Plymouth Colony and the Pilgrims

Historical timeline of Plymouth Colony

Jamestown was settled by entrepreneurs looking for wealth, but the settlement of Plymouth Colongy in 1620, despite what you will be told when you visit Plimoth Plantation, was a religiously motivated effort.

The Protestant reformation was well underway at this time, and there was great religious turmoil in England and in Europe as a whole. Cambridge University was a center of religious descent. The Church of England had been established by Henry VIII, but many of the people felt that it was still too similar to the Catholic Church. One religious faction, the Puritans, thought that the Church of England needed to be purified. Another group felt that complete separation from the Anglican Church was necessary to return the church to its original state and to practice Christianity as was done in the times of the Apostles. One of the Separatists was Richard Clyfton, a Brownist parson at All Saints' Parish Church in Babworth, near East Retford, Nottinghamshire.

William Brewster was a former diplomatic assistant to the Netherlands. He was living in the Scrooby manor house while serving as postmaster for the village and bailiff to the Archbishop of York. He had been impressed by Clyfton's services and had begun participating in non-conformist services led by John Smyth in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. ^[3]

Brewster arranged for a congregation to meet privately at the Scrooby manor house. Services were held beginning in 1606 with Clyfton as pastor, John Robinson as teacher, and Brewster as the presiding elder. They called themselves “the Saints.”

Shortly after this, Smyth and members of the Gainsborough group moved on to Amsterdam.^[9]

Scrooby congregation member William Bradford of Austerfield kept a journal of the congregation's events that later was published as Of Plymouth Plantation. Of this time, he wrote:

Escape to the Netherlands

The following is from Wikipedia's Plymouth Colony and Pilgrim's Progress, published by Smithsonian Magazine.

By 1607, it had become clear that these clandestine congregations would have to leave the country if they wanted to survive. The Separatists began planning an escape to the Netherlands, a country that Brewster had known from his younger, more carefree days. For his beliefs, William Brewster was summoned to appear before his local ecclesiastical court at the end of that year for being “disobedient in matters of Religion.” He was fined £20, the equivalent of $5,000 today. Brewster did not appear in court or pay the fine.

But immigrating to Amsterdam was not so easy: under a statute passed in the reign of Richard II, no one could leave England without a license, something Brewster, Bradford and many other Separatists knew they would never be granted. So, they tried to slip out of the country unnoticed.

They had arranged for a ship to meet them at Scotia Creek, where its muddy brown waters spool toward the North Sea, but the captain betrayed them to the authorities, who clapped them in irons. They were taken back to Boston in small open boats. On the way, the local catchpole officers, as the police were known, “rifled and ransacked them, searching to their shirts for money, yea even the women further than became modesty,” William Bradford recalled. According to Bradford, they were bundled into the town center where they were made into “a spectacle and wonder to the multitude which came flocking on all sides to behold them.” By this time, they had been relieved of almost all their possessions: books, clothes and money.

After their arrest, the would-be escapees were brought before magistrates. Legend has it that they were held at Boston’s Guildhall, a 14th-century building near the harbor.

Bradford said that after “a month’s imprisonment,” most of the congregation were released on bail and allowed to return to their homes. Some families had nowhere to go. In anticipation of their flight to the Netherlands, they had given up their houses and sold their worldly goods and were now dependent on friends or neighbors for charity. Some rejoined village life.

If Brewster continued his rebellious ways, he faced prison, and possibly torture, as did his fellow Separatists. So, in the spring of 1608, they organized a second attempt to flee the country, this time from Killingholme Creek, about 60 miles up the Lincolnshire coast from the site of the first, failed escape bid. The women and children traveled separately by boat from Scrooby down the River Trent to the upper estuary of the River Humber. Brewster and the rest of the male members of the congregation traveled overland.

They were to rendezvous at Killingholme Creek, where a Dutch ship, contracted out of Hull, would be waiting. Things went wrong again. Women and children arrived a day early. The sea had been rough, and when some of them got seasick, they took shelter in a nearby creek. As the tide went out, their boats were seized by the mud. By the time the Dutch ship arrived the next morning, the women and children were stranded high and dry, while the men, who had arrived on foot, walked anxiously up and down the shore waiting for them. The Dutch captain sent one of his boats ashore to collect some of the men, who made it safely back to the main vessel. The boat was dispatched to pick up another load of passengers when, William Bradford recalled, “a great company, both horse and foot, with bills and guns and other weapons,” appeared on the shore, intent on arresting the would-be departees. In the confusion that followed, the Dutch captain weighed anchor and set sail with the first batch of Separatists. The trip from England to Amsterdam normally took a couple of days—but more bad luck was in store. The ship, caught in a hurricane-force storm, was blown almost to Norway. After 14 days, the emigrants finally landed in the Netherlands.

Back at Killingholme Creek, most of the men who had been left behind had managed to escape. The women and children were arrested for questioning, but no constable wanted to throw them in prison. They had committed no crime beyond wanting to be with their husbands and fathers. Most had already given up their homes. The authorities, fearing a backlash of public opinion, quietly let the families go. Brewster and John Robinson stayed behind to make sure the families were cared for until they could be reunited in Amsterdam.

Over the next few months, Brewster, Robinson and others escaped across the North Sea in small groups to avoid attracting notice. Settling in Amsterdam, they were befriended by another group of English Separatists called the Ancient Brethren. This 300-member Protestant congregation was led by Francis Johnson, a firebrand minister who had been a contemporary of Brewster’s at Cambridge. He and other members of the Ancient Brethren had done time in London’s torture cells.

Although Brewster and his congregation of some 100 began to worship with the Ancient Brethren, the pious newcomers were soon embroiled in theological disputes and left, Bradford said, before “flames of contention” engulfed them. After less than a year in Amsterdam, Brewster’s discouraged flock picked up and moved again, this time to settle in the city of Leiden, near the magnificent church known as Pieterskerk (St. Peter’s). This was during Holland’s golden age, a period when painters like Rembrandt and Vermeer celebrated the physical world in all its sensual beauty. Brewster, meanwhile, had by Bradford’s account “suffered much hardship. “But yet he ever bore his condition with much cheerfulness and contentation.”

Bradford wrote of their years in Leiden:

Brewster’s family settled in Stincksteeg, or Stink Alley, a narrow, back alley where slops were taken out. The congregation took whatever jobs they could find, according to William Bradford’s later recollection of the period. The pilgrims worked primarily in the cloth trade in Holland. Bradford worked as a maker of fustian (corduroy). Brewster’s 16-year-old son, Jonathan, became a ribbon maker. Others labored as brewer’s assistants, tobacco-pipe makers, wool carders, watchmakers or cobblers. The hours were long and grueling and were having a negative impact on the pilgrims’ health. Brewster, who was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, taught English at the University, but good-paying jobs were scarce, the language was difficult, and the standard of living was low for the English immigrants. Housing was poor, infant mortality high.

After two years the group had pooled together money to buy a house spacious enough to accommodate their meetings and Robinson’s family. Known as the Green Close, the house lay in the shadow of Pieterskerk. On a large lot behind the house, a dozen or so Separatist families occupied one-room cottages. On Sundays, the congregation gathered in a meeting room and worshiped together for two four-hour services, the men sitting on one side of the church, the women on the other. Attendance was compulsory, as were services in the Church of England.

Not far from the Pieterskerk today is William Brewstersteeg, or William Brewster Alley, where the rebel reformer oversaw a printing company. Its main reason for being was to generate income, largely by printing religious treatises, but it also printed subversive pamphlets setting out Separatist beliefs. These were carried to England in the false bottoms of French wine barrels or, as the English ambassador to the Netherlands reported, “vented underhand in His Majesty’s kingdoms.” Assisting with the printing was Edward Winslow, described by a contemporary as a genius who went on to play a crucial role in Plymouth Colony. He was already an experienced printer in England when, at age 22, he joined Brewster to churn out inflammatory materials.

The Pilgrim Press attracted the wrath of authorities in 1618, when an unauthorized pamphlet called the Perth Assembly surfaced in England, attacking King James I and his bishops for interfering with the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The monarch ordered his ambassador in Holland to bring Brewster to justice for his “atrocious and seditious libel,” but Dutch authorities refused to arrest him. For the Separatists, it was time to move again—not only to avoid arrest. They were also worried about war brewing between Holland and Spain, which might bring them under Catholic rule if Spain prevailed. And they recoiled at permissive values in the Netherlands, which, Bradford would later recall, encouraged a “great licentiousness of youth in that country.” The “manifold temptations of the place,” he feared, were drawing youths of the congregation “into extravagant and dangerous courses, getting the reins off their necks and departing from their parents.”

Emigration to New England

About this time, 1619, Brewster disappears briefly from the historical record. He was about 53. Some accounts suggest that he may have returned to England, of all places, there to live underground and to organize his last grand escape, on a ship called the Mayflower. There is speculation that he lived under an assumed name in the London district of Aldgate, by then a center for religious nonconformists. When the Mayflower finally set sail for the New World in 1620, Brewster was aboard, having escaped the notice of authorities.

The congregation obtained a land patent from the London Virginia Company in June 1619, with John Carver serving as their agent. They had declined the opportunity to settle south of Cape Cod in New Netherland because of their desire to avoid the Dutch influence.^[6] This land patent allowed them to settle at the mouth of the Hudson River. They sought to finance their venture through the Merchant Adventurers, a group of businessmen who principally viewed the colony as a means of making a profit, and added people to the passenger list who were not members of the congregation. The Saints called them “the Strangers.” Among those who were not of the congregation were Miles Standish, who had been hired to provide military leadership for the colony, and Christopher Martyn, designated ship’s governor.

Using the financing secured from the Merchant Adventurers, the Colonists bought provisions and obtained passage on two ships: the Mayflower and the Speedwell. They had intended to leave early in 1620, but they were delayed several months due to difficulties in dealing with the Merchant Adventurers, including several changes in plans for the voyage and in financing. The congregation and the other colonists finally boarded the Speedwell in July 1620 in the Dutch port of Delfshaven.^[8]

But like their attempts to flee England in 1607 and 1608, the Leiden congregation’s departure for America 12 years later was fraught with difficulties. In fact, it almost didn’t happen. In July, the Pilgrims left Leiden, sailing from Holland in the Speedwell, a stubby over-rigged vessel. They landed quietly in Southampton on the south coast of England. There they gathered supplies and proceeded to Plymouth before sailing for America in the 60-ton Speedwell and the 180-ton Mayflower, a converted wine-trade ship, chosen for its steadiness and cargo capacity. But after “they had not gone far,” according to Bradford, the smaller Speedwell, though recently refitted for the long ocean voyage, sprang several leaks and limped into port at Dartmouth, England, accompanied by the Mayflower. More repairs were made, and both set out again toward the end of August. Three hundred miles at sea, the Speedwell began leaking again. Both ships put into Plymouth—where some 20 of the 120 would-be Colonists, discouraged by this star-crossed prologue to their adventure, returned to Leiden or decided to go to London. Others transferred to the Mayflower, further burdening the already heavily loaded ship, which finally hoisted sail for America on September 6, 1620. About half of the 102 passengers were from the Leiden congregation.

Later, it was speculated that the crew of the Speedwell had intentionally sabotaged the ship to avoid having to make the treacherous trans-Atlantic voyage.^[15] The delays had significant consequences; the cost of the repairs and port fees required that the colonists sell some of their invaluable provisions. More importantly, the delays meant that everyone had to spend the entire winter on board the Mayflower off Cape Cod in what could only be described as squalid conditions.

On their arduous, two-month voyage, the 90-foot ship was battered by storms. One man, swept overboard, held onto a halyard until he was rescued. William Button succumbed to “a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner,” according to William Bradford. They were blown far to the north of their intended destination in the Hudson Bay, and were forced to look for somewhere else to land. Finally, though, on November 9, the Mayflower sighted the scrubby heights of what is known today as Cape Cod. After traveling along the coast that their maps identified as New England for two days, they dropped anchor at the site of today’s Provincetown Harbor of Massachusetts on November 11, 1620.

Mayflower Compact

The Pilgrims did not have a patent to settle this area; and some passengers began to question their right to land, worrying that there was no legal authority to establish a colony. In response to this, a group of colonists drafted and ratified the first governing document of the colony, the Mayflower Compact, while still aboard the ship as it lay off-shore. The intent of the compact was to establish a means of governing the colony. This social contract was written and signed by 41 Separatist men. It was modeled on the church covenants that Congregationalists used to form new congregations. It made clear that the colony should be governed “by just and equal laws for the good of the community” and those who signed it promised to keep these laws.^[27]which formed a colony composed of a “Civil Body Politic” This agreement of consent between citizens and leaders became the basis for Plymouth Colony’s government. John Quincy Adams viewed the agreement as the genesis of democracy in America. The colonists chose John Carver as their first governor in New England.

The group remained on board the ship through the next day, a Sunday, for prayer and worship. The immigrants finally set foot on land at what became Provincetown on November 13. The first task was to rebuild a shallop, a shallow draft boat that had been built in England and disassembled for transport aboard the Mayflower. It would remain with the Pilgrims while the Mayflower returned to England. On November 15, Captain Myles Standish led a party of sixteen men on an exploratory mission, during which they disturbed a Native American grave and located a buried cache of Indian corn. The following week, Susanna White gave birth to son Peregrine White on the Mayflower. He was the first English child born to the Pilgrims in the New World. The shallop was finished on November 27, and a second expedition was undertaken using it, under the direction of Mayflower master Christopher Jones. Thirty-four men went, but the expedition was beset by bad weather; the only positive result was that they found a Native burial ground and corn that had been intended for the dead, taking the corn for future planting. They planned to pay for the corn after they had established relations with the local Indians. A third expedition along Cape Cod left on December 6; it resulted in a skirmish with the Nauset Tribe (which became known as the "First Encounter") near modern-day Eastham, Massachusetts. The colonists decided to look elsewhere, having failed to secure a proper site for their settlement, and fearing that they had angered the local Native Americans by robbing their corn stores and firing upon them. The Mayflower left Provincetown Harbor and set sail for Plymouth Harbor.^[28]

The Mayflower dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor on Dec. 17, an area under the charter of the newly formed Plymouth Council for New England. As they were exploring the area, they found Pautuxet, an Indian village that was abandoned because all the inhabitants had died the previous year, possibly from small pox. It was in an area that Captain John Smith of Jamestown had labeled “New Plymouth” on his maps, and the name seemed appropriate.

During the next several months, through the cold, New England winter, the settlers lived mostly on the Mayflower and ferried back and forth to shore to build their new storage and living quarters. and 45 of the 102 passengers died that first year. The settlement’s first fort and watchtower was built on what is now known as Burial Hill (the area contains the graves of Bradford and other original settlers).

Pilgrims

The Plymouth colonists became known as “Pilgrims” based on William Bradford's original phrase describing the Saints that had left Leiden to travel aboard the Mayflower to the New World. They left Leiden, he said, "that goodly & pleasante citie which had been their resting place for near 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes, & looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to ye heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits."⁵

"These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city" (Hebrews 11:13-16, KJV).

Treaty with the Wampanoag

On March 16, 1621, a tall Indian walked into Plymouth, said, “Welcome English.” and asked for beer. He was Samoset, Sagamore of the Abenaki, a tribe in the area of Maine, and had learned some English from the fishermen and traders who visited his territory.

Samoset had been visiting Massasoit Ousamequin (c.1581 – 1661), the Sachem of the Wampanoag Confederation. He stayed with the Pilgrims for a day and a night, answering their questions about the local countryside and tribes. He told them that the Nauset, who had attacked them when they stopped on Cape Cod, were still angry about the people kidnapped by Captain Hunt. He told them that the people of Pautuxet had all died of a terrible sickness the previous year, except one who was not present during the plague, an Indian by the name of Tisquantum who had a better command of English than he did. Samoset said that he would arrange a meeting between Tisquantum (Squanto) and the Pilgrims. Samoset also talked about Massasoit Ousamequin, the great sachem, or king of the Pokanokets, who was the leader of the Wampanoag Confederation. Massasoit Ousamequin was currently in the area with the 300-strong Nemasket people.

Samoset left on Saturday morning but returned the next day with five Indian men who wished to trade furs for English goods. It was the Sabbath, so the Pilgrims fed them and asked them to come back another day. The next day, Samoset returned with Tisquantum, who informed the colonists that the great Massasoit Ousemequin was waiting nearby with the Nemaskets and wanted to meet with the Pilgrims.

Later that day, Massasoit Ousemaquin did appear, with his brother Quadequina and 60 of his men, at the top of the hill overlooking the colonists. Although there was some initial reluctance on the part of both parties to send emissaries, they eventually met and exchanged gifts and entertainment. Edward Winslow was sent to Massasoit with some knives and a copper jewel chain as gifts--and Massasoit was told that King James of England saluted him with love and peace and accepted him as a friend and ally - that the Pilgrims only desired peace and trading. Massasoit liked what he heard. There had been a significant decrease in the numbers of his people, due to the recent plagues, and he felt that his people were at a disadvantage to the Massachusett tribe. The Pilgrims wanted a peace treaty, they would make powerful allies against his enemies in the region, so he willingly undertook the negotiations. Squanto worked to broker peaceable relations between the Pilgrims and the local Pokanokets. He played a key role in the early meetings in March 1621, partly because he spoke English.

At the peace negotiation, Ousemequin was met at the river by Captain Myles Standish and Elder William Brewster. They saluted one another and he was taken to William Bradford's house for the negotiations with Governor John Carver. Ousemequin Massasoit was given some liquor, fresh meat, and some biscuits. Massasoit and the Pilgrims agreed to a treaty which said that none of Massasoit's men would harm the Pilgrims--and if they did, he would send them to the Pilgrims for punishment. And if anyone did unjust war against Massasoit, the Pilgrims would come to his aid. They also agreed that when trading, the Indians would not bring their bows and arrows, and the Pilgrims would not bring their guns. The meeting was the beginning of Massasoit's long-term friendship and defense pact with the Pilgrims.

At the death of John Carver in April of 1621, William Bradford was elected the new governor of the colony. Also in April 1621, the Mayflower finally returned to England, and the colonists began working to establish their village and then to repay their debts.

Tisquantum stayed and lived with the Pilgrims for 20 months, acting as a translator, guide, and advisor. It was William Bradford who nicknamed him Squanto, although Edward Winslow, who became his great friend, continued to call him Tisquantum. He introduced the settlers to the fur trade and taught them how to sow and fertilize native crops, which proved vital since the seeds which the Pilgrims had brought from England largely failed. As food shortages increased, Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford relied on Squanto to pilot a ship of settlers on a trading expedition around Cape Cod and through dangerous shoals. During that voyage, Squanto contracted what Bradford called an "Indian fever." Bradford stayed with him for several days until he died, which Bradford described as a "great loss."

Read more:

http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-Mi-So/Samoset.html#ixzz5Ct5vNGxm

http://mayflowerhistory.com/massasoit/

http://mayflowerhistory.com/tisquantum/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Colony

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrooby_Congregation

https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/plymouth-colony

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrims_(Plymouth_Colony)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bradford_(Plymouth_Colony_governor)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Brewster_(Mayflower_passenger)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robinson_(pastor)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/pilgrims-progress-135067108/#8ACKf2p19IMdiXgk.99
‎ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patuxet

http://www.pilgrimhallmuseum.org/pdf/The_Plymouth_Colony_Patent.pdf

http://www.histarch.illinois.edu/plymouth/townpop.html