 'wild -heads' of the parish ,
decked out in bright searves and ribbons,their legs gartered with
bells,riding hobby-horses and dragons, to dance into church and up the
aisle,piping and playing, as the congregation climbed up on the pews to
cheer and laugh at their antics”.
The Puritans disapproved of such “profane” habits.They believed that
Sunday should be spent in fasting and prayer, as the Sabbath had been
kept by the ancient Hebrews. They spoke of the springtime Maypole as a
“Stynking Idol”. Some even said that for anyone to make merry on Sunday
was “as great a sin as for a Father to take a knife and cut his child's
throat”.
 These stern views of the Puritans naturally caused them to have
arguments and disputes with those who felt that Merrie England ought to
continue to be as it had always been. According to Willinson, the enemies
of the Puritans struck back, calling the reformers “sour,bloodless, and
stony-hearted bigots without a spark of emotion in them, incapable of any
warm human feelins”. One playwright of the time let one of his characters
speak of the Puritans as having a conscience “as hards as pupit”.
King James proved to be sternly opposed to the hopes the Puritans had
held in regard to the manner in which Sundays should be kept. In 1604, as
Willinson says, James I issued an order “ declaring taht Englishmen were
not to be “ disturbed or discuoraged from dancing , archery, leaping,
vaulting , having May games, Whitsun-ales, Morrice dances, setting up
May poles and other sports... or any other harmless recreations, on
Sunday,” after church.
That same year, in answer to the petition of the 800 Puritans ministers,
James I called a conference at Hampton Court Palace on the Thames River
southwest of London. Many Church of England ministers were present, but
only four Puritans had been allowed to attend. After the King had kept the
Puritans waiting several days, they were permitted to speak with him.
They asked the King to grant the Puritan of England something they
called Liberty of conscience. By this they meant they wanted the right to
worship God as they pleased. But King James I knew that the reformers
also wanted the right to elect their ministers from among their own
congregation. This was similar to the system used by the presbyters ( or
elders) of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland.
When he heard the Puritans' request, King James I flew into one of the
terrible fits of rage that his court had learned to dread.
Willinson describes the scene:” I will none of that!”, thundered James I ,
“ A Scottish Presbytery ... as well agreeth with a Monarchy as God and the
Devil. Then Jack & Tom, & Will and Dick, shall meete and at their pleasure
censure me, and my Councell and all our proceedinges.”
James I hated anyone and anything that weakened his power. He
believed in the Divine Right of Kings – the teaching that claimed that kings
had been set up to rule over men by the will of God.
“Kings are not only God's lietunenants, and sit upon God's
throne,”said James I,”but by God Himself, they are called gods.”
In many ways, James was a clever ruler. He knew how dangerous it
would be if he were to allow the Puritans to begin worshiping as they
chose,and to elect their own ministers. As king and the head of the Church
of England , he chose the bishops. The bishops, in turn, chose the
ministers who preached throughout the land. Any attack on the bishops
was an attack on James' royal power. If he were to allow the Puritans to
question his right to govern them in religious matters, how long would it
be before the Puritans began to question his right to be their king?.
James I had put it very simply. He said :”No bishop, no king!”
“I will tell you”, James continued, “I have lived amone this sort of
men [ in Scottland ] ever since I was ten years old , and I may say of
myself, as Christ did of Himself, though, I lived amongst them, yet since I
had ability to judge. I was never of them”.
“When I mean to live under a presbytery, I will go to Scottland again,
but while I am in England, I will have bishops to govern the Church.”
In a final blast at the Puritans he said, “I will make them conform
themselves or I will harry them out of this land or else do worse.”
To prove that he meant every word he had said, James forbade all
private religious meetings and insisted that only the Church of England
prayer book be used. Many Puritan ministers refused to obey the new
laws. In less than a year, three hundred preachers had been removed
from their parishes.
By refusing to allow the Puritans to try to change the Church of
England from within, King James I made them his bitter enemies. The
Puritan hatred of royal power would grow until it burst into revolution,
thirty-eight years later, in the reign of James's son, King Charles I.
The Hampton Court conference of 1604 had several other important
results. One of the Puritan delegates, John Reynolds, had suggested that a
new translation of the Bible be made. King James agreed and set about
fifty scholars of Greek and Hebrew to work under one of the most learned
men in England, bishop Lancelot Andrewes. In 1611, the Authorized or
King James Version of the Bible was published. It contains some of the
most beautiful English ever written and has sold more copies than any
book ever printed.
This was not the Bible read by Puritans, Separatists, and Pilgrims.
They preferred the Geneva Bible, which had been prepared by the
Calvinists of Geneva.( The Geneva Bible is also called the Breeches Bible,
for in telling the story of Adam and Eve some versions read:” and they
knew they were naked and they sewed fig-leaves together and made
themselves aprons,” but the Geneva Bible reads: “... they made
themselves breeches.”)
 Another important result of the Hampton Court conference was felt in
Scrooby. Because of King James's new orders, Richard Clyfton chose to
reign as rector at Babworth.
In 1606 the radical Brownist or Separatist congregation at
Gainsborough – whose preacher now was the “forward” John Smyth –
decided to split into two distinct groups. The smaller group of forty or fifty
persons was to meet in Scrooby . Richard Clyfton was invited to be its
pastor. Meetings had to be kept in secret, because of King James' stern
decrees.
It took courage to “separate” from the Church of England in 1606.
The Scrooby Separatists – or “Saints” as they now began to call
themselves – to meet secretly in Scrooby manor. It is thought that they
may have used the largest room in the house, which was used as the
tavern. There postmaster Brewster served them refreshments free of
charge, for Bradford wrote that he entertained them “with great love...
making provision for them to his great charge.”
In 1606, Mary Brewster bore a second daughter. The dangers of being
a Separatist in those days may have had something to do with the name
chosen for the baby, for she was called Fear.
That same year two new members – John Robinson and his wife
Bridget – joine the secret group of worshipers at Scrooby manor. Both had
been born in the nearby village of Sturton le Steeple. John Robinson had
been a student at Cambridge, later becoming a “forward” preacher. Unlike
Richard Clyfton , Robinson had been forced to leave The Church because
of King James' decrees. The Scrooby meeting quickly made him their
“teacher”, a position second only to Clyfton's.
So Clyfton,Robinson and the rest of the Separatists continued meeting
at Brewster's each Sunday through the spring and summer of 1607; but
they were not to be left in peace for long.
The lives of the Brewsters and most of the other families in the
countryside around Scrooby were centered on the land. The tilling of the
soil in the spring and the harvesting of the crops in the fall were the most
important events in their year. Their rural life made them feel akin to the
ancient Hebrews about whom the read in their Bibles. The woodcut
above,made in 1569, shows English farmers doing their spring plowing
with a team of oxen.The 1577 woodcut below shows a group of busy
harvesters gathering up sheaves of grain in the fall.
The autocartic King James I, shown below wearing full state regalia, was
not to improve the lot of Separatists like William Brewster when he came
to the throne of England in 1603.

William Bradford was only twelve when he deserted the Church of

England parish church in the town of Austerfield where he had been
baptized, for the radical religious services of Richard Clyfton at Babworth.
 ______________________________________________________________________

[ III]
THE FLIGHT TO HOLLAND
________________________________________________________________________

On September 30, 1607, William Brewster lost his job as postmaster –

probably because the authoities had learned that Separatits were holding
meeting at Scrooby manor.
“After these things,” said Bradford, “they could not long continue in
any peaceble condition, but were hunted and persecuted on every side, so
as their former afflictions (troubles) were but as flea-bitings in comparison
to these which now came upon them. For some were taken and clapt up in
prison, others had their houses besett and watched night and day and
hardly escaped their (the bishops' officers) hands and the most were faine
to flie and leave their houses and habitations. Yet seeing themselves thus
molested, ( tormented) and that there was no hope of their contnuance
their ( no hope of remaining in England) by a joynte consente they
resolved to go into the Low-Countries, where they heard freedom of
Religion for all men”.
Clyfton's congregation must have been surprised to learn that John
Smyth and his congregation of seventy or eighty Gainsborough
Separatists ( or Brownists) were about to leave England ahead of the
Scrooby group.Soon the Gainsborough people had sold their lands and
goods and had taken theselves, their wives and their children safely to
Amsterdam. There they and their pastor, Smyth . Joined the Brethren of
the Separation of the First English Church at Amsterdam, better known as
the Ancient Brethren.
When the unworldly Pilgrims arrived in Amsterdam they were upset to
find it a very wealthy trading city whose busy financial life was dominated
by this active stock exchange.

The Ancient Brethren had been organized in London twenty years

earlier, in 1587, by John Greenwood ( Penry's friend), six years before he
and Penry were hanged. Some years later the Ancient Brethren relocated
in Amsterdam.
Since the Ancient Brethren followed the Separatist beliefs of
“Troublechurch” Browne, the Dutch called them Brownists. The people of
Amsterdam speak of the street where the 300 Ancient Brethren built their
new meetinghouse as the Bruinistengange ( or Brownists' Alley) to this
day.
Several months after William Brewster was forced to resign as
postmaster at Scrooby, he and three other Separatits were made to
appear before the court of the Archbishop of York – the Court of the High
Commission – in the city of York. For having committed the crime of
attending Separatist meetings , each of the men had to pay twenty
pounds before they was freed.
 Soon after Brewster's release , a majority of the Scrooby folk
began selling off their property in preparation for their move. But another
grave problem still stood in their way.
For the past nine years there had been in effect a law designed
to stop the emigration of nonconformists( those who did not want to
conform, by attending the Church of England). All who wished to leave the
kingdom must obtain a license from the King.
The Scrooby congregation was certain that King James I would
never give them a permit to leave the realm. For the King knew it was
likely that any nonconformist who left England would ever return of his
own free will. For this reason, The Scrooby folk reasoned that they woul
have to slip away, illegally. And they knew that any ship captain they
asked to carry them to Holland would have to be heavily bribed.
Late in 1607, Clyfton and a group of his followers ( probably
including the Brewsters, Bradford , and the Robinsons) started off, on
foot , for the seacoast town of Boston, which lay sixty miles away to the
southeast.
At Boston , plans had been laid to board a ship owned by an
English Captain and to sail for Holland.
The passages that follow, quoted from Bradford's history, Of
Plymouth Plantation, are some of the most exciting in the entire book.
Except for the fact that a few phrases have been either omitted or
inserted in brackets, and that spelling had been modernized, the story
reads as Bradford wrote it.
“There was a large company of them purposed to get passage in
Lincolnshire and for that end had hired a ship, wholly to themselves and
made agreement with the master[ captain] to be ready at a certain day.So
after long waiting and long expenses, though he kept not the day with
them [ the captain did not appear on the appointed day] yet he came at
lenght and took them in, in the night. But when he had them and their
goods aboard, he betrayed them, having before complotted with the
searchers and other officers [King James I's local sheriff and his bailiffs] so
to do ;who took them and put them [the Pilgrims] into open boats and
there rifled and ransacked them, searching them to their shirts for
money , yea even the women further than became modesty; and then
[ the sheriff's men] carried them back into the town[ Boston ] and made a
spectacle ... to the multitude, which came flocking on all sides. Being thus
first by the catchpole officers [ bailiffs], rifled and stripped of their money,
books and much other goods, they were presented to the magistrates
[ judges] and messengers sent to inform the lords of the Council of them
and so they were committed to ward [ prison ].
The “Lords of the Council”, whom the messengers had been sent
to London to inform, were the members of King James's advisory body,The
Privy Council. It then included ministyers of state, archibishops, royal
princes, and other advisers chosen by the King. The Privy Council probably
was not very much disturbed by the news, for the Pilgrims were – to all
appearendes – nothing but a harmless group of country folks, after all.
“After a month's imprisonment, the greatest part were dismissed and
sent to the places from whence they came ; but seven of the principals
[ including Richard Clyfton, John Robinson and William Brewster ] were
still kept in prison and [ held for trial].”
But the seven men were release soon after and never brought to
trial. Then in the spring of 1608, several months after their earlier
adventure, The Scrooby folk were ready to try to reach Holland again.
As Bradford tells it “ The next spring after, there was another
attempt made by some of these and others, to get over at another place
[ near Hull, also on the North Sea coast] And it so fell out that they
[ happened to meet ] a Dutchman at Hull, having a ship of his own.He
bade them not fear , for he would do well enough. He was by agreement
to take them in [ aboard ] between Grimsby and Hull, where was a large
common [ or open field ] a good way distant from any town.
The men were to talk the forty miles from Scrooby to the coast.
The women, children, and baggage were to be put on board a bark, or
barge and sailed down “Scrooby Water”, as the Ryton River then known ,
into the Idle, from the Idle into the Trent, and then into the Humber, whose
wide mouth empties into the North Sea.
On board the bark there may have been twenty to forty persons,
including Clyfton's wife, Ann, with nine-year-old Eleazar, the youngest of
her three sons; John Robinson's wife, Bridget, with their two small
children, John and Bridget; and William Brewster's wife, Mary , with
eight-year-old Patience and two-year-old Fear. But it so fell out, “ Says
Bradford, “That they [the women and children] were there a day before
the ship came, and the sea being rough and the women very sick,
prevailed with the seamen to put into a creek hard by, where they lay on
ground at low water [ or where they went aground at low tide].
“The next morning the ship came , but they were fast [ the bark
with the women and the children was still aground] and could not stir till
about noon.
“in the meantime , the [ Dutch ] ship master, perceiving how
the matter was, sent his boat [ the ship's dory ] to be getting the men
aboard whom he saw ready, walking about the shore.
“But After the first boat full [ including eighteen-year-old
William Bradford] was got aboard and she was ready to go for more , the
master spied a great company [ crowd ] both horse and foot with bills
[ staves ] and guns; and other weapons ; for the country was raised to
take them. The Dutchman seeing that , swore his country 's oath ,
'Sacramente!' weighed his anchor, hoisted sails and away.
“ But the poor men which were got aboard were in great distress for
their wives and children, which they saw thus to be taken.
“It drew tears from their eyes, and anything they had they would
have given to have been ashore again ; but all in vain, there was no
remedy , they must thus sadly part”.
As for the rest of the Scrooby folk on shore, “ the men that were
in greatest danger, made shift to scape away before the troop could
surprise them, those only staying that best might, to be assistant unto the
women. But pitiful it was so see the heavy case [ the hard lot] of these
poor women in this distress; what weeping and crying on every side, some
for their husbands that were carried away in the ship as is before related;
other not knowing what should become of them and their little
ones;others again melted in tears, seeing poor little ones hanging about
them , crying for fear and quaking with cold.
“Being thus apprehended [ arrested by the crowd] they were
hurried from one place to another and from one justice to another, till in
the end they knew not what to do with them; for to imprison so many
women and innocent children for no other cause ( many of them) but what
they must go with their husbands , seemed to be unreasonable ... and to
send home again was a difficult , for... they had no homes to go to ... for
they had either sold, or otherwise disposed of their houses and livings
[ properties ].
“To be short, after they had been thus turmoiled a good while,
and conveyed from one constable to another , they [ the officials] were
glad to be rid of them in the end upon any term”.
The men who had sailde away , “ afterward endured a fearful
storm at sea, being fourteen days or more before they arrived at their
port, in seven whereof they neither saw sun, moon, nor stars and were
driven near the coast of Norway ; mariners themselves often despairing of
life, and once with shrieks, and cries gave over all , as if the ship had been
foundered in the sea, and they sinking.
“but when man's hope and help wholly failed , the Lord's power
and mercy appeared in their recovery; for the ship rose again.
“Fervent prayers they cried unto the Lord in this great distress...
even … when the water ran into their mouths and ears ; and the mariners
cried out , 'We sink! We sink!'”.
For the Pilgrim men , including Bradford, cried, “ with … divine
faith , 'Yet , Lord, Thou canst save! Yet , Lord, Thou Canst save!'”
“Upon which the ship did not only recover , but shortly after, the
violence of the storm began to abate, and the Lord filled their afflicted
minds with such comforts as everyone cannot understand and in the end
brought them to their desired Haven [ Amsterdam ].”
The Pilgrims who had been left behind England were still
undaunted , even though two attempts to scape the country had been
thwarted . Bradford concludes: “And though some few shrunk at these first
conflicts and sharp beginings , ( as it was no marvel ), [ and although a
few were discouraged by these early attempts] yet many more came on
with fresh courage , and greatly animated others. And in the end ,
notwithstanding all these storms of opposition, they all got over [ to
Holland] at length, some at one time and some at another, and met
together again... with no small rejoicing.”
And indeed, by August, 1608, the last of the Scrooby
Separatists – including Clyfton and Brewster, who had stayed behind to
help the stragglers – had arrived in Amsterdan.
The Separatists were country people who knew no trade
but farming. Naturally, the felt out of place in that great city of 240,000
people, where they had to try to learn to speak the “uncouth” Dutch
language. But in Amsterdam the Separatists had found the freedom of
conscience they had striven for so many years to obtain.
At last, at the meetinghouse of the Ancient Brethren, they
could attend Sabbath services openly conducted in a manner they could
approve.
Nothing, about their Sunday meetings suggested the
Church of England. The Sabbath itself , of course , was strictly kept.
Families filed into meeting in Brownists's Alley dressed in sober or “sad2
colors, as the darkers hues were termed. The men sat on wooden benches
on one side of the aisle, the women on the other – as the ancient Hebrews
had done. This custom of dividing the men and women, called “dignifying
the meeting,” would be continued in the New World.
Members of the congegation now lived their daily lives
according to strict rules of conduct which they called the Holy Discipline of
Christ. Their place of worship was always referred to as the
“meetinghouse” in order to distinguish it from the churches that the
Saints so heartily disliked.
In February, 1609, the Pilgrims sent John Robinson to
Leyden, probably because his brother-in-law , Jhon Carver, was already
established there as a merchant. Soon the city authorities or burghers of
Leyden granted permission for the Pilgrims – or any other persons – to
settle in their city “provided such behave themselves.

The weavers in this seventeenth-century Dutch painting are resting

besides their loom. Holland's cloth industry was carried on in the homes
of the weavers.
 _______________________________________________________________________

[ IV ]
LEYDEN, “THE BEAUTIFUL CITY”

________________________________________________________________________

When the authorities in England learned that Leyden was

willing to admit the Separatists, the English protested to the burghers and
said that the Pilgrims were fugitivives from justice . But the burghers of
Leyden paid no attention to their complaints.
By May 1, 1609, all the Separatists who wanted to leave
Amsterdam – numbering about 100 persons – had arrived in Leyden.
William Brewster and William Bradford were among those who followed
Robinson to Leyden. The Reverend Mr. Clyfton remained in Amsterdam,
and so John Robinson became pastor of the new congregation.
Leyden was a center of handicraft trades. But the pride of
the city lay in her great university. It was Europe's most important
Protestant university and had been founded to commemorate Leyde's
victory in 1574, after a Spanish siege.
The Pilgrims did their best at making a living. Since most of
them were country people, they had to begin learning trades at the
bottom. Bradford became a corduroy maker, and young Jonathan
Brewster, who was now sixteen, became a ribbon maker. The other
Pilgrims worked as wool combers and carders, silk workers, felt makers,
buttom makers,drapers, tailors,hatters,glovers, leather dressers, cobblers,
metal workers,carpenters,carriers and printers. Eventually, some of the
Pilgrims were able to start small businesses for themselves, but in the
beginning they were all forced to do the most lowly jobs, for other people.
 The Pilgrims felt much more at home in Leyden (below) with its
peaceful canals and gabled stone houses, than they ever had in the large
and bustling city of Amsterdam.

It was not until May of 1611 that the Pilgrims had the time or money
to set up their own meetinghouse for Sunday services. In the first years in
Leyden they met in each other's houses. But in 1611 they got together
enoungh money to buy a house called the Groenepoort ( or Green Gate) in
which they could hold services. The Robinsons used it as a parsonage,
too.
By 1612 Bradford became a citizen of Leyden and set himself up in a
corduroy business of his own. Soon after, he married Dorothy May, the
daughter of Henry May, one of the elders of the Ancient Brethren in
Amsterdam.
When he had set himself up in the ribbon trade, in 1617, Jonathan
Brewster became a citizen.
In the years that followed the establishment of the Green Gate
congregation in Leyden, its membership changed slowly. Many of the
Scrooby people had remained behind in Amsterdam, while other English
refugees, from other parts of the homeland, made their way to Holland
and joined Robinson's church.
Although the Pilgrims never took part in Dutch political disputes and
never meddled in Dutch religious debate while they lived in Holland, they
knew the danger that Holland had faced in the past and was still facing
during they stay there. Holland's long, bloody struggle against Spain,
which had erupted in open warfare several times in the seventeenth
century, was still not enterely over. Although the northern Protestant
provinces of the Netherlands declared their independence from Spain in
1581, conflict had continued. William the Silent, the stadholder or chief of
state of the northern provinces, was assassinated in 1584 and succeeded
by his son Maurice of Nassau. Both William and Maurice had been aided in
their struggle against Spain by a prominent Dutch states-man and
business leader named Johan van Oldenbarneveldt.
In 1609, Oldenbarneveldt was convinced that a truce could be
arranged with Spain. Maurice and the Protestan clergy did not trust Spain
enough to negotiate. Oldenbarneveldt persisted, however, and in 1609
finally drew up a twelve-year truce.
A new generation of boys and girls was growing up without
memories of England. The discipline of the Separatist Church bore down
hard on the spirits of the young, who watched their Dutch friends and
neighbors having fun on Sundays, while they were expected to spend the
day at meeting, listening to endless sermons. While their parents
appreciated the skill of Elder Brewster, who was admired for “ripping up
ye hart & conscience before God,” many youngsters looked for jollier ways
to pass the Sabbath.Necessity forced most of the young people to labor in
shops and mills.
Poverty and the fear of the corruption of their youth were the
chief motives by which the Separatists account for their restlessness.
Their distress was increased, in 1618, by a problem involving Elder
Brewster himself.
 In 1617, after Brewster had at last found a means of supporting
his family in Leyden by tutoring students at the university, he decided
that the Separatist cause needed a press of its own. With so many
Separatists in exile, there was no way to spread “ye trueth” abroad in
England except through the circulation of Separatist tracts.
Brewster proceeded with caution. Together with a non-Separatist
partner, he established a small printing business on his own premises. His
little house was located on the Stinckteeg or Stink Alley. In order to give
his operation more tone, Brewster adopted the address of his side door,
which was located on Choir Alley. The first few books to leave the Choir
Alley press were inoffensive enough. But soon, strange cargo began to
reach England. Concealed in the false bottoms of French wine barrels were
pamphlets from Brewster's press.
Brewster printed many copies of Laurence Chaderton's 1578
attack on the Church of England. Another violent work lo leave the press
was the “Perth Assembly”. It was this pamphlet that fell into the hostile
hands of the bishops of the Church of England and they were furious. King
James demanded that the guilty printer be found and brought to him at
once. He gave the job of tracking down the man to the English
ambassador to Holland, Sir Dudley Carleton. Carleton employed Dutch
printers to trace the type used in the pamphlet and soon discovered that
William Brewster had printed it on his Choir Alley press.Brewster's house
was raided by Dutch agents. They found telltale cases of matching type in
the attic, but Brewster had vanished.
In view of the hot indignation which King James felt toward
Brewster's productions, it is likely that, had he been found, he would have
met a very unkind fate. Another nonconformist, the Reverend Mr.
Alexander Leighten, who had also published criticak pamphlets abroad,
was sentenced to a fine of hundred thousand pounds. He was whipped
and pilloried had one ear sliced off, his nose split and was branded with
the letters SS ( which stood for “stirrer of sedition”) and sent to London's
Fleet prison for life.
 William Brewster's Choir Alley press was probably smaller than this
English press of 1600. In Leyden, Brewster printed “Perth Assembly” a
tract attacking King James for trying to force the Scotch Presbyterians to
accept the rule of bishops.

The search for William Brewster went on for months on both sides
of the English Channel. It occurred to many of the Separatists that as long
as the remained in Leyden, their beloved elder would be a homeless
fugitive, for his family and his friends would be watched by the
authorities.
The international man-hunt undoubtedly did much to turn the
thoughts of the Separatists toward a new haven across the sea.
Finally , in 1617, they began to debate among themselves about
where could go to build the kind of lives for themselves that they had
always wanted. They had probably read Captain Jhon Smith's enthusiastic
account of his trip to New England in 1614, which was published as A
Descrption of New England in 1616. ( This was the same Captain Smith
who had been rescued by Pocahontas in England's ten-year-old colony at
Jamestown, Virginia). The two places most often mentioned in the
Pilgrims' discussions, however, were Virginia and Guiana.
Sir Walter Raleigh wrote vividly of Guiana, on the lush, tropical
northern coast of South America. He told of hidden gold, and a of savages
whose heads hung down beneath their shoulders. He had first visited
Guiana in 1595 and in 1617 launched a second, ill-fated gold-hunting
expedition into the jungle.On this trip many of his men died of fever and
he found no gold. Some of the Pilgrims, who understood nothing of the
dangers of the place, however, wanted to settle in Guiana.
The Virginia colony was in trouble. Of the many hundreds of
settlers who had sailed for Jamestown since its founding, most had died.
Word of the hardships suffered by the Virginia colonists did get back to
England and it had become increasingly difficult to persuade people to go
to Jamestown.
In 1616, King James had even proposed to his Privy Council that
they grant reprieves to men condemned to death if they would agree
instead to go to Virginia.
It was reasonable to hope that a King who was willing to send
condemned men to Virginia would be willing to send Separatists.
At last, in the summer of 1617, when the Pilgrims had decided that
Virginia was definitely the place for their attempt at colonization, two
represenatives of the Green Gate congregation were chosen to go to
England and try to get permission for a Separatist settlement. The
representatives were John Carver – who was one day to be governor of
Plymouth Plantation – and Roberth Cushman , deacon in the Green Gate
congregation.
When they arrived in London, Cushman and Carver spoke to Sir
Edwin Sandys, whom Brewster had known in Scrooby. Sandys was a
member of the London Company and friendly toward the Separatists.
Sandys was greatly interested in their proposal to “plant”in
Virginia with a number of families from the Green Gate congregation.
 With the help of Sandys, negotiation began among the
London Company, the English government and the Separatists at Leyden
for permission to settle in Virginia.The Separatists refused to discuss their
religious views with bishops of the Church of England and certainly had no
intention of changing these views for the sake of gaining land. The King ,
after much discussion and debate, would not allow the Separatists to be
given an official patent or grant of land but agreed that if they should go
to Virginia... He would … not molest them, provided they carried
themselves peaceably”. This was not assurance enough for the cautious
members of the Green Gate congregation.
While their letters sailed back and forth across the English
Channel, some of the Ancient Brethren started off for America, after much
less discussion. Elder Francis Blackwell had gathered two hundred
followers for the voyage and set sail in the fall of 1618. Their Ship was
blown off its course and they wandered for six months in the South
Atlantic while the water supply ran low and disease broke out. When the
ship finally reached James-town, Virginia, only fifty of the hundred
Separatists were alive. Blackwell, the captain of the ship and all of the
ship's officers were dead.
The Pilgrims must have been shocked by the pranks of the Dutch. This
seventeenth – century tavern scene, painted by Dutch artist Jan Steen,
shows offering his lady a fresh fish.

In 1619 a new offer was made to the Pilgrims. The Dutch

New Netherlands Company, eager to bulid up their holdings in the New
World, offered to let the Pilgrims settle in New Netherland, on the lands
they claimed along the Hudson River. They offered the free transportation
and cattle for each Pilgrim family. In February, 1620, the Dutch company
asked the Prince of Orange for two warships to protect the Pilgrim's ship
on the journey to New Netherland, for they knew how greatly the
Separatists feared the might of the English goverment. The Pilgrims like
the offer, for there they would be free of the English goverment and the
Church of England.
Suddenly in 1620 a stranger from London – an iron-monger
named Thomas Weston – appeared in Leyden with still another offer for
the Pilgrims. It seemed to be the solution to all their problems. Weston
told them to turn down the offer of the Dutch and to be wary of the
unstable London Company. He said that he would gather a group of
London bussinessmen who would be willing to lend the Pilgrims the money
for their transportation to the New World and for the supplies they would
need. The Pilgrims could pay back the money once they were established.
The idea seemed a good one to the Pilgrims and the agreement was
signed with Weston. A joint stock company of Merchant Adventures was
formed. At last the Pilgrims were on their way to a permanent home in
America.
As Bradford Said:” ... All great and honourable actions are
accompanied with great difficulties , and must be both enterprised and
overcome with ansewerable courages.”
It is possible that this seventeenth – century Dutch painting is meant to
show the Pilgrims aboard the ship ( center) in which they sailed from
Holland to England. The artist has paited it as a Dutch vessel, which
probably bore no resemblance to the English Speedwell, the ship in which
the Pilgrims sailed to Southampton.
An unknown Dutch artist painted this picture of the soberly dressed
Pilgrims on the dock at Leyden, ready to aboard the Speedwel. They were
an anxious but hopeful band when they began the first leg of their difficult
pilgrimage to a new life in America.
__________________________________________________________________________

[V]

SEVENTY MERCHANT ADVENTURERS

___________________________________________________________________________

Thomas Weston and the Merchant Adventurers were to change the

Pilgrims' lives in many ways. When Weston arrived at the Green Gate in
Leyden with his plans for sending the Separatists to the New World, he
had convinced them to abandon the dealings they had had with both the
New Netherlands Company and the London Company and to use his
company of seventy Merchant Adventurers instead. Then, Weston learned
that the wealthy Sir Ferdinando Gorges and a group of financiers known as
the Plymouth Company had petitioned the King for the rights to Northern
Virginia ( an area extending from Pennsylvania to Newfoundland). Gorge
wanted to rename the land New England. Weston knew that the king
would undoubtedly issue a patent to Gorges and a new plan took shape.
London Bridge – shown here in 1639 – was lined the shops of merchants
and craftsmen; it was a great trade center. The first treasurer of the group
of Merchant Adventures who financed the voyage of the Pilgrims to North
America was a goldsmith whose shop was on this bidge. It is likely that
other Merchant Adventurers also had businesses on London Bridge.

The Plymouth Company was interested in Northern Virginia

because of the rich fishing grounds that lay off the coast. There was
money to be made in fishing, particularly in cod, because cod could be
easily preserved by salting and drying ; and codfish abounded in the
waters off Northern Virginia. So the Pilgrims, Weston decided, should
settle in Northern Virginia and become fishermen.
Despite the fact that most of the Pilgrims were farmers with little
experience in fishing, they agreed to the plan. They also liked his idea
because there was no Church of England established in Gorges' territory.
So the Pilgrims who left their homes in Leyden on July 21,1620, at
the start of their journey to America, were meant to and indeed did fufill
Gorges' dream of establishing a permanent colony in Northern Virginia.
But Gorges had yet to learn that Plymouth was never to become the base
for the great fishing empire he hoped to control.
The Pilgrims must have been both a nervous and a sad company as
they sailed down the canal to Delfshaven. Their understanding with
Weston and his company of seventy Merchant Adventurers hade never
been entirely satisfactory. They would have to work very hard. For seven
years a large percentage of what they earned would have to go to pay off
their debt to the company – and at a high rate of interest. And the
Merchant Adventurers – as the Pilgrims learned – had little interest in
anything but making a profit.
The greatest cause for sadness among the Pilgrims, however, was the
fact that many members of their family, for one reason or another, had to
be left behind. Mary Brewster, one of the three people from Scrooby who
family finally sailed on the Mayflower , was making the journey to England
with only two of her five children and without her husband William.
( William was in hiding somewhere in England and was to slip aboard ship
in Southampton. He had been a hunted man since he had offended the
King and the Bishops with the pamphlets he had printed). Mary had her
two youngest sons with her when she left Leyden: Love ( probably short
for Love of God), who was nine and Wrestling ( short for Wrestling with the
Devil), who was six, Wrestling's name spelled W-r-a-s-l-i-n-g in the
seventeenth century and it was pronounced that way , too. Mary had left
behind her oldest son Jonathan , who was twenty-seven, and her two
daughter Patience , twenty, and Fear, fourteen. The two girls were left
either brother's care or with the Robinson Family.
No matter what sadness they felt, the Pilgrims were a determined
band. They had all left their homeland, England , to settle in Holland. Now
they were ready to leave their adopted land behind them as well, and to
set out across The Western Sea to find a New Zion – a promised land – in
the wilderness.
These workers are cleaning and drying ( or “flacking”) codfish.Fish were
cleaned in the shed at left;then dried either on the beach or on the rack
called a “ stage”, at right.
 [ VI ]

“REMOVALL “ TO AMERICA

It was July 22, 1620, when the travelers finally gathered on the dock at
Delftshaven . There were sixteen men, eleven women, and nineteen
children – a small company, indeed , to carry the seeds of Separatism
across the sea. “Truly dolfull,” said Bradford , “was ye sight of taht
mournful parting, to see what sighs and sobbs and praires did sound
amongs them, what tears did gush from every eyes and pity speeches
peirst each harte.” John Robinson blessed them and with “ watrie cheeks
commended them with most fervente praiers to ye Lord... and then with
mutual imbrases and many tears , they took their leaves one of another,
which proved to be the last leave to many of them .” Yet Bradford adde:
“ ... they knew they were Pilgrims and looked not much on those things ,
but lifted up their eyes to the heavens , their dearest country and quieted
their spirits.”
The Speedwell,with her cargo of Saints, sailed first to Southampton,
England, where Carver and Cushman awaited them with supplies. She was
a small ship of sixty tons purchased by the Separatits in Holland. They
planned to keep her in America to use as the first vessel of their future
fishing fleet. As she berthed at a Southampton dock beside the Mayflower
, the Speedwell must have looked extremely small.
Weston had engaged the Mayflower in London . She was just three
times as large as the Speedwell, and her 180 tons were packed to the
gunwales with passangers and supplies for the voyage to America. For
Weston had learned of the dwindling of Separatists forces and realizing
that they could never make a successful settlement alone, he and his
associates had recriuted others - “Strangers”, The Saints called them – to
join their party. Like the Saints, they were poor people: weavers, tanners,
an unemployed soldier, a few shopkeepers, a fish-monger.
In his book The Story of the “Old Colony” of New Plymouth, Samuel
Eliot Morison, the famous American historian, explain what the Mayflower
would have been like. She was ninety feet long and twenty-five feet wide
at her broadest. The waist of the ship ( the middle part of the main deck
that was opened to the weather) was covered with canvas to keep salt
spray from both passengers and cargo. Both the bow and the stern of the
ship had high wooden superstructures. The superstructure at the stern
was bigger and higher than the superstructure at the bow; for this
sterncastle, as it was called,contained the great cabin where the ship's
officers ate, as well as the captain or master's cabin. Both the great cabin
and the master's cabin had extra bunks built in where the more important
members of the Pilgrims' company probably slept. The superstructure at
the bow end of the ship – called the forecastle – cantained both the crew's
quarters and the galley where the crew's meals were prepared. It is likely
that the Pilgrims families had to do whatever cooking they could manage
elsewhere, for the galley on a ship like the Mayflower was small.
People grew ill and irritable in the hold of the Mayflower. There was
little hot food, the standard fare being cold biscuit, salted beef and beer.
Everyone lived dread of drowning, for the ship was leaky in her
superstructures and streams of icy water kept pouring in upon the
Pilgrims.
For sixty-six long days and sixty-six long nights they sailed westward.
Some of them must have wondered if there really was such a place as
America on the other side of the ocean, for there was no end to the sea.
On the morning of November 10, 1620, a pallid dawn disclosed a strip
of land. Everyone rushed to the deck, craning necks and elbowing
neighbors for the sight of America. There was laughter and weeping and
inmmense relief. They had sighted Cape Cod.
 Captain Christopher Jones tacked south , along the outer arm of the
Cape. Directly in the path of the ship lay Tucker's Terror ( now known as
Pollack's Rip), a boiling shallows well known to mariners, even in those
days. Intead of heading his ship out to sea again to avoid the shoals,
Captain Jones announced that the waters were impassable and he
returned to the northern tip of Cape Cod that night.

Despite all of the incoveniences of sailing on the Mayflower, the Pilgrims,

at least in one way, were very fortunate passengers. The Mayflower was a
“sweet” ship. She had been used in the wine trade, and her hold had a
pleasant smell from the leakage of the wine casks. Most
seventeenth-century ships had an overpowering smell of garbage and
rotting cargo. The Pilgrims were also fortunate in Master Christopher
Jones, The Mayflower's captain. He had skippered the ship for twelve
years and handled her skillfully. The drawing above is a cross section of
the Mayflower II, a modern attempt to re-create the original Mayflower
from information available.
It had 24 parts :
1. Poop deck
2. Quartes deck
3. Upper deck
4. Forecastle
5. Main deck ( The Pilgrims lived here with most of their possessions.
There were no bunks or hammocks to sleep on, so beds had to be
made here or on the upper deck)
6. Crew's quarters
7. Boatswain's store
8. Galley, with cooking range
9. Main hold ( containing cargo and supplies including barrels of beer,
dried meat and vegetables)
10.Cargo
11.General stores
12.Barrels of waters
13.Barrels of biscuit and flour
14.Temporary cabin
15.Special cabin
16.Tiller room
17.Helmsram with whipstaff conected to the tiller ( ship is steered
from here)
18.Captain 's Great Room or Great Cabin ( in the stern- castle)
19.Pens for livestock
20.Beak
21.Bowsprit
22.Foremast
23.Mainmast
24.Mizzenmast
A modern artist painted this picture of the signing of the Mayflower
Compact on Shipboard off Cape Cod. The artist has tried to re-create the
dark Great Cabin of the Mayflower where the formal signing of the
document probably took place.

The Mayflower Compact was to play an imoprtant part in the lives of

all the Pilgrims. It is quite likely, however, that the written document did
not seem half as important to them as did the fact that they had arrived
safely at a place where they intented to stay. Bleak though it was , The
Pilgrims must have felt great happiness when they first sighted Cape Cod
and the New World; for as Bradford says: “... after long beating at sea”
they had at last arrived at “that land which is called Cape Cod; the which
made and certainly known to be it , they were not a little joyful.”
___________________________________________________________________________

[ VII ]

“HARD AND DIFFICULT BEGINING”

___________________________________________________________________________

On November 11, 1620, the first party of sixteen armed men from the
Mayflower went ashore on the tip of Cape Cod and stayed just long
enough to look around quickly and to colect a load of firewood. They
returned to the ship with favorable reports of the new land. They made no
attempt to leave the ship on the folowing day – which was Sunday. On
Monday, November 13, the women went ashore to do the washing that
had accumulated on the long voyage across the Atlantic. While the
women washed, the men who had come with them looked over the
shallop( a longboat which could be either rowed or fitted with two small
masts and sails) which they had brougth with aboard the Mayflower.
Two days later, on Wednesday the fifteenth , an exploring party of
sixteen men – led by Miles Standish and including William Bradford – went
ashore. When they had gone about a mile down the beach they saw five
or six indians and a dog. When they saw the Pilgrims, the Indians quickly
disappeared into the woods that fringed the beach. The Pilgrims, knowing
little of the Indians' skill in moving swiftly and silently, spent the day
trying to catch them – with no luck.
On December 6, the shallop set out a third time, several days later it
arrived at the desserted site of Plymouth ( which captain John Smith had
named 1614). Eighteen men were in the party, again made up of Pilgrims
and crew from the Mayflower, including Winslow, Bradford,Standish and
Carver. They reached Clark's Island in Plymouth harbor on Saturday,
December 9, , and in order to keep the Sabbath – stayed there until
Monday morning, December 11. On that day the party of eighteen men
stepped ashore.
They arrived at the ship, to be met with sad news. While he was
away, William Bradford's wife Dorothy had fallen from the Mayflower and
drowned, although the ship had been lying quietly at anchor at the time.
Many of the Pilgrims aboard were by this time terribly discuoraged with
the hardships of life in the New World and it is possible that Dorothy took
her own life. Had she done so. Bradford and the other Pilgrims would have
considered it a shameful and sinful act. In this diary, under the heading
“Deaths,”Bradford made the following notation: “Dec,7,Dorothy, Wife to
William Bradford.”
On the other hand, the Pilgrims were happy to learn that a site for the
colony had been found. After three days od debate they definitely decided
to land at Plymouth. On December 16, the Mayflower anchored off Clark's
Island to wait out the Sabbath ( which was the next day). Finally, on
December 20, they decided where their town was to be built.
Plymouth was a good spot for a colony for many reasons. There was a
fine brook and a steep hill rising sharply from the shore - a splendid site
for a fort. But Plymouth had another decisive advantage. There were large
cultivated areas, only recently overgrown, in which dry husks of corn still
rustled in the wind. Plymouth had been an indian village, as the Pilgrims
knew from Captain John Smith's map which they had in their possession.
It was Chrismas Day, 1620, when the work on the new settlement
actually began. It was not a holiday, for the Pilgrims did not believe in
celebrating Christmas or Easter, or any of the other traditional holidays
observed by most Christian churches.
Later, a trange event occured on March 16, 1621, during a business
meeting in the Common House. An Indian brave marched into the
settlement and would have come into the Common House had not the
sentries stopped him.
 “Welcome,” he said to the astonished settlers. “I am Samoset.” He was
an Abnaki, from Pemaquid Point in Maine. He had sailed with English
Captains along the Newfoundland coast and had learned their tongue.
Samoset told the Pilgrims many things about the region in which they
had chosen to live. There had once been an Indian Village at Plymouth. It
had been called Patuxet. In 1617 a great plague had swept the village,
and all the inhabitants had died.
He also told them that the most powerful Indian Chief of the area was
a man named Ousamequin(“Yellow Feather”), usually called Massasoit
( “Big Chief”). Massasoit was chief of the Wampanoag and lived at
Sowams on Narragansett Bay, about forty miles southwest of Plymouth.
Samoset talked with the Pilgrims well into the night. After spending the
night at Plymouth he left them, saying he would return the next day with
other Indians and with trade goods. Samoset was as good as his word and
did come back the next day with five braves, each carrying a deerskin.
They Also brought three or four beaver skins. The Pilgrims were impressed
with the beaver skins and wanted more. Beaver was the most valuable of
all furs and would bring high prices in England. Samoset sent the five
braves back to Sowams for more skins and stayed behind with the
Pilgrims.
When the braves had not returned in four days, the Pilgrims sent
Samoset to find them. During Samoset's absence the Pilgrims had two or
three scares – Indians sneaking about Plymouth making faces and rude
gestures at them. Then, almost as suddenly as he had come the first time,
Samoset reappeared with a friend named Tisquantum or Squanto. To their
amazement, the Pilgrims discovered that this Indian, too, spoke English.
Some think that Squanto recrossed the Atlantic with Captain John
Smith in 1614, when Gorge sent Smith to America.
On this 1614 voyage, Smith was accompanied by another captain,
named Thomas Hunt. Hunt had stayed on the coast to fish, after Smith
had sent out for home. With his ship full of cod, he sailed to Cape Cod.
There he raided a Nauset village and captured about twenty Indians – one
of whom was Squanto! Then Hunt clapped all of them in the hold and
carried them off to Spain, where he sold them as slaves. Squanto was
purchased by some Spanish friars, “ that so they might nurture [him] in
the Popish religion ,” and convert him to Catholicism. He later managed to
escape to England, where he lived for several years in the home of John
Slanie, who was treasurer of the Newfoundland Company. Squanto
probably returned to America on one of Slanie's ships, for he was next
heard from in Newfoundland, where captain Dermer, another of Gorge's
men, met him in 1618. Dermer took Squanto with him on a voyage to the
Masachusetts coast. How joyful the twice- kidnapped Indian must have
been to be at home once more!
But his joy quickly turned to grief when he witnessed the tragedy
which had befallen his people. All had perished in the great plague. When
Squanto learned that he was the last and only surviving member of the
Patuxet tribe, he went to Massasoit at Sowams. Massasoit took him in.
The Pilgrims, for their part, soon recovered from their surprise in
gaining the friendship of an Indian who knew their homeland. Squanto
was to embrace the Holy Discipline and would fully deserve to be
numbered among the Saints. He was , in Bradford's words,” a special
instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation.”
Shortly after his arrival, Squanto's skills as an interpreter and
negociator were called into play. On March 22, 1621, Chief Massasoit,
accompanied by sixty of his braves, appeared at Plymouth. They were an
impressive delegation and conducted themselves with great dignity and
formality. To meet them , Captain Standish hurriedly assembled his own
little force , arrayed in as much steel and armor as he could muster. When
they sat down to talk, there were many issues outstanding.
The Indians had good reason to want to get rid of the English.
For years English sea captains had robbed them, kidnapped their young
men and killed their people senselessly with their “firesticks”. The Indians
suspected and perhaps correctly, that the English ships brought the
terrible plague to their land.
 One advantage the Pilgrims had in the negotiations was something of
which they were unaware. The Wampanoag were often at war with a
neighboring Indian federation known as the Narragansett. The English
would be useful allies for the Wampanoag if they were attacked by the
Narragansett. Squanto used this fact in helping to negotiate a peace
treaty between Massasoit and Governor Carver.
It provided that the Indians would return a number of metal farming
tools which they had taken from the colonists a few weeks before, and the
Pilgrims would in turn pay the Pamet Indians for the seed corn the Pilgrims
had taken during their first explorations on Cape Cod.
It was a fair treaty. It reflected the fact that the Indians and the English
were then nearly equal in power. Because it was fair, it endured for more
than fifty years. The Indians left satisfied , on March 23, 1621. Squanto
remained behind to help the Pilgrims. According to their Old Style
calendar, the Pilgrims' New Year's Day fell on March 25. This was the day
when they had to elect their governor for the coming year, John Carver
was re-elected.
On April 5, a sober day in the lives of the Pilgrims, the Mayflower
sailed for England. Her hold was empty. The sailing must have left them
all with two sober thoughts: they were at Plymouth to stay, no matter
what happened and they had already fallen behind in paying off their debt
to the Merchant Adventurers in London.
This first spring brought one event which did not involve farming.
Edward Winslow had lost his wife Elizabeth in the General Sickness of the
winter and Susanna White, the mother of Resolved and Peregrine, had lost
her husband. They decided to get married. Governor Bradford performed
a civil wedding ceremony for them on May 12,1621 – since the Pilgrims
did not believe that wedding were in any way religious. The winslow
wedding was the first wedding to take place in New England.
During the summer , The pilgrims sent the shallop into the vicinity of
what would one day be Boston Harbor, to trade for beaver pelts with the
Massachusetts Indians.
 The Pilgrims'first autumn in New England was beautiful and the
harvest of Indian corn was plentiful. The Pilgrims were thankful for their
survival and decided to set aside a day of Thanksgiving for the harvest
festval.
Bradford probably named a day in october for the celebration of the
first Thanksgiving . The Pilgrims and their descendants often observed it
during the years ahead. America's present-day celebration of
Thanksgiving in November was established by President Abraham Lincoln,
who first made it an official national holiday in 1863.
For the Pilgrims' Thanksgiving Day Bradford dispatched Squanto to
Sowams, to invite the Wampanoag braves to the feast. Four men sent out
to shoot waterfowls, and they returned with enough ducks and geese to
keep the company for a week. They probably shot wild turkeys as well, for
they were plentiful in the country about Plymouth.
A warm October sun enveloped the harvest scene, shining equally
on the Pilgrims who had set their feet upor, a strange new land and upon
the Indians who had made them welcome.
Squanto, shown below left as modern scultor imagined him to be, was a
true and helpful friend of the Pilgrims. Once Samoset had introduced him
to the Plymouth settlers , Squanto never left their side, for he adopted
their religion. Massasoit, seen below right in a modern statue , signed a
peace treaty with the English settlers who had built their homes on his
land . A member of the Mayflower's crew remembered Chief Massasoit as
a “very lustie man in his best years.”
After 1622 religious services were held in the fort at Plymouth – Shown
here in a Phogrograph of the modern restoration – until 1649, when the
first meetinghouse was completed.
__________________________________________________________________________

[ VII]

PLYMOUTH PLANTATION

___________________________________________________________________________

Although the Pilgrims had given thanks for the harvest of 1621, the
tiny settlement ( containing about sixty persons) was still nothing but a
line of rude, thatched huts strung along Plymouth's Town Brook. Their
nearest English neighbors were either hundreds of miles away in the
temporary, scattered fishing villages on the coast of Maine, or to the south
in Virginia.
Farther north, in Canada , were the hostile French. The Dutch had built
a trading post at present-day Albany, in 1614, and claimed the lands
surrounding New York harbor and the Hudson River. England lay two to
four months away on the side of the wintry gray waters of the Atlantic. To
the west , behind them , were the forests of wilderness New England.
Ringed about by Indians – Pamet and Nauset on Cape Cod, Wampanoag
and Narragansett to the south and west and the Massachusetts to the
north – the Pilgrims must have looked anxiously to Captain Miles Standish,
wondering if he could save the colony it it was attacked.
On November 11, 1621, just a year after the Mayflower first anchored
off Cape Cod, the Pilgrims sighted a ship coming into the harbor at
Plymouth. It proved to be the fifty-five-tone Fortune, which had sailded
from London four months earlier, in July. On Board were thirty-five
men,women and children who had come to live in Plymouth. Elder William
Brewster was no doubt overjoyed to see his twenty-eigth-year-old son,
Jonathan. Edward Winslow welcomed his younger brother, John and the
entire band of Saints must have gathered to greet their former deacon
from Leyden congregation, Robert Cusman . With Cushman was his
fourteen-year-old son , Thomas and the nineteen-year-old French-speaking
Walloon , Philip De la Noye ( an ancestor of President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt).
The Fortune also carried several papers. The fisrt was a patent, signed
by Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the other members of the New Council for
New England ( the reorganized Plymouth Company). It promised the
Pilgrim settlers 100 acres of land apiece at the end of seven years.
The second was an angry letter from Thomas Weston, asking the
Pilgrims to copy out and sign their contract with the Merchant Adventurers
- for the Separatists had refused to put their names to any agreement
before the Mayflower. “ That you send no lading in the ship is wonderful”,
Weston wrote, “and worthily distasted. I know your weaknes was the
cause of it, and I believe more weaknes of judgement , than weaknes of
hands. A quarter of the time you spent in discoursing would have done
much more, but that is past,” his continued.
Weston's letter also told the Pilgrims that unless the contract was
signed , they could expect no more money and supplies from London.
After Deacon Cusman preached a sermon on “The Dangers of Self-love”,
urging the Pilgrims to sign, They stepped forward and put their names to
the agreement with Merchant Adventurers.
Just the Fortune reached the English Channel, she was captured by a
French privateer and robbed of all her cargo. The French , finally allowed
the ship to sail to London.
Soon After the Fortune sailed away, Plymouth Colony was alarmed by
the threat of war with the Indians. Canonicus, Chief or sachern of the
Narragansett, sent governor Bradford a sheaf of arrows wrapped in a large
snake-skin stuffed with bullet.
Fortunately, Canonicus did not attack the settlement. But the
challenge caused the Pilgrims to beging buliding a “strong pale” or
palisade, aroud their village.It took them foru months to complete the
eleven-foot-high enclosure, for it was almost a mile in circumference. They
worked every day except the Sabbath – even including Christmas Day,
1621 – until the next spring when the gates and walls finished.
In March, 1622, red-haired Miles Standish set out in the shallop on
another beaver-trading expedition to the Massachusetts Indians, taking
Squanto and another trusted Indian companion, Hobomok, with him. They
had “good trade and returned in safety, blessed be God,” Said Bradford.
Since Weston sent no supplies, the colony grew desperately short of
food during April, May and June. By the middle of summer, two of
Weston's ships – the Charity and the Swan – arrived in Plymouth. They put
ashore about sixty of Weston's men, with not so much as a “bite of
bread”, said Bradford. Also aboard was a letter from Weston to Bradford.
Weston said that he was no longer one of the Merchant Adventurers.
Plymouth could expect no more help from him. “I am quit of you”, said
Weston, “and you of me, for that matter.”
Starvation was so close at hand that all supplies were kept under
guard, and more than once men were “well whips” for stealing the corn
that ripened in the fields.
That summer they heard of the “great massacre in Virginia”. Chief
Opechancanough of the Pamunkey Indians had risen agaisnt the English
there and killed 350 people. The Pilgrims must have wondered when their
turn would come, for it was during this summer that they began building a
stout fort on the hill behind the village.
The ship that brought the news from Virginia to Plymouth later
accompanied Edward Winslow to Maine. He sailed there in the Pilgrims'
shallop, traded for as much food as he could for the starving colony, and
returned to Plymouth as soon as possible.
In the fall of 1622, Weston's men left Plymouth and moved forty miles
north , to a place called Wessagusset, where the town of Weymouth
stands today. There on Boston Bay they set up a trading post and began
“trucking” or trading trinkets to the Massachusetts Indians in return for
beaver.
 Since the harvest was poor, both Plymouth and Wessagusset found
themselves facing another hungry winter. Even though the Pilgrims were
now competing for beaver with Weston's men , they decided to make a
joint trading expedition to the Indians to obtain food.Wessagusset
supplied the ship Swan and a party of men from the two colonies
( including Bradford and Squanto) sailed around Cape Cod to Monomoy
and bartered for supplies of dried beans and corn. On this trip , Squanto
fell ill of a violent fever and died. Bradford then returned to Plymouth and
traded further with the Indians in “inland places, to get what he could...
which did help them something.”
Food proved to be in even shorter supply in Wassagusset that winter
than in Plymouth. In February, 1623, Wassagusset's Governor John
Sanders sent a messenger to Bradford saying that the Massachusetts
would not allow him to “borrow” any more corn. Sanders “desired advice
whether he might not take it from them by force”.
Soon all the tribes on Cape Cod and in the neighborhood of Plymouth
knew the story.Plymouth was afraid that she might be blamed for what
Sanders had thought of doing, for as far as the Indian were concerned,
Plymouth and Wassagusset had been settled by the same people.
The Pilgrims claimed that Miles Standish had heard Wituwamat, a
Massachusetts Indian brave, threaten to ruin the Wassagusset colony.
Plymouth also knew that Sanders' men had no guns. In March, Bradford
sent Standish and Hobomok and eight heavily armed men to Wessagusset
in the Pilgrims' shallop. They were to pretend that they were on a trading
exposition.
Some historians say that Bradford genuinely believed that an Indian
uprising – like the one in Virginia – might develpo if Weston's men were
allowed to continue dealing with the Massachusetts,and that both
Plymouth and Wessagusset might be wiped out.
Other believe that The Pilgrims invented stories about the Indian
dangers in order to excuse their destruction of Weston's colony. For, as
Weston was now a rival, Plymouth no doubt feared that she might lose all
her beaver trade to his post at Wessagusset.
Next, Weston's men sailed away in the Swan, hoping to find their
leader at one of the English fisihing stations on the coast of Maine.
Wessagusset had been destroyed.
Former Merchant Adventurer Thomas Weston himself arrived in
Plymouth in April, on the Paragon, to find out why his colony at
Wassagusset had been destroyed. Since Weston had fallen into the hands
of Indians in New Hampshire and lost all his trade goods, the Pilgrim
leaders took pity on him and secretly lent him a small supply of beaver.
Three months later, in July , 1623, two ships arrived from England - the
Ann and the Little James -carrying ninety-three settlers. The New arrivals
nearly doubled the size of the little colony on Town Brook.

This map locates some of the towns founded in New England by Plymouth
's Pilgrims and the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, as well as Plymouth's
important beaver tradings posts at Aptucxet and Matianuck.
 Edward Winslow was again sent to London to deal with the Merchant
Adventurers, whom the Pilgrims now owed 1,400 pounds. The debt never
grew small. The worth of the supplies sent back to Plymouth somehow
always exceeded the value of the clapboards, the otter, and the beaver
shipped off to London.
In 1625, Miles Standish sailed to England under instructions to talk to
Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the Council for New England, and to ask them
to help get the Pilgrims out of the clutches of the Merchant Adventurers.
When the Charity sailed, the pinnace Little James tied behind her; the
smaller ship was loaded with codfish and a supply of beaver worth 277
pounds. In the English Channel, pirates from the Barbary coast swooped
down on the two ships. The Charity cut the Little James adrift and the
pinnace fell prize to the robbers.
Gorges and Laud could send their troops to New England, trouble
arose in England – troubles between King Charles and the Puritans – which
would lead to revolution.
___________________________________________________________________________

[ IX ]

CAVALIERS AND PURITAN ROUNHEADS

The ascendancy of Charles I, just five years after the Pilgrims had
founded Plymouth Colony, brought on a period of discontent in England –
an era which culminated in a civil war. The war was climaxed, early in
1649, by the beheading of the King; and by the abolition of the House of
Lords.
The unrest in England ( 1625- 1642 ) prior to the war caused a great
wave of inmigration to America and the West Indies and brought to New
England settlers far different from the Pilgrims.
There were the Puritans, who were as deeply religious as the Pilgrims,
but hardheaded businessmen, where the Saints were far less shrewd.
In the Puritans ranks were successful merchants, well-to-do farmers,
tradespeople – solid middle-class gentry.
A Puritan Leader, John Endecott, described as an able, self-righteous
and fanatical man, on March 19, 1628, bought with six other “religious”
persons a patent for territory in the Masachusetts Bay area from Gorges
and the Council for New England.
Despite some opposition from Sir Ferdinando, a royal charter was
granted the group on March 4, 1629. The territory lay between the Charles
and Merrimack rivers.
However, Endecott and his associates did not wait for the King's
charter but proceeded with their plans for a settlement. On June 20, 1628,
Endecott sailed from England on the Abigail with a small company. In
September, he landed at Naumkeag and took over the small fishing post
that had been established there two years before by exiles from Plymouth
under Roger Conant.Endecott and his men soon drove Connant out of
Naumkeag and claimed the land as their own. Conant and his men
crossed the North River to found Beverly. Naumkeag was renamed Salem (
from the Hebrew word Shalom,meaning peace) to celebrate the peace
that followed.

The long- haired dandy, left, is a Cavalier – a supporter of King Charles I.

To the right is Mathew Hopkins , an English witch-finder, whose book,
Discoverie of Witches, appeared in 1647.

The Puritans settlers were energetic and resourceful. Within a very

short time there were a number of towns in the Massachusetts Bay colony
, including Dorchester, Medford,Watertown,Roxburry and Lynn. The
Pilgrims of Plymouth, who had been virtually the only settlers in New
England for nearly a decade, now had more neighbors than they could
cope with.
The Pilgrims, however, converted the Puritans to Separatism. In 1630,
Deacon Samuel Fuller of Plymouth was sent to Boston, where he
convinced Winthrop that the Puritans in America should break with the
Church of England and adopt Plymouth's method of electing ministers for
their churches. Winthrop agreed and so, by the way of the Puritans, The
Pilgrims traditions of democratic elections would continue long after the
Plymouth Colony had been swallowed up by its neighbors.
Despite the disagreements that arose between Pilgrims and Puritans,
both greeted England's Puritan revolution of 1642 with full approval.
In England the Royalists ( or Cavaliers) , led by the nobility, had rallied
to the side of King Charles I, who believed he should be supreme over
Parliament. The tradesmen, artsans,and middle-class merchants took up
the cause of the Presbyterian and Puritan Roundheads, who insisted
Parliament had certain rights in the governing of England which the King
could never take away. They insited it must always be the right of
Parliament – not the King – to levy taxes. After suffering severe military
defeats at the hands of the Puritan Oliver Cromwell, who rose to
leadership in the Civil War, the King's men were defeated in 1646.
The King was taken prisoner by the victorious Puritans. Fearing that
the King's many supporters might try to restore him to supreme authority,
the Puritan leaders decided to behead him in 1649. The country was to be
ruled by Oliver Cromwell and by Parliament and was to be a
commonwealth rather than a monarchy.
Oliver Cromwell, who had adopted the Tiitle of Lord Protector of
England in 1653 and became virtual dictator of the country, died in 1658.
Disillusioned with the harshness of Puritan Rule, England turned once
more to her ancient monarchy and in 1660, placed Charles II, The son of
Charles I, on the throne from which his father had been driven.
The restoration of the monarchy did not mean, however, that the
goverment of England was to become excatly as it had been in the days of
James I and Charles I. In Cromwell's reign the importance of Parliament in
governing the country had become so well established that the English
people would never again let their monarch trample on the rights of
Parliament. Also, the Courts of High Commission and the Star Chamber
had been abolished and were never restored. When Charles II came to the
throne it was understood that Parliament was to have the right to levy
taxes and other powers; and it became possible for a man or a party to
oppose a policy of the King and to remain safely within the goverment.

The American painter Benjamin West shows Oliver Cromwell, in boots

and cloak, dissolving the “Rump” of the Long Parliament in April , 1653.
The long Parliament had been holding sessions since November, 1640.
The “Rump” sessions were those held after december,1648, purge of
those members hostile to the growing control of Parliament by the army
and Cromwell. It was the Long Parliament that made war on the King and
condemned Archbishop Laud to death. The King was beheaded at the
order of the Rump session. By 1653 Oliver Cromwell, now ruler of
England, began to find Parliament's power troublesome. He dissolved it ,
prior to declaring himself Lord Protector and virtual dictator of England.

On the other hand, there is no question that the Puritan code

allowed its followers to become excessively intolerant. The most
outstanding examples of this fault were the witchcraft trials of 1692 in
Salem and in other region of Massachusetts. Some nineteen so-called
witches were hanged or crushed to death at Salem.
 Witch-hunting had spread like a contagious disease from Europe
where it had become increasingly more common since the mid-fifteenth
century.
The practice of witchcraft itself had long considered a crime in
England and in most of the part of Europe. James I, who was a most
supertitious man, wrote a book called Daemonologie, which dealt with the
subject and advocated the death penalty for witches. In 1604 such a law
was passed in England and was in effect when the Puritans first came to
Masachusetts.
A witch was defined as one who was allied with the Devil and
therefore evil. In those dark times, many persons afflicted with illnesses
such as epilepsy were denounced as witches – for the seizures they
suffered were considered signs that the Devil had possessed the individual
, who then had to be destroyed. During the 1640's a man named Mathew
Hopkins declared that he had secret ways of uncovering witches and was
appointed Witch Finder General. He went from place to place in England
exposing “witches”. The innocent persons – men,women and children –
executed on his testimony are estimated to have been numbered in the
hundreds.
The Pilgrims never became involved in the tormenting of witches the
way the Puritans did.
The Pilgrims held their first religious services, left, on January 21, 1621, in
the Common House, the First building in Plymouth. Morality was strictly
enforced.

The nineteenth- century painting, captures all the horror of the Salem
witch fever. The girl has been convicted of witchcraft and is being led to
the tree where she will be hanged.
The man in the stocks, below, was a petty offender.
__________________________________________________________________________

[ X ]
KING PHILIP

___________________________________________________________________________

In 1637, an ugly episode took place between whites and Indians.

The Pequot, under a chief named Sassacus, were becoming increasingly
irritated by the inroads being made into their lands. Pilgrims and Puritans
had set up numerous trading posts in Connecticut, especially in the
Connecticut River valley.
Clashes followed between Indians and traders in many areas. When
the Indians killed a colonist, the colonists responded by killing Indians.
Because of growing irritation on both sides, war broke out between
Puritans and the Pequot.
It was a short conflict which ended in three weeks after a combined
force of Massachusetts and Connecticut men, commanded by Captain
John Mason and John Underhill surprised about 700 Pequot men, women
and children at an encampment near the mouth of the Mystic River in
Connecticut.
The Pilgrims and Puritans almost universally regarged the New
England Indians as “the dregs of mankind.”The leader in the work of
educating and converting them to Christianity was the Reverend John
Eliot, a pastor from Roxbury who was gravely disturbed because the
Indians were “so stupid and senseless.”
He decided to learn their language and translate both the Lord's
Prayer and the Ten Commandments, and even complete the ambitious
project of translating the Bible into the Algonquian tongue. Eliot did
convert a number of tribesmen in the 1640's who were afterwards known
as the “Praying Indians”.
 The Pequot War was a mere skirmish when compared to the great
conflict that broke out in 1675 between the tribes of the Wampanoag
Federation and the English. The struggle, known as King Philip's War,
lasted a year and resulted in the downfall of the Algonquian tribes in New
England.
King Philip, whose Indian name was Metacom, succeeded to
leadership of the Wampanoag after the death of his elder brother,
Wamsutta. Wamsutta had taken over command when his father, the
respected Chief Massasoit died in 1661. After Wamsutta died at Plymouth,
Philip became the king.
Missionary efforts to convert his people to Christianity particularly
angered Philip, for he regarged the Christian doctrine of submission as an
English trick to enslave his subjects.
In 1673, Edward Winslow's forty-four-year-old son Josiah, “a worthie
and well-accomplished gentleman” of Plymouth, became the first
native-born colonial governor in America and the leader of the war
against King Philip.
When a Praying Indian named Sassamon was murdered, Plymouth
authorities blamed three of Philip's men for the deed and had two of them
hanged and the third shot dead.
The Wampanoag Federation – which included the Abnaki, the
Masachusetts and the Mohegan – responded to this with war preparations.
Reports came to Plymouth from outlying towns that Philip's men “ were
giving frequent alarums by drums and guns in the night... and the young
Indians were earnest for war”.
Although longtime friends of the Indians like Roger Williams and
Samuel Gorton tried to avert bloodshed, all their avertures failed. The
explotion awaited only the spark to set it off. It came on a day in June,
1675, when a settler at Swansea, Masachusetts shot and wounded an
Indian trespassing on his hand. It marked the start of New England's
costliest Indian war.
 War erupted everywhere in New England. Tribe after tribe rallied to
King Philip, and panic rose among the whites to such an extent that even
the faithful Praying Indians, who lived in islotation on remote Cape Cod,
were subjected to severe repressive measures by the Pilgrims.
As might be expected, The Masachusetts Puritans dealt with the
Praying Indians even more harshly than had their Plymouth neighbors.
When a group of two hundred recent converts to Christianity deserted and
joined Philip, the Puritan Fathers drove the rest of the Praying Indians from
their villages, set fire to their fields and executed some of them on mere
suspicion.
In addition to this, Williams crusaded against religious intolerance.
He spoke out boldly for freedom of worship and gained some support in
Plymouth . In 1634, Williams left taht colony and went to Salem, where the
congregation chose him as their pastor. But the Massachusetts Bay
authorities wanted no such radical in their midst. Late in 1635, the court
ordered his banishment from Massachusetts.
He finally reached the country of the Wampanoag and settled at
Seekonk, Rhode Island, near Sowams. Informed that he was still within the
borders of Plymouth Colony, Williams moved, with five supporters, he
founded Providence, Rhode Island, which he hoped would always be “ a
shelter for persons distressed for conscience...”All who came there were
granted full religious freedom.
By 1656, there was an influx of Quakers into New England and the
Pilgrims had to deal for the first time with the Society of Friends – as the
Quakers called themselves.
The Quakers rejected baptism and communion, and recognized
neither rank nor outhside authority.
Finally , it can be said that the contributions of the Pilgrims and
Puritans were many. They were the first develop a church goverment in
which elections were held yearly by the whole congegation. This
democratic system was immediately put to use in the New England town
meeting - and influenced the men who later formed the goverment of the
United States. Connecticut championed civil liberties; Rhode Island,
religious freedom. And public education for all was made compulsory in
Masachusetts in 1647.
Both Puritan and Pilgrim considered it each man's duty to learn to
read in order to be able to read the word of God in the Bible, and to
perfect himself in all ways, in order to glorify God. Therefore, as early as
1624 the Pilgrims announced their intention of opening a common school,
although the plan was delayed almost half a century by their lack of
funds.
In 1636, Harvard College was founded at Cambridge. It was the first
institution of higher learning in the English colonies and was to become
one of the world's great universities.
Both Puritans and Pilgrims alike gave to America the idea that
education is not the privilege of a few but the right of all.
By present-day standards, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony were
almost as intolerant as the Puritans of Masachusetts Bay. But in the age in
which they lived, tolerance was a new idea, believed by almost nobody,
and to be found almost nowhere on earth.
And although the Plymouth settlers had journeyed as religious
pilgrims to the New World in their searc,freedom of conscience,true
freedom of conscience for men would not come until after the American
Revolution.
In Speaking thus, Bradford spoke not only for Brewster, but for all
that was best in the Pilgrims character. And it is because of the stregh, the
ideals, and the courage of men like William Bradford and Williams
Brewster that the Pilgrims are so well remembered by American today.
The Indian Chief King Philip, slain in 1676, in Rhode Island.

The most famous picture of the Pilgrims may be this painting by George
H. Boughton, titled Pilgrims Going to Church. It is inaccurate in that it
does not show the Pilgrims climbing up Fort Hill, where their fort
meetinghouse was actually located; but it is correct in showing them
walking through the snow, carrying their guns and Bible.
 PICTURE CREDITS
BRITISH MUSEUM
CULVER SERVICE
JOHN CARTER BROWN LIBRARY
COLLECTION OF MARITSHUITS, THE HUGE.
METROPLITAN MUSEUM OF ARTS
MUSÉES ROYAUX DES BEAUX ARTS DE BELGIQUE
MASSACHUSETTS STATE HOUSE
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY,LONDON
NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
PILGRIMS HALL, PLYMOUTH,MASSACHUSETTS
PLIMOTH PLANTATION, PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS
RIJKSMUSEUM, AMSTERDAM
RADIO TIMES HULTON PICTURE LIBRARY
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