Since last Monday was our annual Labor Day holiday, this seems a good time to reflect on some of the labor arrangements in the earliest days of what became the United States. Less than half, only 41 of the 102 passengers on the famous 1620 Mayflower voyage, were seeking a place to establish their own first-century style Christian community. These Separatist religious rebels had a vision and a plan, but lacked the funding to sail away to a new future. They sold what possessions they could and then sold themselves into indentured servanthood for a period of seven years.

The rest of the Mayflower passengers consisted of merchants, craftsmen, skilled workers, other indentured servants, and several orphaned children. The religious refugees referred to them as strangers, and strangers they were to the Separatists at the start of the voyage. The Investors from the Virginia Company had the financial wherewithal to finance the trip. Reluctantly, the Separatists agreed to a contract with them that secured financial backing in exchange for receiving the profits from their labor for a period of seven years. To boost their profits, the stockholders insisted the Separatists accept the strangers into their close-knit community as part of the deal.

Delayed Financial Gratification

Each adult male was granted a share in the joint-stock company. After seven years, the accumulated earnings were to be divided among the shareholders. During the seven-year indentured servant period, settlers were required to work in common, with each settler contributing everything to a typical store and withdrawing from it to meet their own needs and those of their families.  One-fifth – or about twenty – of the Mayflower passengers came as indentured servants. Most of the others were members of the Established Church of England (Anglican). Ironically, this was the very institution the Separatists had emigrated to Holland to escape a decade earlier.

When the Mayflower crew finally spotted land after two months at sea, they discovered they’d arrived north of the jurisdiction of the Virginia Company. Some among the group immediately decided their commitment as indentured servants was null and void. They believed they could now do as they pleased. To avoid chaos and conflicts before they even started establishing their new settlement, they worked out the details of the Mayflower Compact. Every adult male either signed it or had his mark, or “X,” witnessed on the document before anyone left the ship.

Those who came as indentured servants owed whatever they could grow, make, hunt, or fish to the community and the benefactors back in England. The labor was grueling, as were the living conditions. Half the indentured servants died within the first months in the new location. The other half of the non-indentured new arrivals were also in graves by the spring of 1621.

Send More Workers

The remaining few dozen colonists were desperate for help to establish a stable, long-lasting Colony. Several previous attempts to establish English settlements along the East Coast had failed. To avoid becoming another failed colony, the settlers sent appeals back to England, Scotland, and Ireland, requesting more assistance.

In the ensuing years, hundreds of others joined them. For most, their passage was paid for by their future masters. Between the arrival of the Mayflower and the Revolutionary War, it is estimated that as many as four out of five new immigrants came initially as indentured servants. They came believing they’d get food, clothing, and shelter in exchange for their labor. For people in the British Isles contending with grinding poverty and few prospects for a better future, this was an appealing deal. Men who accepted the offer could anticipate finishing their term of service and then getting their own land and financial compensation for their work. There was also the hope they might participate in local government once they were freemen.

Managing Indentured Servants

Early Plymouth law governed the fate of these indentured servants. When still more labor was needed, the Natives were sometimes forced into slavery. Europeans intentionally destroyed Native crops and means of supporting themselves. According to numerous cases recorded in the Plymouth Court Records, governing these indentured servants was a complex process.

After their period of indentured work, they would become free citizens of the Plymouth Colony. Colonial officials sought to ensure that they would be law-abiding and God-fearing citizens who would contribute to the well-being of the Colony after completing their service.

The servant’s master was responsible for the servant until the term of the contract was completed, and the length of the agreement could not be shortened. Thus, servants typically became adjunct members of their master’s household. This protected the Colony from assuming responsibility for those who, for whatever reasons, could no longer be productive members of the master’s household. Occasionally, the Court ruled the community, not the master, was responsible for a servant who was sick or mistreated. That may have laid a foundation for a future welfare system in the Colonies.

Immigration Issues Are Ancient History

Migration has been a part of the human experience for as long as humans have existed. Clear back in Genesis, God instructs Abram (Abraham) to pack up all his belongings and head out to a place he’s never been before, to receive the blessing God has in store for him. Famine, floods, wars, droughts, persecution – all these factors motivate an individual or a whole population of people to strike out for a new place. People immigrate from and to every continent, sometimes fleeing trouble, and at other times migrating in search of a fresh start.

Most immigrants make incredible sacrifices for the chance of finding something better. In the early 1600s, immigrants sold themselves into bondage to get to the New World. It was a price they were willing to pay to establish their own community based on their understanding of what the earliest Christian communities were like. Today, immigrants come eager to scrub floors, clear tables, wash dishes, cut lawns, pick crops, and work long hours at hard labor for low wages – hoping to create a better world for themselves and their children.

We set aside one Monday a year to pay tribute to the people whose labor literally built this country. For nearly two centuries, the majority of these laborers came as indentured servants.

Some information for this blog came from Plymouth Colony Archive Project and the Constitutional Rights Foundation. If you enjoyed this blog, you may also enjoy reading about Child Labor.

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Dyes that rendered clothing red, purple, or indigo were expensive; thus, most Separatist women wore clothing dyed brown, yellow, or blue. Many of the exiled Separatists living in Holland before sailing aboard the Mayflower worked in local textile factories. Some had looms in their homes where they made material to sell.

Not All Black and White

 All those paintings and images you’ve seen depicting Pilgrims dressed in black or gray and white, with buckled shoes and hats, are more legendary than accurate descriptions of their clothing. Buckles were expensive and didn’t become common until later in the seventeenth century. Most days, people wore various colored garments, reserving black or gray outfits for special occasions and the Sabbath.

Their undergarments were made of linen. Only the rich could afford cotton or silk. Women typically wore a petticoat, smock, shift, or chemise made of linen or wool with a wool dress over it. The dress consisted of a skirt and bodice, with sleeves connected with laces. The outfit was completed with a linen apron, which helped keep the skirt clean and could easily double as a sort of bag to hold things from the garden.

Government Regulations?

Washing one’s hair was a rare luxury. Men and women wore hats to keep their hair in place. Mary wore the typical linen cap, known as a coif. By the mid-1500s, English law required men to wear a woolen cap on Sundays, possibly as a government subsidy plan to support wool cap makers.

Buttons were reserved for decoration. People used laces or pins to hold clothing together. Fur garments came from cats, rabbits, beavers, bears, badgers, and polecats. They also used leather laces to tie their shoes. Women who could afford to do so hung containers of sweet-smelling spices, called pomanders, around their waists to disguise the horrid smells in the streets! Or in the case of Mary Brewster and her peers, to cover the foul smells aboard the ship.

Pack Very Lightly

Those who decided to emigrate to the New World had very limited space to pack personal items such as clothes. The chest the Brewster family brought with them on the Mayflower is on display at Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, MA. The 30” high by 50.5” wide by 19” deep chest had to hold everything the family would need for the long journey and their first months in their new home. It is made of Norwegian pine, readily available in Holland due to frequent trade between Holland and Norway. A chest was functional not only to hold their meager possessions, but could double as a table, a place to sit, or even a bed. People in that era often preferred to sleep sitting up; so a chest against a wall would make an adequate resting place.

As for what to carry in the chest, Mary probably relied on the suggestions contained in the “Provisions Lists” compiled by earlier settlers to Virginia. The lists suggested the amount of clothing, tools, household implements, and food each colonist should bring to last for the first year.

“Bring a Good Store”

Fellow Mayflower passenger Edward Winslow advised others planning to join the fledgling Plimoth Plantation colony to “bring a good store of clothes and bedding with you. Bring every man a musket. Bring paper and linseed oil for your windows, with cotton yard for your lamps.”

Being several months along in her pregnancy, Susanna White perhaps also convinced her husband William they had to bring along a cradle when they left Holland. She delivered Peregrine in November 1620 while the Mayflower was anchored in Provincetown Harbor. The infant’s name means “traveler” or “pilgrim. The cradle is on display at Pilgrim Hall. Since all the women continued to live on the ship for months as the men built their first houses, it is likely our Mary Brewster took a turn at rocking baby Peregrine to sleep in the cradle.

After they sailed away from Europe Mary Brewster and the others had to produce everything they needed until the next ships from Europe sailed into Cape Cod Bay. Eventually, they were able to get new supplies from Europe and life improved. When he died in 1643/4, Mary’s husband Elder William Brewster left a will that listed his possessions. The list included, “oneblew clothe suit, green drawers, a vilolete clothe coat, black silk stockings, skyblew garters, red grograin suit, red waistecoast, twany colored suit with silver buttons.”

Information for this article came from Local Histories, Learner.org, Mental Floss, and Pilgrim Hall.  Photo credit: Plimoth Plantation, Collection of Henry Price.

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A 17th-century wife had essentially only two choices. She could go along with her husband’s plans willingly or begrudgingly. Mary Brewster chose love over resentment, though her husband’s commitment to take this enormous risk put her and their children in danger on several occasions. It meant leaving a relatively secure and comfortable life in tranquil rural northern England to join the ranks of the desperate refugees, fleeing for safety across the North Sea.

Counting the Cost

Thinking the worst of her troubles were behind her, she settled into a new daily routine along the canals of the beautiful Leiden, just south of Amsterdam. All went well for a while. Her family grew by two additional sons. She was surrounded by women who made daily chores pleasant as they did them together. William occupied himself with reading and teaching English to international students at the new Leiden University. Their faith community grew and thrived under the capable leadership of Pastor John Robinson.

Then William started a publishing business. He decided to veer away from his original intent to translate various religious-themed books into English. Instead, he ventured into something much more bold and ultimately life-threatening. He not only published and illegally smuggled into England books critical of King James. Mary became essentially a single mother whose husband stayed out of sight and out of her reach as he spent a year dodging the king’s men, determined to find him and return him to England to face the consequences.

Excerpt from Mary Brewster’s Love Live

William managed to avoid capture. The Separatists found financial backing for their trip. After two failed efforts to leave, the Mayflower at last set sail in September 1620. After months away from land, they finally heard two wonderful words. Enjoy this excerpt from Mary’s story about that moment:

Then I heard a sailor from high up on the mast call out two of the most glorious words I ever heard. “Land Ho! Land on the horizon! Land Ho!” 

“Land!” A spontaneous cry of delight erupted everywhere, all over the ship. A chorus of cheers and laughter sounded out as we repeated land again and again. It was as sweet a sound as I ever heard. The younger folks even grabbed one another with hooked elbows and began dancing! It was a sight I shall never forget. I had not sufficiently appreciated what a blessing it is to have solid ground beneath me. I was oddly surprised that the sailors seemed as thrilled to sight land as we landlubbers were. I suppose the near sinking of the ship from the broken beam in that massive storm had them all wanting a respite from the ocean. 

Many of us were already on the upper deck, preparing for what bit of dignity we could offer the Button boy. His corpse was already wrapped in a sheet and at rest on the board, balanced on the edge of the rail. Master Jones insisted it was his place to say something over the body before releasing it to the sea. 

In all the commotion and excitement, someone, whether on purpose or not, pushed the recently departed Button lad over the rail to his final resting place. When I heard about it, I was stunned. Such a sad life for the little boy, to die so far away from family and so close to our destination. He should have had a proper burial. But what was done was done. William quietly offered a prayer of commendation for the dead once Master Jones turned to tend to other matters. He did not want to incur any more of the crusty man’s wrath. 

We continued slowly sailing toward the coast. 

I strained to see land for myself, but all I saw was darkness gradually pushing the last of the daylight over the horizon, out of sight. Waves slapped against the ship, and the sound made my eyelids grow heavy. By the time the first stars peeked through the clouds, my longing for sleep overcame my eagerness to see land. 

That night, we all went to sleep dreaming of waking up to the sight of a coastline. 

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The companion story told from the perspective of one of the four women to survive the first winter will be available soon in print and eBook.

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At that time, Leiden was a significant industrial community of around 15,000 and growing. Within 30 years after the Pilgrims left for North America, in 1650, Leiden was a city of 55,000. Leiden, also spelled Leyden, is about 10 miles northeast of the Hague, 30 miles southwest of Amsterdam, and 200 miles across the North Sea from London, England. The city is laced with nearly 17 miles of canals, second in number only to Amsterdam. Eighty-eight bridges cross the canals, many of them suitable only for pedestrians.

Immigrant Refugees

Leiden, in the 1600s, was a major industrial center for the textile industry. Many of the English Separatist refugees worked in textile mills or at home weaving for one of the mills. Children sorted and combed wool and did other textile-related menial jobs.

The Separatist immigrants came to Leiden a few decades after England had befriended the area against Spanish efforts to assimilate the region. England aided the Dutch, soundly defeating the Spanish Armada in the naval showdown of 1588. A decade earlier, the Spaniards laid siege to Leiden. For a terrifying period of several months (October 31, 1573 through March 21, 1574) the Dutch made heroic efforts to keep the Spaniards at bay. When the siege finally ended, William, the Prince of Orange, allegedly offered the people a choice. He would either exempt them from taxes for several years or establish a university. They chose the university, and the University of Leiden was established in 1574.

University of Leiden

The University provided William Brewster with a means of income. He taught English to university students through their mutual familiarity with Latin. Separatist Pastor John Robinson took classes there, making friends among the university faculty. Brewster was familiar with Leiden from his earlier trip there in 1584 as a staff assistant to William Davison, the former Secretary of State and Ambassador for Queen Elizabeth I.

The Dutch, grateful for England’s support, hosted Davison and Brewster at a variety of special events.  England befriended the Dutch in a typical European monarch game of chess, with each monarch trying to gain and maintain power and stability by absorbing neighboring nations. England wanted to secure the loyalty of the Dutch to keep Spain away from England.

Thanks to the University, Leiden became one of Europe’s most prominent scientific centers, a position is has held for over four centuries. Students from all over the world come to study there. One of them,  Dr. Jeremy Bangs, has devoted his life to researching the influence of Leiden on the American Pilgrims.  He founded the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum in a small 14th-century house near the city center. There he collects and displays manuscripts and other memorabilia germane to the Pilgrim story.

Life in Leiden

As is the case for many modern immigrants, the plight of the Scrooby area Separatist immigrants was desperate. They arrived with few resources, most unable to communicate in Dutch, and were unfamiliar with city life. They banned together, doubling up families, taking whatever menial work they could find, and banning together to worship and encourage one another.

Eventually, they were able to purchase a home with sufficient land to build a series of small homes for their members. The community was so congenial that when Brewster had another child, they named their son Love. Though life was safer in Leiden than in England, it was also hard. Children were picking up ideas and practices from their Dutch peers that bothered their parents.

William Brewster’s decision to start publishing and distributing documents critical of King James stirred the anger of the king. Though the Dutch were tolerant, they were in no position to go against the wishes of the King of England. So when King James sent his men to find and arrest Brewster, William went into hiding, and their Separatist community more seriously considered setting up their own colony in the New World.

Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Leiden made extensive plans to participate in the 2020 400th anniversary, plans which were scuttled because of the pandemic. However, forward-thinking planners put together a virtual four-hour Leiden tour with stops at places significant to the Pilgrim story.

This month is the second anniversary of the release of my historical novel about the story behind the Mayflower voyage. I’d be happy to speak to your book club or organization about this fascinating history. Contact me at HowWiseThen to make arrangements. You can sign up to receive weekly blogs and/or a monthly newsletter there as well. If you’ve enjoyed this article, share it with a friend.

Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures covers the Pilgrim’s escape from England and their interactions with the Pokanoket people. Available wherever books are sold in paperback, eBook, and audio.
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Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles-Tale-Two-Cultures/
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles-kathryn-haueisen/
Autographed copies are available from my website or BlueWillowBookShop.com/book/

The post Leiden appeared first on How Wise Then.

According to a Legacies of History article, the village’s population when the Pilgrims were leaving England was between 150 to 200 people. Today it has a population of less than 500. It is located on the River Ryton, near the confluence with the River Idle, in north Nottinghamshire. Sherwood Forest of Robin Hood fame is not far away. The nearest town with guest accommodations is Doncaster, about twelve miles further north along the Great North Road (today England A1).

Scrooby: Small but Significant

St. James (St. Wilfrid) – Scrooby, England

St. James (later renamed St. Wilfrid) was a congregation of the Established Church of England, formed by King Henry VIII, when the Pope denied him a divorce from his first wife. The church was in the diocese of the Archbishop of York, located a mere 50 miles or so to the north of Scrooby.

Today Scrooby Manor is a private home.

Scrooby Manor was a huge estate during Pilgrim days and also the property of the Archbishop of York. The Old North Road connected London to the south with Edinburgh to the north. Official church and royal messengers frequently traveled the route with important news and documents. Scrooby is about halfway between the two cities, making the Manor a popular rest stop.

Pilgrim Elder William Brewster and his family lived in and managed Scrooby Manor. William spent part of his childhood there when his father became the bailiff and manager of the Manor. Pilgrim Brewster assumed those duties when he returned to Scrooby from his studies at Cambridge University and his father died.

Brewster and All Saints in Babworth

Young Brewster was enthralled with the Separatist ideas discussed at Cambridge University during his brief studies there. Some of his classmates became significant leaders in the English non-conformist movement at the turn of the 17th century. Two groups of non-conformists evolved. Puritans fought to further purify the church from Roman Catholic theology and traditions. Separatists wanted to leave the Established Church to practice their faith more in line with the earliest Christian communities.

Non-conformist clergy served several Scrooby area congregations. Brewster preferred to worship at All Saints, where Separatist sympathizer Pastor Richard Clyfton preached sermons that appealed to him. Starting around 1600, Brewster walked across the lane in Scrooby from the Manor to St. James and kept walking to hear Pastor Clyfton preach seven miles away in Babworth.

All Saints is still a worshipping congregation today. In the early 1900s, their Rector, Frank Wilberforce, encouraged them to claim and celebrate the congregation’s role in the Pilgrim story. Frank Wilberforce’s great grandfather was William Wilberforce, who led the English movement to abolish slavery.

Conform or Leave

Life for non-conformists was relatively calm until Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, and King James became monarch of England in addition to being King of Scotland. The new position included serving as head of the Established Church. He and his bishops took a dim view of both the Puritans and Separatists. The king had absolutely no interest in further reforming the Established Church. In 1604 over a thousand clergy appealed to his majesty to permit a few changes. He refused and instead ordered that any clergy who defied him should be removed from their pulpits. Richard Clyfton was one of those pastors.

All Saints is where Brewster met William Bradford, the future Governor of the Plymouth settlement. At the time, Bradford was a young man, only a few years older than William’s son Jonathan. Tensions mounted year by year as the 16th century wound down. Messengers regularly brought news to Scrooby Manor about non-conformists arrested, tortured, and executed. Some of them were friends William knew from his days at Cambridge. Separatist pastors began to lead their people to emigrate to the more tolerant Lowlands (The Netherlands).

The Separatists at Scrooby

Archbishop of York – Edwin Sandy’s

Elder William Brewster befriended Pastors Richard Clyfton and John Robinson. When Pastor Clyfton lost his position in Babworth for defying the king’s edicts, William invited the All Saints congregation to worship at the Manor. Soon a new, underground congregation formed with Clyfton as pastor, Robinson as teacher, and Brewster as the ruling Elder.

St. James, a few yards away from the Manor, remained part of the Established Church. The underground congregation met in the property owned by the Archbishop of York, one of the most influential men in England. They held secret services only a few yards from a congregation in his diocese. What could possibly go wrong with that plan? It turns out, quite a bit.

Their decision to form an underground congregation at the Manor was as dangerous as it was daring. Scrooby Manor occasionally provided rest to monarchs, bishops, and other high-ranking authorities who would readily arrest, and likely execute, anyone caught at the Scrooby underground worship services.

Leaving England

By 1607 their situation was life-threatening. Reports of heretics caught and executed became more frequent. It was time to prepare to leave England. Brewster resigned his post as bailiff at the manor, making him and his family homeless. About fifty  Separatists, led by Pastors Clyfton and Robinson, and Elder Brewster, made the arrangements to leave. Betrayed in their first attempt to leave, they returned to Scrooby, where they were dependent on the charity of sympathetic friends and neighbors.  They successfully left their beloved homeland in 1608 to live in exile in the Lowlands.

Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures covers the Pilgrim’s escape from England and their interactions with the Pokanoket people. Available wherever books are sold in paperback, eBook, and audio.
Bookshop.org (Supporting local Indie Bookshops)
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles-Tale-Two-Cultures/
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles-kathryn-haueisen/
Autographed copies are available from my website or BlueWillowBookShop.com/book/

The post Leaving England appeared first on How Wise Then.

New research by genealogists Sue Allan and Caleb Johnson indicate that Dorothy moved to Amsterdam around 1608 from Eastern England, near Boston, with her mother Katherine and father Henry May. Henry served as a leading church elder in the Henry Ainsworth Amsterdam congregation of the Ancient Church of the Brethren. William Bradford moved there from Northern England that same year with other Separatists from Northern England.

Seeds of Religious Rebellion

The couple probably met in 1608, during the one year the Northern England Separatists lived in Amsterdam. That group first emigrated to Amsterdam where other English Separatists had already established English-speaking congregations. When conflicts broke out between and among these congregtions, the Northern English group established their own congregation in nearby Leiden, with John Robinson as their pastor.

Dorothy’s grandfather, John May had been part of the English Familia Caritatis (The Family of Love) movement. This Protestant group opposed several Established Church of England policies and practices. Members spread their beliefs primarily through family members, encouraging marriages within the faith community. They rejected infant baptisms; an unconventional view considered heretical by some church authorities.

Religious Refugees on the Move

Rising pressure against their unconventional beliefs prompted several English groups to relocate to the more religiously liberal Lowlands. Henry May and his family, including Dorothy, were among those who resettled in Amsterdam. When the conflicts erupted the church leaders prevailed upon Pastor John Robinson, down the road in Leiden, to help calm the turmoil.

Pastor Robinson probably visited the Amsterdam congregation on occasion, perhaps taking William Bradford and others from his Leiden congregation with him. There is some speculation Pastor Robinson may have encouraged the union between Henry May’s daughter, Dorothy, and William, in keeping with the groups preference that membes marry within the community.

Dorothy May was sixteen on December 10, 1613 when she married William Bradford in Amsterdam. Her age and the laws at that time dictated she must have her father’s permission to marry. Henry May gave permission and attended the civil ceremony since the Separatists did not consider weddings a function of the church.

William Bradford, twenty-three when they married, had been orphaned in childhood. In the seventeenth century, men not yet twenty-five years old usually didn’t marry without parental consent. Considering how active Bradford was in the Leiden Separatist congregation, perhaps someone from the congregation stood in as a surrogate father. The Bradford engagement and banns were recorded in both Amsterdam and Leiden.

Rough Start for William Bradford

When William was orphaned his uncles took him. They did the basics for him, but little more. From a very young age William was interested theology and scripture. He was often confined to bed due to some childhood illnesses. When he was well enough, walked seven or eight miles to a church where future Separatist pastor Richard Clifton mentored the boy. That is where he met Elder William Brewster. Bradford was a frequent guest in the Brewster home, and lived with the family a couple of times in both Leiden and Plymouth.

The Bradfords had one child they named John, born in Leiden, probably in 1617. The Bradford’s left the boy behind when they sailed for North America – presumably with the intention of sending for him when Plymouth Colony was established and more suitable for a young child. Dorothy’s parents remained in Leiden and probably assumed care for little John. The child may have been named for Pastor John Robinson, or more likely, his grandfather, John May. John did eventually join his father in Plymouth.

The Grand Plan to Relocate

The Bradfords were among those in Robinson’s congregation who volunteered to go with the first group to establish a new religious colony. The congregation decided to initially send a small group of thirty-seven settlers to establish a new religious community in the New (to them) World. Some of these settlers left family behind with rest of the community, intending to reunite once the settlement was firmly established. This plan enabled the settlers to return to Leiden if efforts to establish a colony failed.

The voyage was both tedious and treacherous. After ten weeks at sea, the Mayflower anchored off Provincetown Harbor on November 11, 1620. Using the shallop they’d brought with them, several men, including Bradford, set out to locate the best place to build their new colony. William was away on one of these expeditions when Dorothy died. She fell overboard and drowned in the frigid water. Bradford rarely referenced her death in his accounts of the colony.

An 1869 fictional magazine story suggested the twenty-three-year-old woman jumped overboard to avoid the bleak future ahead of her. More likely she  leaned too far out, perhaps searching the horizon for signs that the men were returning, and slipped overboard. Women in that era wore multiple layers of clothing. Once her clothes got wet it would have been nearly impossible for her to fight long enough to be discovered and rescued from the frigid November sea. It is unlikely Dorothy knew how to swim. It seems most probable she lost her balance, fell overboard, and drowned before anyone missed her.

A Life of Challenges and Leadership

William Bradford struggled against a series of tragedies. The relatives that raised him when his parents died took no interest in his thirst for religious education and spiritual nourishment. Even as a young boy Bradford engaged in intensive Bible study, perhaps because illness prevented him participating in more rigorous pastimes.

Like many of the Mayflower passengers, William became quite ill the first winter in the new colony, but survived. Governor John Carver did not. When Carver died the first spring in the new land, Bradford assumed duties of Governor. The Colony elected him to serve in that position a total of thirty-one years. He married the widow Alice (Carpenter) Southworth on August 14, 1623. Their marriage included a feast attended by the Pokanoket leader Massasoit Ousa Mequin and many other Natives. William and Alice had three sons who all lived to adulthood, married, and had children.

A portion of this articles comes from the Mayflower400 Website.

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Elizabeth, acting on her own accord, was apparently deeply involved in non-conformist activities near Ipswich, England. Ipswich is about 50 miles southeast of Cambridge and 85 miles northeast of London. Shortly after she married Edward, the couple returned to England to tend to details regarding her inheritance and liquidate the assets she’d inherited. English law stipulated that once a woman married all of her property became her husband’s property.

Elizabeth’s Will Recorded in Leiden

Laws in Holland were more liberal than in England. The couple returned to Leiden where Elizabeth wrote a will in 1619. By then members of Separatist Pastor John Robinson’s congregation were making arrangements for several families to establish an extension of the Leiden church in North America. The Winslows were among that group. Others planned to join them once the colony was established.

Elizabeth may have emigrated on her own as a young single woman. That would have been highly unusual for the times, however, her family had numerous friends and relatives engaged in non-conformist activities. Other English non-conformists had already established a congregation in Amsterdam. Elizabeth would have been warmly embraced at the Church of the Ancient Separatist Brethren in Amsterdam. We don’t know if she went there first or not. We do know she ended up in the Leiden congregation led by Pastor John Robinson.

Impact of Religious Turmoil

She was born in Chattisham around 1593 to Samuel and Sarah Barker. Groups of non-conformists challenging the Established Church of England influenced the Barker family. During the political and religious turmoil of the 1500s hundreds of people were tortured and burned at the stake. Which religious group dominated vacillated according to who was the reigning monarch. I’m working on a resource of the monarchs and time line that influenced the Separatists’ decision to emigrate.

When the Pope denied King Henry VIII’s request for an annulment from his first wife Catherine of Aragon, he dismissed her anyway and established the Church of England in 1634. The new church body turned England Protestant, but it remained similar to the Roman Catholic Church. He implemented the doctrine of a Supreme Governor as the head of the church, replacing the papacy with the reigning monarch. Catherine had six children, but only daughter Mary survived.

All in the Royal Family

Wife number two, Anne Boleyn gave birth to Elizabeth and later delivered a baby boy, but the infant was still born. Henry expressed his disappointment by beheading Anne. Wife number three, Jane Seymour, gave Henry what he wanted, a male heir. King Edward VI was crowned in 1547 when King Henry VIII died. The boy was nine-years-old and only lived five years, not long enough to change England’s official religion as the Established Church.

Henry’s daughter, Mary, succeeded her half-brother in 1553. A devoted Catholic, she fought to return England to the Catholicism. From 1553, until she died in 1558, she added some three hundred new Christians to the list of martyrs. Thus, she earned the label ‘Bloody Mary.’ Her half-sister, Elizabeth was then crowned Monarch. She retained the Established Church of England as the state religion.

Family Religious Feud

That would have settled the matter except for Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Elizabeth’s cousin. Mary had briefly been the Queen of France, a staunchly Catholic country. When the French king died a year after they were married, this Mary returned to Scotland, but maintained her Catholic French connections. Until Queen Elizabeth signed the warrant for her execution in 1587, Mary Queen of Scots tried valiantly to deliver England back to the Catholic Church.

The Separatists had had enough and wanted to completely sever ties with both the Catholics and Established Church to live in a simpler, first-century style faith community. They moved to Holland, and from there across the ocean. Edward and Elizabeth no doubt shared many of the same religious beliefs and possessed equal quantities of determination, courage, and hope.

Diplomat Edward Winslow

Edward hailed from the Worcester area England, about 130 miles northwest of England. He was a printer, working in London, but traveling to Leiden. He moved to Leiden in 1617 and helped William Brewster publish and smuggle religious books back to England. These publications criticized the Established Church of England. King James succeeded Queen Elizabeth in 1603. He knew about the anti-Established Church publications coming out of Leiden and wanted them stopped.

By 1619 it appeared Leiden was not far enough removed from England. It was time to move on. Edward quickly earned a reputation as a diplomat. He led a number of expeditions to meet, trade, and negotiate with the area Pokanoket. He wrote several first-hand accounts of the early Plymouth years and served as assistant to Governor Bradford on several occasions. He returned to England several times to address their investors’ concerns about slow and low rates of return on their investment in the new colony.

A Short Life Well Lived

Elizabeth died the first spring in the new colony, on March 24. She never had children. Widowed Edward married Widow Susanna White in May. I’ll write about her and her first husband in another blog.

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Fortunately for these future Plymouth Pilgrims, they were not the first English religious rebels to leave England. By the early 1600s King James had made it very clear he would tolerate no challenge to his authority as either the monarch of Britain or the head of the Established Church. He was a religious man, with well-developed, if somewhat rigid, ideas about theology and scripture. Perhaps inspired by Martin Luther’s work to translate the Bible into the language of the German people, King James commissioned the translation of the Bible into a version that suited his thinking. The 1611 King James bible is nearly a replica of the 1560 English language Geneva Bible. However, the Geneva translation included notes that railed against the Pope and didn’t shed a positive light on monarchy either.  King James had the resources to publish a version that suited his personal theology better.

Like It or Leave

By the time the Scrooby Pilgrims emigrated, King James had removed over three hundred protesting clergy from their pulpits in England. Some of the displaced clergy fled to become Amsterdam refugees. By the time the Scrooby group arrived they were fairly well established.

These future Pilgrims arrived in a growing and prospering city approaching 200,000 people. Amsterdam  had a reputation for religious tolerance. As long as new arrivals caused no trouble and found ways to support themselves, the Dutch authorities had little interest in their religious preferences. It was a Golden Age for Amsterdam. During this time period the popular canals were just being built. In 1602 Amsterdam became home to the world’s first stock exchange when the Dutch East India Company opened an office to trade their own shares. Though our Pilgrims had moved on to Leiden by 1618, that year the city established the first global regular newspaper, “Courants.”

The Scrooby Amsterdam refugees represented a much larger Separatist movement in England. This group believed the only way forward faith-wise was to return to the simpler church structures of the first century. The various small towns in North England around Scrooby had given rise to a number of Separatists who either lost their pulpits or presumed they soon would. One of them, John Smyth, emigrated with a group of followers from Gainsborough in 1607, the year our group from Scrooby tried to leave, but were betrayed in Boston, England. Scrooby Separatists had worshiped with the Gainsborough congregation and thus knew some who successfully migrated to Amsterdam.

Make New Friends

Another group of London based Separatists had already settled in Amsterdam back in 1595. They formed a church future Plymouth Governor William Bradford referred to as the Ancient Brethren. At first our new arrivals, under the leadership of William Brewster, John Robinson, and Richard Clyfton, were relieved and grateful to find kindred spirits already established in Amsterdam. Their relief was short lived. Both John Smyth’s relocated Gainsborough group, and the Ancient Brethren were caught up in a series of internal conflicts as well as contentious relationships between the two groups.

It must have felt to the newly arrived Scrooby Pilgrim immigrants they’d been betrayed a second time in only a couple of years. The late Mary B. Sherwood wrote in Pilgrim: A biography of William Brewster,

It would have seemed natural for the people from Scrooby to join once more with their neighbors from Gainsborough, the church of which they were formerly a part. They did not do so, primarily because of the bewildering behavior of the minister, John Smyth. Smyth, whose search for the truth had led him to separate from the Church of England, was still finding the truth illusive. He continued to pore over the scriptures and theological writings, reaching one temporary conclusion after another, sometimes rejecting a ‘truth’ he had recently proclaimed.

Indecisive Leadership Wrecks Havoc

One of the more challenging conclusions Smyth reached was that an English translation of scripture was not acceptable, because it was translated by humans, and therefore not reliable as being the true word of God. He insisted they study only Hebrew and Greek scriptures – apparently not caring those too were written and preserved by mere mortals. For new immigrants struggling to adapt to speaking Dutch, this was one more challenge they could do without. Smyth also concluded infant baptisms were inadequate since infants did not decide whether they wanted to be baptized or not. The Scrooby Pilgrims had most certainly all been baptized as infants in the Established Church of England. After Smyth re-baptized himself and all of his followers, he later decided he had been wrong in his conclusions about baptism.

William Bradford in his recollections of the Scrooby Pilgrims brief time in Amsterdam later wrote, Smyth was “a man of able gifts, and a good preacher, eminent in his time, but whose inconstancy, unstable judgment, and being suddenly carried away, soon overthrew him.” (Alexander Young: Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth).

The conflicts and the unstable local leadership, combined with the typical immigrant challenges of adapting to a strange new culture, led the Scrooby group to conclude they’d come to the right country, but the wrong city. They lived there only one year before moving onto our next stop on this Pilgrim journey – Leiden. Come back next week to learn more about life in Leiden.

Thank you for taking time to read more about the 17th Century Pilgrim Journey. I hope it inspires as we wait out the consequences of COVID-19 and commemorate the Mayflower’s 400 anniversary with virtual celebrations. Why not share it with a friend? Got this from a friend? You can sign up for your own free subscription at HowWiseThen. I am always looking for leads about good people making great contribution to our global village. If you have a suggestion for a future HowWiseThen blog, let me hear from you. I have a variety of free downloads waiting for you on my website.

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William Brewster
(via BrainyQuote)

Apparently my great-great-great something grandparents were expelled from St. Wilfrid in Scrooby because they defied the laws of the land at the time by not worshiping in this Anglican parish. They worshiped instead with the trouble-makers of their day – the Separatists. 

Most people pick up the Pilgrim story with the arrival of the Mayflower in Cape Cod in 1620. They pretty much drop the story after what is widely claimed to be the first Thanksgiving. The version passed down to has been greatly edited and starts much earlier than 1620.

The Separatist story actually goes back a century earlier to what Martin Luther was doing in Germany. During 2017 his efforts are being widely celebrated as the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation. October 31, 1517 was the day Martin posted his 95 discussion points on the town public bulletin board, which was also the Wittenberg church door. That sparked generations of change throughout Europe.

England was as much influenced by those changes as anywhere. One of the people who got caught up in the story is my great, great, etc. grandfather – Elder William Brewster. He was part of the Separatist movement in the small village of Scrooby in northern England. His father served as the bailiff of the Archbishop of York’s estates and postmaster for the Queens posts from 1590 to 1595. William attended Cambridge University, which at that time was overflowing with religious and radical ideas, sparked by Luther’s efforts to reform the Holy Catholic church. After Cambridge young William served under William Davidson, Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth I. He was also her representative in the Netherlands in 1585. Brewster went there with Davidson.

Upon the death of his father in 1590, Brewster returned home to Scrooby and was appointed Master of the Postes. Between the stimulation of Cambridge University and time spent in the tolerant Netherlands, he had what we might consider a conversion experience. Brewster became a member of the Gainsborough Separatist church, led by John Smyth. Smyth wasn’t an ordained preacher. Parliament only allowed ordained priests to preach. Separatists were therefore forbidden to hold their own services.

Try to make this stick in today’s world – the 1559 English Act of Uniformity made it illegal not to attend an Anglican church. The Separatists most likely met, as secretly as they could, in the home of Smyth.

Sources: http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies and Pilgrim: A Biography of William Brewster by Mary B. Sherwood (Great Oak Press of Virginia, Falls Church, Virginia)

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