Story of the Pilgrims
The story of the Pilgrims has its origins in the stubbornness of a group of religious separatists - the Pilgrims from England and their fellows from Holland. That stubbornness was had its own roots in the earnest belief that the Protestant Reformation in England had not yet been completed. The King of England, they believed, was but a substitute for the Pope in Rome, and the Church of England was an imitation of catholicism. Like the Catholic Church of old, the Church of England was loath to countenance any group who refused to read from the Anglican Book of Prayers nor to recognize that an earthly monarch could be their religious leader.
The two groups of Pilgrims that came together and sailed for the New World were from England's northern counties and Leiden, Holland. The latter group had taken "separatism" to the practical extreme, and by 1620, had established a less-than-flourishing community. That Dutch community, moreover, became increasingly hostile to the Pilgrim outsiders, who were never totally accepted into the local economy and culture. Separatist youngsters, however, were beginning to become acculturated, and this was of growing concern to the Pilgrims who opted to emigrate.
Both groups of Pilgrims met in Southampton, England, and embarked for their six-week journey on the Mayflower. After two false starts that resulted in their leaving the second, smaller ship, Speedwell, behind, the journey to the New World was finally underway. Their original destination and charter was for settling lands near the mouth of the Hudson River in present-day New York. Harsh, undependable winds and dwindling supplies forced the group to make landfall in northeast Cape Cod.
While living on board the Mayflower, the Pilgrims dispatched a landing party to explore possible sites for their new settlement. They eventually stumbled upon an abandoned Indian village on the eastern shore of present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts. The previous inhabitants had either died from disease brought from contact with European sailors, or they had fled and joined with other tribes. In any case, their site already had cleared land for planting, as well as some stored food supplies. Those supplies would be help supplement the meager food supplies of the Pilgrims that first hard winter.
During that first hard winter, the Pilgrims must have doubted their ability to survive. Starvation and sickness wiped out about half their original 100 along with 18 of the 30 women of childbearing age. During that time heroic nursing measures by people like Miles Standish and future governor William Bradford helped pull the survivors through. Even so, it is doubtful that the first Plymouth settlers would have made it through another winter had it not been for the compassion and generosity of the local Wampanoag Indians. Plymouth eventually grew from Plymouth Plantation to become seven more settlements from its original founding in 1620. It was absorbed by the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1690, and its inhabitants were mainly subsistence farmers and fishermen.
Finally, one other significant element in the origins of the Plymouth Colony was likewise an idea, but this time not religious. It was a loyalty oath and a commitment to the rule of law known as the Mayflower Compact. Before disembarking to establish their settlement, the 41 men reaffirmed their allegiance to the King (as British subjects, not religious subordinates) and promised to obey those just laws that were needed for the good of the colony. The Mayflower Compact set the tone for the next 150 years of British colonial thought in the New World. When the rulers of Great Britain, 150 years later, decided to pass coercive rather than just laws, many colonists believed that the "compact" was broken. Descendants of the Pilgrim founders made another compact. This time it was the Declaration of Independence.
