The beginning of english new england
The Mayflower. Watercolor by Jeremy Bangs, reproduced with permission.
We think of Massachusetts as the home of John Winthrop’s puritans – symbolized by the sprinkling of road signs depicting high black hats complete with buckle. Yet, as this article by historian Francis J. Bremer argues, both the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s congregationalism and civil structures owed their foundations to an earlier group, who arrived ten years before the better known Winthrop Fleet. Often referred to as the pilgrims (a term not coined for them till the 19th century), these men and women represented a more uncompromising element in the puritan movement.
As for the puritans who followed them, the key factors in the decision to migrate were the harsh punishments and severe restrictions meted out by English bishops in the Church of England. The fact of sympathetic local magistrates and church officials under the reigns of Elizabeth and James I meant that, in some regions of England, puritans were able to act on their beliefs to some degree. But other parts of the kingdom were not so favorable.
Image William Brewster, well connected, but hoping to separate from the Anglican church. His faith led him to Leiden and North America. Wellcome
Thus was the experience of pilgrim leader William Brewster, who was raised in Scrooby, Nottinghamshire. He was well connected; his father had been master of the royal post station as well as bailiff and receiver for the Archbishop of York's manor in that town. Following his father's death, William assumed those positions. He and fellow puritans gathered together in the manor house in the early 1600s to discuss sermons they had preached in neighboring churches and to share their own religious experiences.
In about 1607 this conference of lay men and women organized themselves into a church by attesting to a covenant to follow God's will as they understood it. They chose Richard Clifton and John Robinson – both clergy deprived of their livings in the national church - as their ministers. By forming a congregation separate from the official Church of England, they were breaking the law. Soon they were being hauled before church courts.
Soon they were hauled before church courts [and] imprisonment, fines and harassment led Them into exile
Imprisonment, fines, and other forms of harassment led the congregation to go into exile in the Netherlands, which was a haven for numerous disaffected English religious reformers. They settled in the city of Leiden.
After ten years, the congregation decided to emigrate yet again. They were concerned about the influence of aspects of Dutch culture on their children and feared being caught up in a renewal of hostilities between the Netherlands and Spain.
In 1620 members of the congregation sailed for America with John Robinson and other members hoping to join them later. After a few false starts and the abandonment of a second ship that they had hired, they sailed on the Mayflower. Frustrated by a difficult voyage and challenges navigating the coast to the area of the Hudson River, where they had received authorization to settle, they planted themselves at Patuxet, the name of a Wampanoag village which had been abandoned after a recent epidemic. They named their settlement Plymouth.
A statue of the Pokanoket great sachem Massasoit, or Ousamiquin, in Plymouth, Massachusetts. His 1621 treaty with the Plymouth colonists paved the way for decades of peace. The peace was broken by King Philip’s War, Native people’s attempt to protect their land, hunting grounds, homes and livelihoods. Image: Greg Kullberg, Wikicommons
The story of early Plymouth has been told and retold many times, with new insights in works published recently to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower's arrival. Those works have reminded us of the importance of the Native peoples of the region and their role in the early history of the colony, including the treaty agreed to by the Wampanoag and the English and the fall 1621 gathering we remember as the first Thanksgiving.
The Plymouth puritans had a history of empowering lay believers. Going back to their days in Scrooby, the new congregation was formed by the banding together of lay men and women in covenant. All decisions were made by the congregants. Their minister John Robinson believed in lay prophesying - a practice whereby lay believers could share their understanding and experiences with others in church settings and in conferences in private homes. In early Plymouth there was no ordained minister and so religious exercises were led by William Brewster, with occasional sermons by laymen such as Thomas Cushman, William Bradford, and Samuel Fuller.
“we combine ourselves into a civil body politic… to frame just and equal laws for the general good"
The same spirit of broad participation and self-government was the model for civil government. The "Mayflower Compact" was agreed to by the colonists before they left the boat, pledging all to "covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic ... and by virtue thereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices ... as shall be thought mete and convenient for the general good of the colony."
For a long time most scholars of early New England focused their attention on Massachusetts and regarded Plymouth as relatively insignificant. But recent work by Michael Winship and myself, among others, has demonstrated that it was the Plymouth model of congregationalism that became the New England Way of church practice.
far from being insignificant, plymouth’s model of congregationalism became the new england way
When the first Massachusetts colonists settled in Salem in 1628, they were visited by Plymouth's Samuel Fuller, who discussed the ways in which the Plymouth colonists had organized their church, far from English parishes and bishops. When the Salem church was formed, representatives from Plymouth came to extend to the new congregation the right hand of fellowship. In 1630 Fuller again travelled north and discussed church matters with John Winthrop and other new arrivals.
On a practical level, the Plymouth colonists, having been settled for over a decade, were a major provider of livestock for early Massachusetts. Over the years, leaders of the two colonies asked for and offered advice to each other on matters of church organization, issues involving separation of church and state, appropriate legal punishments for various crimes, and other matters.
Plymouth became a trusted member of the New England Confederation, a union of that colony with Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven formed in the 1640s. In the 1680s Plymouth's autonomy was stripped away by royal authority and in 1692 the once separate colony was incorporated into Massachusetts by that colony's new charter.
For more about Plymouth colony, see Francis J. Bremer, One Small Candle: The Plymouth Puritans and the Beginning of English New England (Oxford University Press, 2020) and John G. Turner, They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty (Yale University Press, 2020).
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Francis J. Bremer is a world-renowned scholar of puritanism and an advisor to the Partnership of Historic Bostons. Professor of history emeritus at Millersville University, he has also been editor of the Winthrop Papers for the Massachusetts Historical Society. He is author of the award-winning John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father and many other books and articles. His One Small Candle: The Plymouth Puritans and the Beginning of English New England is available here.
Find out more
Francis J. Bremer, Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) offers a fascinating and important understanding of English Puritan communities.
Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). A beautifully written, masterful biography.
Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). A nuanced look at the forces compelling the Puritan migration - and the stories of many who returned home to England.