In 1606, worried about the future of their faith, members of the church in Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, “separated” from the Anglican Church, declaring it hopelessly corrupt. In seventeenth-century England, Separatists had to go either underground or into exile. Since only the latter would permit them to practice their religious faith openly, exile was it. In 1608 some 125 members of the group departed England for the Low Countries. They were led by their pastor, John Robinson; church elder William Brewster; and a sixteen-year-old youth, William Bradford. After a brief stay in Amsterdam, the group settled in the town of Leyden. In 1619, however, disheartened by the difficulties they had encountered in making a living, disappointed by the failure of others in England to join them, and distressed because their children were being “subjected to the great licentiousness of the youth” in Holland, these “Pilgrims” decided to move again—to seek “a place where they might have liberty and live comfortably.”
The Pilgrims approached the Virginia Company about establishing a settlement near the mouth of the Hudson River on the northern boundary of the company’s grant. The London Company, though unsympathetic to the religious views of the Pilgrims, agreed with their request. Since the Pilgrims were short of money, they formed a joint-stock company with other prospective emigrants and some optimistic investors who agreed to pay the expenses of the group in return for half the profits of the venture. In September 1620, about 100 strong—only thirty-five of them Pilgrims from Leyden—they set out from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower.
Had the Mayflower reached the passengers’ intended destination, the Pilgrims might have been soon forgotten. Instead their ship touched America slightly to the north on Cape Cod Bay. Unwilling to remain longer at the mercy of storm-tossed December seas, they decided to settle where they were. Since they were outside the jurisdiction of the London Company, some members of the group claimed to be free of all governmental control. Therefore, before going ashore, the Pilgrims drew up the Mayflower Compact. “We whose names are underwritten,” the compact ran, “do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one another covenant and combine ourselves under into a civil Body Politick. . . and by Virtue hereof do enact. . . such just and equal laws. . . as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony.”
Thus early in American history the idea was advanced that a society should be based on a set of rules chosen by its members. The Pilgrims chose William Bradford as their first governor. In this simple manner, ordinary people created a government that they hoped would enable them to cope with the unknown wilderness confronting them.
The story of the first thirty years of the Pilgrims’ colony has been preserved in Of Plymouth Plantation, written by Bradford. Having landed on the bleak Massachusetts shore in December 1620 at a place they called Plymouth, the Pilgrims had to endure a winter of desperate hunger. About half of
The story of the first thirty years of pilgrim life in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is preserved in Governor William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation. A glimpse of the first colony is shown in this reconstruction.
Them died. But by great good luck there was an Indian in the area, named Tisquantum—Squanto— who spoke English! In addition to serving as an interpreter, he showed them the best places to fish and what to plant and how to cultivate it. They, in turn, worked hard, got their crops in the ground in good time, and after a bountiful harvest the following November, they treated themselves and their Indian neighbors to the first giving feast.
Bradford prided himself on treating the Indians fairly. We “did not possess one foot of land in this Colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors,” Bradford boasted. But the Indians yielded the land readily because so many had died of smallpox, likely brought by settlers. And the Pilgrims, after hearing of the Powhatan attack on Jamestown in 1622, ambushed a band of Massachusetts Indians, killing seven, and put the leader’s head atop a post at the Plymouth fort.
Yet by 1650 there were still fewer than 1,000 settlers, most of them living beyond the reach of the original church.
•••-[Read the Document Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation at myhistorylab. com
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