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Anna Scott

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American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1018.058

They were the people who were possibly leaving because of the lack of jobs in England, because of the risks around poor harvests or wanting newer opportunities, plague being around. You know, there were lots of reasons why they possibly wanted to leave England. There was one little group of children, four children, who were sent on the voyage

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1040.188

with no parents because the man they had thought was their father had divorced their mother and sent them away believing that they were the product of adultery. So there's less different backstories for all of these characters, if you like, on the Mayflower. And some of them are quite sad.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1058.66

So you have got these two different groups, the saints and the strangers, and that becomes a challenge, particularly as things progress and it becomes clear. that they're not heading to the place that they intended to go to.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1074.992

I think because you've got the two different groups, it's hard to say who were the leaders, if you like, because I think you've got leaders within the pilgrim group, but there were certainly differences and difficulties between these two groups. So the first governor of the colony, once they got to America, was called John Carver, and he... actually died quite quickly after they arrived.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1098.576

So he wasn't governor for very long. And after that, William Bradford became the governor. And he had been a young man who was only 18 years old when he originally fled England with William Brewster, who's sometimes known as the Pilgrim Elder, kind of an advisor, a preacher for them at times. He printed pamphlets and was quite prominent in the Leiden community.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1124.216

So Bradford, when they made the voyage, he was 30 years old. And so he would go on to become their leader. And he was governor on and off for many years after the establishment of the colony.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1172.099

Yeah, I think possibly one of the most challenging relationships that I remember William Bradford describing in his diary was between the pilgrims and one of the crew. And he's one of the few people who actually died on the voyage And he describes in detail how this particular man was, he was basically being really horrible to the pilgrims and really mean to them. They were seasick.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1200.284

It was not a good voyage. And I think he was being horrible to them about that. And Bradford used it as an opportunity for a lesson in describing God's providence. He talked about God's providence before, about how God has provided for them and effectively gives them signs and shows the way.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1218.576

Because in this case, this man who was, he used the word contemning, he was despising the pilgrims, then dies in quite an elaborate and horrible way. Yeah. And all the crew, they all remark upon the fact that it's because he'd been so horrible and that for Bradford, this is God's providence.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1239.105

So there was obviously tensions, you know, between those who were leading the ship in terms of the crew, those who were leading the pilgrim group. And then as they get towards America, the leading strangers, if you like, the non-pilgrims, who will be thinking about the needs of their own families.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1257.918

So the other thing that you need to think about in terms of who's on this ship is, it is the nature of these families. And there are children of different ages. You said that there's one passenger who gave birth, another one gave birth a bit later and had a child called Peregrine, which means pilgrim. And it would certainly have been challenging.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1277.672

And there were the separatist families and the other group were also families as well, a mixed group.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1301.846

I think it would certainly have been life-changing. Just, you know, the length of the voyage, the... I think the strength of their faith must have been significant in helping them to cope with it. You know, whether or not they did cope with it. The colony governor that died when they got there, his wife died six weeks later and Bradford described that was of a broken heart.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1326.215

I mean, they must have had such stress that...

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1331.038

That kind of thing was happening. And that was how they described that. But this, you know, the stress they were under on the voyage, no doubt impacted their health and survival rates after they got there.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1346.414

Well, I think shipped biscuits and things like that would have been important. It would have been hard to get your five-a-day fruit and veg, certainly. And they had to do things like, because of the delays in the voyage I mentioned in the previous episode, I think they had to sell some butter at Southampton.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1364.648

to help pay some of the debts they were accruing because of the delays that they've had and because of having to fix the ships and things. Something like butter, that's got lots of fats and that would have been good for them to have had. So to have lost that...

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1379.042

To have lost some of your food stores, for there to have been more people on the ship, you know, there were lots of things that would have been challenging.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1388.587

But actually, this pattern of, you know, almost verging on having that starvation, if you like, that wasn't necessarily the case for that first voyage, but it was something that happened within the colony over the subsequent years because of... the challenges of growing your own food as well. So it was the start of a very difficult period for a lot of them.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1464.707

Yes, I think it probably helped them have vindication for what they saw that they were doing and what they were wanting to achieve. It must have helped them through. I think what's really interesting about the Pilgrim's story is how it's been picked up and how it's been retold and actually the history of the history is as significant in many ways. William Bradford was on the ship

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1491.158

20 years later, he wrote his diary. So it wasn't, he didn't write it at the time. He was reflecting on it sometime later. And he was then telling the story of his life, basically. His own story got lost for a period, turned up again in the Bishop of Fulham's library in London.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1508.82

In the 1850s, his diary had got lost around the time of American independence, but it ended up back over here and was repatriated to the States and was picked up again. And then you have the formation later that century, the General Society of Mothar Descendants and... References to the story by politicians.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1532.962

So John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, refers to the pilgrims in an important speech in 1802, foregrounding the importance of that team building, you've called it, that was enshrined in a document that they had to create to record their agreement to deal with the tensions that there were between the saints and the strangers.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1587.199

I think the weather had something to do with it. We've talked about it was the wrong time of year and they hit some weather when they started to get near the coast and they ended up around the back side of Cape Cod and where that land sticks out. So you've got Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod and they were the far side of that piece of land.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1609.867

And so because of the weather being so bad, they came up to the tip, to that top where Provincetown is now, and they moored themselves there. And they decided that they couldn't get down to where they'd been intending to go around Hudson Bay area. And they were just about to hit wintertime. And so they had to make a decision about where they were going to stay.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1636.54

And that's when these conversations were having to happen. There was the realization that people weren't happy. They weren't happy that they were in the wrong place. And they also knew that the permission they got was then invalid. So what were they going to do? They had to come to some kind of resolution because they knew they needed to work together if they were all going to survive.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1667.273

Yeah, and I think maybe the most famous words in it is that they described themselves as a civil body politic. So they agreed that they would work together for the mutual benefit of the whole group to establish their colony in the hope that they could then all survive. So they continued in the way that they had planned, but just in a slightly different area.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1692.643

They didn't stay off the tip of Provincetown. a harbour, a natural harbour where they could moor the ship while they worked out where they were actually going to live and so they spent some time scouting that area looking for that place.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1731.997

Yeah, so on the map they had, it was called Plymouth, we talked about. The two Plymouths and that was there, but it was Betuxet. And it was directly across, if you like, from where they had been moored, where Provincetown now is. And there was an area where it was easier to park the ship effectively.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1817.586

I think it was really to address the risk of conflict among the passengers and probably among those leading men particularly.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1836.938

Yes, and it did ultimately do that. It did go back to England, but I think much later than they'd intended.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1844.244

Yeah, they couldn't do that straight away.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1863.174

I think there's a lot less known about the crew than there are about the passengers. And the passengers who we know the most about are the ones who had descendants. So logically, some of the crew, they did go back, you know. But actually, the period in the six months following the landing was dire in terms of survival. So some of them will have died as well because this is when disease occurs.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1891.555

set in for a lot of them.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1907.582

Okay, well, I talked about John Quincy Adams a little bit and his speech that he made in 1802. And it was at this point that the Pilgrim's story which had been a story of religious significance. It was about faith and the foundation of churches where people were free to worship for themselves up to that point.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1928.116

And this is when the religious story becomes used in a more political way and it becomes a civic story. And this is when America, the United States of America, is creating its own origin narratives based on the stories of the people who came there first, who were European. This obviously overlooks the significance and importance of the indigenous people who were there already.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1954.515

So John Quincy Adams, his own father, John Adams, had been one of the founding fathers of that United States of America. And so he talks about the compact in this political way by linking it to the recently drafted Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This is what he says in his speech. He gives this speech at Plymouth Ravcon for Father's Day.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

1981.315

One remarkable incident is the execution of that instrument of government by which they formed themselves into a body politic the day after their arrival upon the coast. This is perhaps the only instance in human history of that positive original social compact which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only legitimate source of government.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

2003.166

Here was a unanimous and personal assent by all the individuals of the community to the association by which they became a nation. So they're using this story to represent the origins of the new nation.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

2018.617

And it becomes significant even more following the Civil War because Thanksgiving is adopted nationally as a holiday. Okay.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

2065.582

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's interesting to think about what we understand their vision for the colony was and possibly how it developed. Because there's quite significant shifts between the first generation who land there and establish the colony. And then what's happened as you get to the next generations is, and the feeling that they need to spread that next generation.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

2092.104

And so the core ideals of the colony and the religious practice that were held by the original leading pilgrims effectively break down over time as those other generations follow.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

2156.158

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really important to think how the story is being used and why it's being used. And so you can look at that depending on who is telling the story and which bits of the story they choose to tell. One of the things that for many years, particularly in Britain,

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

2173.02

the pilgrims have been known as the pilgrim fathers, which I've challenged by pointing out the fact that actually there were some women on that boat. You know, it seems like a basic thing. And the idea of pilgrim fathers creates as well, I think, an image in your head of elders, perhaps wise older men.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

2193.816

And so beyond the idea of there being women there contributing to ultimately the success of the colony, It's also, I think, important to remember that when they were fleeing England and Leiden, to some extent, they were young. So they weren't these elders, which are often represented, particularly from the American side, because they were older when they were in America.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

2222.515

But when they were here and when they were making decisions to leave England and Holland, they were young, they were radical. It's a lot easier to risk things, I think, for younger people sometimes. And that has got to be part of this story. William Bradford was 18 when he fled England. He was 30 when they left Holland. And he was the leader of the colony within a year.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

223.752

Of course. So we all have heard of the Mayflower and the second ship was called the Speedwell. And we're going to hear about whether or not it lived up to its name. But you might be able to guess for yourself because obviously it's not one of the ships that anybody's ever heard of. Yeah, absolutely.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

2245.794

And so he shaped that story. They were having children. They were young children. You know, that's a significant thing to think about in terms of why were they doing what they were doing and how did they manage to achieve it?

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

2295.832

Thanks so much, Don.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

242.463

So on these two ships are in Southampton and the separatist group, the Pilgrims, the Saints, all of these different names have been used for that group. They are on the Speedwell. That's the ship that they've bought for this voyage. So they've invested by buying themselves a ship Selling their homes in the places that they originally came from.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

265.18

They've come from Leiden in Holland and originally they lived in England in rural parts of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. So each time they've moved on, they've had to sell everything and take with them what they can carry.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

278.152

So they're ready to go and they have come to meet the Mayflower, which is the ship that has been hired by the financial backers, the merchant adventurers who are based in London. And on that ship are some people who are seeking out new lives, but not necessarily for the same reasons as the pilgrims. So they've not got the same religious motivations. The pilgrims also have been called separatists.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

306.706

They wanted to be separate from the Church of England at a time when that was risky to the point of risking death because you were going against the head of the church who was the head of the state, the king at that time, and you would be risking death. Your safety, for sure, and possibly risking your life.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

326.754

So one of the motivations for the pilgrims in travelling so far away from England was really to be able to get on with worshipping in the way that they wanted to, far away from that gaze of the king. It was further away than when they had been in Holland, but even being in Holland hadn't been far enough for them.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

347.575

And I think in some ways they were given permission to go over to America because they then would have been a bit out of sight and out of mind. And so I guess it was easier to be able to look the other way for those in England who disagreed with what they wanted to achieve. The merchant adventurers, they were in it for the money, as you've said.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

369.664

They had paid for the voyage and for the colony to be able to set themselves up. They'd given that investment, but there was a debt that was then owed by all of those who were going to establish the colony. But it wasn't just about them getting that debt paid back. It was really about opening up new avenues for trade because there was a feeling that there would be

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

390.329

raw materials and resources that could be brought back to England, to Europe, to be traded, to make more money. So it was really about establishing those connections where trade could then prosper. I think there's another bit of the story about how successful that was for the Pilgrims after they established the colony, because those things really didn't always go well.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

413.882

So beezer pelts, for example, were important. in terms of currency for things like trade. And sometimes they had ships, things to be sent back to help pay off the debt. And then that was captured by pirates and all sorts of things went wrong for them. So there was this plan, but it didn't always go to plan. And that's what's about to happen when they're in Southampton.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

439.292

So both of these ships set sail. It's the summertime, so that's fine. And they go out into the Atlantic. But the speedwell starts to leak.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

472.602

That's right. So they make their way back, not all the way back to Southampton this time. They pull into the port at Dartmouth. So that's a little bit further along the south coast of England, but not very far when you think about the vast journey that they're about to undertake.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

490.049

So they decide that they're going to try and fix the speedwell and they sit there for about a week while that's happening. And at this point, the passengers are getting pretty worried.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

501.654

And the captain, the master of the ship, doesn't even want to let them get off the ship because he thinks that some of them are going to run away because there's a lot of discontent around what's going on and people start to lose their nerves. So they manage to fix the ship and they set sail again, both of the ships, the Mayflower and the Speedwell.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

540.888

Yeah, so I think squashed is probably the way to describe it. Yeah, there wouldn't have been a lot of space. The fact that they had carried wine on the ship, it has been described as a sweet-smelling ship. I think there could have been worse things that it could have carried. So I guess that was not as unpleasant as it could have been.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

562.04

I think the other thing to note about the voyage, which is a positive for the pilgrims and perhaps one of the reasons why the story has become so successfully well known, is the fact that not a lot of them died on the way over. So although the conditions would have been harsh and hard and difficult, there wasn't rampant disease on that journey.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

588.234

It was certainly challenging after they got over to America. But unlike other voyages that had been happening around that time, there wasn't a vast amount of sickness that was happening. So it is worth noting that.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

615.993

So they set off again into the Atlantic and it turns out that the repairs that they'd made to the speedwell were really not good enough and it continued to leak. One of them wrote about how it was open and leaky as a sieve. So that's not really something that you want to be travelling over all the way across the Atlantic on. So they decided to come back again.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

636.505

And this time they pull in in Plymouth, which is, again, further along on the south coast of England. And they are there fairly briefly and ultimately decide that the speedwell isn't going to make it. Bear in your mind, this is the ship that they bought for the voyage. The other one was hired, so they'd made an investment in this.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

658.877

And then you've got the problem of having two groups of people and one ship. So you've got all of the separatists, the pilgrims from Leiden in Holland, and then you've got these other economic migrants, if you like, on the Mayflower. And to put everybody onto one ship, onto the Mayflower, means that it's inevitably going to be much more uncomfortable for those of them that are on there. Yes.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

684.957

And there's also that discontent that people have started to express in Dartmouth. And some people decided to not continue with the void at that point. Yeah. They already knew they were risking their lives, but they were also then saying, we're not going to do this, but they didn't have anything else to go home to. They'd sold their houses, they'd given up their jobs.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

707.973

I mean, it was a real disaster for some of them. They had to do things like they sold some butter to raise more money because of the delays. So it was a saga.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

756.932

Yes, yes and no. So there's a strange relationship with the Plymouth and the Plymouth. So the Pilgrims accidentally stopped at Plymouth in England and they end up in a place that's called Plymouth in New England in America.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

770.744

But both of those things are accidental because the Plymouth that they get to in America had already been named on a map that had been created by John Smith, Pocahontas John Smith, in the years previously.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

797.36

Yeah, I mean, it's logical. Certainly there's plenty of places in the world that are named after places that people have come from. Boston, Massachusetts, there were a lot of people from Boston, Lincolnshire that were involved in that. And that was 10 years after this. But no, the Plymouth thing, there was this new Plymouth It wasn't an established place.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

817.169

It was an abandoned Native American settlement called Patuxet. But on the English map, it was already called Plymouth and they'd seen that map. And yeah, the other Plymouth, that was just because of the speed well-being, a dodgy ship.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

855.638

Yeah, so it's hurricane season.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

859.143

It's not, you know, if you were going to get on a ship now, you're not allowed. You're not allowed to do it this time of year. And so the weather inevitably was going to be bad. The voyage, it took them 66 days. So September, what kind of time are you going to get there? It's going to be the middle of winter. They've got no homes to live in. They don't know where they're going to live.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

883.709

It's extremely cold. How can they start growing their food? You know, all of these things, which if you're going to do create a colony 101, those things aren't going to be on that list.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

925.051

Yeah, I mean, I think when you say they were religious and they weren't religious, everybody had to be religious to some degree because it was the law. You know, you had to go to church and you had to follow the rules of the church. The king was the head of the church. The king was the head of state. It was pretty strict.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

943.238

This period of time was when people started to question some of those rights that we now take for granted, you know, around religious tolerance and people being able to worship God or actually not worship God. Those arguments were being made by people who were associated with these people at that time.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

962.353

They were leaders at that time in England, in Holland, and some of them were obviously traveling over to America as well, partly to escape England.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?

991.721

So you've got on the ship the people that we've referred to as the saints. So the pilgrims saw themselves as the saints. They believed in predestination, that there was a place in heaven for them because they'd been selected by God. And the other people who were outside of that group were referred to sometimes as the strangers. So they were the less religious people, if you like.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1079.494

Okay, so Leiden happened a year after they got to Holland. There's loads of things that happened on the way for them to get to Holland. So although you said it's not far across there, it was a bit of a saga for them getting over there.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1094.893

Yeah, that's fine. I mean, some of the men ended up off the coast of Norway en route to Amsterdam. So it was not as easy as they hoped. However, once they got to Amsterdam and they were all reunited because the men had been split up from the women in a...

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1111.181

bit of a crisis while they were trying to escape because as well the other thing about leaving a country to go to another country what makes that easy is if you've got permission to go and they weren't allowed they didn't have permission to leave they didn't have what we would now they didn't have a passport in the way that we we would have they didn't have that permission and they were actually hiding from the authorities and escaping illegally

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1135.814

so that was a challenge for them but yeah when they got there i think it's useful to understand the context of the fact that over in england they'd been debating the rights and wrongs of how to organize themselves into a church and these debates didn't stop when they got to the netherlands When they got over to Amsterdam, they were actually, I guess you could say they were falling out.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1164.022

The debates were challenging for them. And so the man who had led them to Amsterdam, the preacher Richard Clifton, who had been the minister at a church in a village called Babworth, not far from Scrooby, before he was sacked, he had taken them across there. But then there was a rift, there was a break, and there was disagreements among the elders.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1193.334

And so the group we know became the Pilgrims on the Mayflower moved to Leiden under the supervision of John Robinson, who had been Clifton's assistant.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1207.52

That's a difficult question to answer. There are some catalogues of names of people at the time who they knew were from England. They were families, so there were a fair few people. And when the group escaped from England on a boat that had come from Gainsborough up the River Trent out into the Humber, there were a few people that got on the boat in Gainsborough. about 12 people.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1234.846

And then by the time they got to their rendezvous in the Humber, there were 80 of them. So they'd pick people up on the way. So we know that that's how many people there were in that particular escape attempt. So I would think some of those people then were the ones who moved with Robinson, who had come from some of the villages around here. And a lot of the people were related here.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1306.872

They did. And so when you say how many people were there, it's different to the number when you get towards 16, 20, a bit later on, because they're having children. And so, you know, the more of them, it would have grown, that group would have grown. And they were quite young families, a lot of the people at the time escaping from England. So...

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1329.485

When you say as well that it was a simpler life, I think it's useful to think about how different a life it would have been.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1336.591

They were coming from rural England and they were still in an urban setting. And they were having to do the kinds of jobs that they wouldn't have been used to doing. back in England as well. So a lot of it was to do with the cloth trade, weaving cloth, that kind of thing.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1355.247

But it wasn't agriculture or husbandry, which would have been familiar to a lot of them if you think about the landscape of England, where they came from.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1368.889

No, yeah, that's right. That's right. They were still arguing with people, though, and still doing things that potentially put them at risk, including William Brewster, who set up his own printing press. And he was printing pamphlets that were seen to be seditious by the king in England. In the end, actually, he had to go into hiding because of the jeopardy around the attention towards that.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1394.046

It still wasn't good to be upsetting the king in England, even though they were over in Holland.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1421.294

That's right. So there were some interesting things happening in Europe. And you're actually seeing at this time, the power effectively shifts from Southern Europe to Northern Europe. Amsterdam was a really key center in terms of trade and expansion. Because this is the period when colonialism begins. The colonies are being established in different places.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1446.301

And it's those northern cities that start to lead the way in that. And so the power and the wealth that had been centered in the Catholic South is starting to shift. And that's all happening at this time.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1504.659

Yes, that's right. I think the pilgrims weren't as savvy in terms of the economics of things, perhaps, as some others during that period and in the years that followed. They were duped quite often, you know, in terms of their financial dealings.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1521.884

And although the finance was there for colonisation and those voyages to explore and establish themselves in other places, the Dutch did invite the pilgrims to do that with them. But at the end of the day, they went to London to finance what they did and they didn't do it in partnership with the Dutch.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1604.144

Yeah. And as you say, Virginia. So they were interested in a particular area. And as you will know, as we'll find out, that's not exactly where the Pilgrims ended up.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1620.799

Yeah, so there'd been previous contact, certainly, and exploration of the coast. So Captain John Smith, who you may know from the Pocahontas story, he'd been around there and he'd mapped that coast around 1616. And he'd brought that map back and shown it to the king. And they had named places along that coast.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1643.812

Some of those places may have been where there had been Native American settlements, for example. But on that map, he named one of the places as New Plymouth. That wasn't a place at that point that had got any English people living there. They just got a map and they were going to put a load of British names on it.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1691.653

Yeah, so as we head towards 1620, you have to appreciate that it's been 12 years that the pilgrims, the separatists, are in Holland before they leave. But there are a different set of reasons that pushes them towards that decision. And one of those reasons is there has been this truce with Spain. Spain's a Catholic country, and they really did not like the Catholics.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1719.944

So there's also the irony here, which you can find throughout the story of the pilgrims, who are a group of people seeking religious tolerance to be able to practice religion freely in the way that they chose. but they were extremely intolerant of other sets of beliefs or practices that were different to theirs.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1744.458

So it carries through the story and that's also something obviously that happens when they get to America and meet the indigenous communities there. So yeah, truce with Spain under threat, what's going to happen if you're at the far end of Protestantism, at the other end of the spectrum, that's a real concern. There are other reasons as well.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1769.112

So we've talked about the fact they were from a rural area in England and they'd started to have children or they were having more children when they were in Holland. And there was a feeling that they wanted their children to understand what it was to be English. They didn't want their children to be too Dutch almost. So they had also heard about the voyages that had been going across to America.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

178.831

Hello, Anna. Nice to have you. Thank you. It's great to be here and be invited back again.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1831.658

It amazes me how much they did know and how many letters went backwards and forwards across the ocean in the period, particularly after they'd got there, but also in the period before. There were accounts of voyages and what had happened. But you're absolutely right when you think about how crazy it was, because one of the people on the ship, he was called Robert Cushman,

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1856.618

He didn't actually go on the final voyage, partly because of the stress of it, but he had heard about a terrible account of, I think, 180 people who had gone on a voyage and I think 130 of them had died in a fairly...

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1871.949

horrific way from disease you know as a consequence of it wasn't a healthy place to be a ship going that far for that long and many people didn't make it so you do find yourself asking why on earth would they do it and so one of the recurring themes whenever things go wrong for them or there's something exceptionally challenging is to think about what they've written about their belief in God's providence

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1900.825

So this idea of providence that God will provide for them, God will save them, God will support them. I think that has got to be at the core of why they were doing what they were doing.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

1971.311

Yes, although there are caveats around that. So when they want to go over to America, they don't go on their own. There are two ships. And the separatists are on one ship, a ship that they purchase called the Speedwell. And spoiler alert, the Speedwell doesn't speed very well. And then there's a second ship, the Mayflower. And on the Mayflower, there are people who...

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2000.633

you could call economic migrants. They're the people that are going in search of a better life, possibly escaping the famine or the plague or the bad harvest or the lack of jobs in England, looking for, as you say, economic opportunities, land for themselves in that, what was called a new world, not a new world to the people that had lived there for decades,

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2025.188

Some millennia, but yeah, new to this part of Europe. So there were opportunities. I think you can look at the history of Plymouth's colony, the establishments they got over there in economic terms, and eventually it was subsumed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, based in Boston, who economically were a lot more effective and a lot more successful than the Pilgrims ever were.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2082.654

So they bought the Speedwell and that was the ship that was going to carry the separatist congregation from Leiden over to America. And that was the intention. But they needed some people to come and support the development of the colony. Actually, that's what the investors wanted. They didn't want this to just be a religious project. It wasn't a religious project for them.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

209.053

There is actually a reference to them calling themselves pilgrims, and the reason we know so much about the story is because of the main guy, if you like, William Bradford, who became the governor of the colony in Plymouth once the pilgrims reached America. He was instrumental in telling their story.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2104.16

They wanted people who could work at the colony and to effectively repay the debt, the outlay that they invested to get the ships over there and to set the colony up. So the Mayflower as a ship was hired for this voyage. Originally it was built in Harwich and it was registered in Rotherhithe in London.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2124.216

And so the ship, both of the ships, made their way to Southampton to rendezvous there to then set sail together. So there had been a lot of negotiation with the adventurers. They were called the merchant adventurers, the financial backers of the voyage. And they had to have a patent, which was permission, like a contract, giving permission for them to be able to land in America to set up a colony.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2156.798

So there were lots of arrangements around what that deal looked like and how how long they'd have the debt to repay. And it was the seven year debt. And things changed fairly quickly. And the negotiations shifted over the terms of the agreement for how they repaid the debt. So

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2178.26

In the end, it was said that they were going to have to work seven days a week for the next seven years to repay the debt. And it was a pretty harsh agreement. And it came about in that way because of the failings that were about to happen after both of the ships set sail from Southampton. Because as we all know, the Mayflower is a famous ship on a famous voyage.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2202.218

But who's ever heard of the Speedwell? What happened there?

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2214.605

Yeah, I guess there's the Victorian period image. So it's a Victorian period for us here in England of pilgrims wearing black and white with big tall hats and buckles on them, which was just an invention of the 19th century. That's not necessarily what they look like. And the way that you can tell possibly what they were wearing is from the descriptions in their wills.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2238.82

So when somebody died or they thought they were imminently going to die... they would write out all of their property and what they wanted to have happen with it. And it included their furniture and also their clothes. And often the pilgrims had a lot of books as well.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2255.889

So you can tell a lot from the people based on what they listed as their property, what they were reading at the time and that kind of thing. And some of the clothes were different colours. They weren't all black, for example.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

227.757

He told the story of what their life was like in the colony once they arrived, but he also told lots of details about pilgrims

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2271.18

Well, did they? Yeah, I mean, that's a bit like Vikings with horns on the helmets. It's one of those myths that gets carried around.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2338.41

Yeah, that's right. So they've made all of these preparations for the voyage. They've bought the food that they think they need. They know that they've got this debt to pay. They know that they're going to have to work hard. And you've got to remember as well, they don't know where they're going. They don't know what it's going to be like when they get there.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

235.599

the story of what happened to them before the Mayflower reached the shores of America, where they came from in England, their trials and tribulations, what happened to them when they went over to Holland, and some of the reasons why they decided in the end to make that journey, to make that massive leap and travel over on the Mayflower to America.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2355.816

And the first thing that you've got to do is build your own village. I mean, where are they going to live? It's incredibly, the prospect of what they've got to do is incredibly difficult. in a land that they've never been to before. And they must have in mind that they may not make it. They've heard the stories of other people that have done it and it's gone really badly wrong.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2402.614

It really does. I think there's some interesting things that they've done differently, though. What is it that makes this particular voyage different? There were a lot of voyages that were about to happen around this time. And this becomes the famous one because of William Bradford's diary. He was going to become the colony governor. He wrote the history down.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2423.6

He knew the value of recording their story to underline what they hoped to achieve and then what happened to them. But the other thing is that you've got to remember it was a mixed group of people on the ship and it was men and it was women. So... If you combine those things together, it's a lot easier to have children, unlike in the early years of Jamestown, where it was just the men.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

2450.254

So they've already got this model for trying to establish a colony with what they hope are the right ingredients. But we learn later on that they really only managed to establish themselves because of the help that they get from others, particularly a couple of really important Native Americans that they meet over there.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

312.628

Yeah, that's one of the names that were given to the people at the time. So you're right there talking about the Church of England. So previously there'd been the Catholic Church. There was a big split under Henry VIII for lots of reasons. And I'm sure you've got an episode that covers that somewhere in the History Hit umbrella. Yes, indeed.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

331.36

So in terms of what these people wanted, another name that's used at that time is Puritans. So they wanted to purify the church and the things that they saw were wrong with the church. And a lot of that was around ritual and things that they thought were a hangover from the Catholic church. They wanted a direct relationship with God, particularly this group that we're talking about, the pilgrims.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

358.05

And eventually they didn't believe that they could reform the church from within like the Puritans did. They wanted to separate from the church entirely. So this is another reason why we call them separatists. They wanted to form their own churches and they wanted to worship together in congregations so that they effectively could manage their own churches.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

381.157

But at that time, that was a really dangerous thing to do because you've got the king who is the head of state, but he is also the head of the church. And so for you to want to break away from the church is really putting your odds with the state and with the king. And at that time, that was something that you would risk your life potentially by doing.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

402.175

You'd definitely be in trouble with the church courts. They all had...

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

406.921

courts and they would hear different offences if you like in those courts and they included things like you had to go to church in the village where you lived you weren't allowed to even travel to other churches for services and things like that so it was very strict you weren't allowed to preach in the church unless you were ordained to do that and

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

431.38

And there were lots of rules about things like baptism and making the sign of the cross and the robes that they had to wear. So there were particular leaders in the churches at the time that were pushing back against a lot of those rules. These were the Puritan-leaning ministers, but they eventually broke with the church and separated.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

455.69

So they were sacked from their jobs, they were rejected from the church, and that was happening in and around Scrooby at that time. there were actually two congregations of separatists, one based in Scrooby and one based in Gainsborough. And they were starting to feel threatened and were starting to think about how they could improve their lives and where could they go.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

482.793

And they had heard about Amsterdam and Holland and they had a sense that over there churches were allowed to practice more freely And there was more tolerance, the views that were different to the authoritarian rules of the state church. And so they thought that it might be better for them to leave the country entirely. And so this put them on a path to what was to come.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

523.433

Okay, so in England, let's have a think about that. The pilgrims who we've talked about living in Holland were in England before that, and they were from rural Nottinghamshire and rural Lincolnshire area. So they would have been familiar with farming, husbandry, those types of rural activities, and the jobs that go with those, so labouring, farming, those types of things. They weren't all...

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

550.899

Simple jobs, if you like. They were involved in different things, though, and there were the leaders who were in charge of things. So William Brewster, he lived at Scrooby Manor, which was a palace of the Archbishop of York. It was like an outpost. if you like, on the edge of the diocese at that time, which is the administrative area that the church operated in.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

574.098

His role has been described as a master of the post. So the thing about Scrooby, this very rural place where they lived, Scrooby is on what's known as the Great North Road. It's the main road that links Edinburgh with London. So that's where all the traffic goes.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

591.831

That's it. People would have travelled up and down there, some very important people. And that's also where the news travelled. So you're master of the post, then you receive the news and you pass the news on. So that's an interesting part of the story. We talk about the rural life in England, but there are connections amongst all of these people.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

612.643

So one of the other leaders, he lived in Norwich, but he came back to Nottinghamshire. He'd been at Cambridge University. They were traveling around and they were networking with their supporters and also with people who could fund them. So people who could pay for their education and that kind of thing as well.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

667.321

Yeah, but I think it's also important to think about the swings of attitudes that were happening at that time. So it's not a straight trajectory from Henry VIII to James I because Henry's daughter Mary reverted to Catholicism.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

684.225

And so, you know, things went backwards and forwards for quite a period. And there was a lot of jeopardy if you were on the wrong side at that time. So people were travelling across to Europe, for their own safety when they felt that they perhaps were under threat. And then as the Protestants returned, they would travel back. And so this pendulum was swinging throughout this period.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

709.232

And when James came to the throne after Elizabeth, some of the Puritans, those leading church people who would describe themselves as wanting to reform the church, really thought that he would come along, come down from Scotland, and help give them what they needed to make the church change.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

728.058

And so he came to the throne in 1603, but it became clear after a conference that they had the following years that he wasn't going to support them in that way. And he actually said about some of these protesting Puritans that he would, the quote was, he would harry them out as a land or else do worse if they wouldn't conform to what he wanted. So that really set it out for them.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

755.351

He wasn't going to be as tolerant of their views as they had hoped that he would be.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

790.017

Yes, absolutely, because I think there wasn't the type of scientific reasoning for things at that time. God was your reference point for explaining all of these things that were happening in the world. And although we tend to think, yes, there's a really strong religious reason for all of these things, there were economic reasons as well.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

809.931

But the economic reasons are often related to God or to religion. So there was plague around at that time. There had been a series of poor harvests. There was some enclosure of land going on so that rurally people that had owned land or had access to land, that was lost to them.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

831.208

And so it was affecting people's jobs and consequently affecting their prospects, affecting their wealth or their ability to earn money. And some of those types of things were at the time blamed on retribution from God or needing to change things to try and respond to why things were going badly. And that's how people would explain things to themselves.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

859.104

So in the context of England at that time, there were reasons why people perhaps came to the conclusion that it would be better to move on. And this applied to the pilgrims that we're talking about and, as we'll hear later on in the story, to some of the other people who were on the Mayflower ultimately.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

912.045

So we might think, okay, they'd heard about Amsterdam. They'd heard about these churches maybe by accident, but there was a connection. There was a connection with the place. And that's through one of the leading pilgrims, one of the most famous pilgrims, William Brewster. And he's the man who lived in Scrooby, in the manor at Scrooby.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

932.554

He had been educated to some degree by being sent to Cambridge University. And a lot of the leading men at that time who were involved in these debates around religion and what they should be doing in terms of the church and in terms of their own church and beliefs had also been educated at Cambridge University. It was an important network.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

956.87

But subsequent to that, he'd actually joined Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State to Holland, Sir William Davison. He'd been there himself. He'd been to Amsterdam. He'd seen what it was like. And so he had a sense of what was happening over there. And that had to have informed their opinion on what was going to happen. I also mentioned that there were two separatist groups in the Scrooby area.

American History Hit

The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

984.27

And the Gainsborough group, led by a priest called John Smith... who himself had been kicked out of the church as well, that that group had gone over to Holland slightly earlier. So there were groups going over and they would have been in touch and they were finding out about what life was like over there from these other contacts who'd also travelled in that direction.