Anna Scott
speaker
160 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Anna Scott’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Thanks so much, Don.
Hello, Anna. Nice to have you. Thank you. It's great to be here and be invited back again.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You'd definitely be in trouble with the church courts. They all had...
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
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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