American History Hit - The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

More than 30 million people can trace their ancestry to the 102 passengers and 30 crew aboard the Mayflower when it landed in Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts in the harsh winter of 1620. On board were men, women and children from different walks of life across England and the city of Leiden in Holland. But why did the Pilgrims leave their old lives behind in the first place, chancing it all to cross the treacherous Atlantic and settle a strange alien land?In today's episode Don is joined by Dr Anna Scott, heritage consultant and public historian at the University of Lincoln in the UK, to learn more about this 400-year-old tale of religious persecution, financial opportunity and a Puritanical fight for freedom that helped sow the seeds of a fledgling nation.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey at https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK.All music from Epidemic Sounds/All3 Media.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's mid-September, 1620, in Plymouth, England. The wheels of a cart rattle along the narrow cobblestone street leading down to the harbor below.

Overhead, in the bay window of a weathered Elizabethan house, a woman beats a dusty blanket as screeching gulls circle the sky. It is an unremarkable autumn day, here in this seaside village. Life as usual, except for the recent arrival of a weary group of travelers, religious separatists in search of refuge. One of their two ships, the Speedwell, is in dire need of repair, but on this day they've made the fateful decision to abandon her and crowd 102 passengers and 30 crew onto the other ship, the Mayflower. And so the treacherous late-season passage will commence,

crossing the wide Atlantic Ocean in cramped unsanitary conditions, searching for freedom on the shores of a strange new one. world. So who are these people, these separatists, these pilgrims? What have they separated from? And what do they possibly hope to find? Greetings, listeners. Nice to be with you. I'm Don Wildman, your host here at American History Hit. And hey, it's another helping of the holidays. The season is upon us. Now that the temperatures finally dipped below 75 in November here in the Northeast, that was weird. We are back on track. The leaves off the trees, a fresh, chill in the air and everyone's made their plans for the day of dining. Past the gravy and the

cranberry sauce, it's time to plumb some delicious pilgrim history. This year, we've approached this subject before, see past episodes, we're breaking the story down to the savory side dishes that really make the meal. The pilgrim story, of course, was never the simple fable we were taught in grade school. The odyssey of these religious sojourners had different phases lasting years, hard struggles, insecurity, and terrible tragedy. At any time, they could have pitched the whole idea and given up on their mission to find safe haven. Alas, they did not. They finally made it to the promised land. And we celebrate that achievement every year with a meal in their honor that's evolved into a day of gathering for friends and families

to mark the beginning of the holidays. This episode will tell part one of the story and track the Pilgrim's Progress from the shores of England to the harbors of the Netherlands and back again, finally to embark into a great unknown. But I know who's here to help. And it is Anna Scott, researcher at the University of Lincoln in England, who has written extensively on the Pilgrims, featuring prominently in the history hit TV documentary we produced for Mayflower 400, the 400th anniversary of the voyage. Hello, Anna. Nice to have you. Thank you. It's great to be here and be invited back again. First, the basics. A quick factoid why this really matters. There are 30 million Americans today who can directly trace their bloodlines straight to the 102 passengers

and 30 crew on the Mayflower. The pilgrims are an essential building block of America and not just the Patriot fans. Why do we call them pilgrims? This was not the name they gave themselves, was it? 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 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 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. I understand, though, that they named themselves the saints. A group within the general separatist movement of England, it's probably important to give some broad context here for the times. I mean, we're coming out of the 1500s, which is the time of, you know, the Church of England being formed by Henry VIII. That is in the broader context of the reformation happening all over Europe at the time. Within all of this, especially, especially in a pushback against the Church of England, are these separatist movements.

There's a long list of them, from Anabaptists to the Quakers, all opposed to the corruption and doctrine of the Church of England. These particular people are found around the English village of Scrooby, which is a great name. I love that name, in Nottinghamshire, just south of Leeds. Population in 2001, 329. This is a tiny farming place. Tell us about that movement that they are part of, and particularly, the man named Robert Brown. They are brownists, aren't they? Yeah, that's one of the names that

were given to the people at the time. So you were right there talking about the Church of England, so that previously they'd been the Catholic Church. There was a big split under Henry the 8th for lots of reasons, and I'm sure you've got an episode that covers that somewhere in the history 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 there were lots of rules about things like baptism and making the sign of the cross and the roves 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. And 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. Anna, I just need to paint the picture of England in those days, the general environment in which this separatist movement sprouts. Tell me how life was like for these people in those days. 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 And they were from rural Nottinghamshire and rural Lincolnshire area. So they would have been familiar with farming, husbandry, those types of rural activities. Yeah. And the jobs that go with those, so laboring, 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 Scroobey 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. The big highway. 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 travelling around. 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. We're in the reign of James

the first, James the sixth in Scotland, I believe, right? This is a time that we're actually coming up towards the English Revolution, which is, I mean, really, things are very rocky in the society in general at this time. That's happening all over the place in Europe. But here in England, it's What was supposed to be so simple for Henry the Eighth, creating this central authority for the religion, has only created a lot more havoc. And all of these many, many separatist movements are part of a larger societal unrest. Is that correct to say? 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 the Eighth to James I, because Henry's daughter, Mary.

reverted to Catholicism. Exactly, yeah. 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, you know, they would travel back. And so this pendulum was swinging throughout this period.

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. 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. He wasn't

going to be as tolerant of their views as they had hoped that he would be. I wanted to find how hard this was for many of these groups, including this one. When you were, trying to practice as you saw fit, the various punishments that could happen were as bad as they could get, right? I mean, people were put to death. They were certainly jailed. They were in miserable conditions. Communities turning against themselves. I mean, all of the stuff that we've seen in so many different periods of unrest throughout the world is exactly what's going on here, but it has to do specifically with religion, which was so much a bigger part of people's lives in those days. 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. But the economic reasons are often related to God or to religion. So there was plagued around at that time. There had been a series of poor harvests. There was some enclosure of land going on, so that rarely people that had owned land or had access to land that was lost to them.

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, you know, were at the time blamed on retribution from God or needing to change things to try and respond to why things were going. going badly, and that's how people would explain things to themselves. 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. At the same time, just across the channel, you've already mentioned that in the Netherlands, a whole other kind of life is happening. It's important there to understand that it's not like today. There's not one country. Half of what we know as the Netherlands was actually under Spanish control.

The northern part of the Netherlands was under the Dutch. That's what we're talking about here. And particularly, we'll get to a town called Leiden. But on the way there, it's Amsterdam. What would they have known about Holland in those days? And what kind of refuge that would give them? 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. 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. But subsequent to that, he'd actually joined Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State to Holland, so William Davison. He'd been there himself. He'd been to Amsterdam. He'd seen, 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 a secretist groups in the Scrooby area, 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 traveled in that direction. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. Isn't it amazing? We're five centuries before and we're already talking about the liberal quality of the Netherlands.

What was so much a part of that society was an open border policy, right? there was a lot of emigration to Netherlands from all parts of the world. That was what was known about that area. And for them to go, which was not a long journey across the channel there, they thought that they could make their home in this country and do and practice Christianity as they saw fit. They start in Amsterdam.

It's not long before they make the move to Leiden. Tell me why that happened and what was the vibe in Leiden like? 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 that you said it's not far across there, it was a bit of a saga for them getting over there in the big place. Well, I'm comparing it to the Atlantic Ocean. Yeah, that's fine.

I mean, some of the men ended up off the coast of Norway on 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 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 would have. They didn't have that permission and they were actually hiding from the authorities and escaping illegally. 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 organise 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, the debates were challenging for them. And so the man who had led them to Amsterdam, the preacher Richard Clifston, 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. 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. How many people are we talking about?

How big is this group? That's a difficult question to answer. There are some catalogs 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 trend, out into the Humber,

there were a few people that got on the boat in Gainsborough, about 12 people, 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. At most, we're talking about 100 to 150 people

are going to comprise this church that they're going to found in Holland. That does not work out in Amsterdam for them. It's too big a town, a little too racy, perhaps. So the whole effort is switched to Leiden, which is a university town to this day, very high-minded folks down there, a little simpler life for these folks.

And this is where they're going to plant themselves. And by the way, this is 1608 we're talking about right now. There was a concerted effort to find home, to find, make a foundation in Holland. They had no plans necessarily to go to this wild new world. That comes later. And so this is a very interesting chapter in this time. So when they moved to Leiden, they put down roots, right? They did.

And so when you say how many people were there, it's different to the number when you get towards 16, 20, but 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 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. Yes. 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, create weaving cloth, that kind of thing. 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. But they weren't being put in jail by the local sheriff. That was a big change. 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. It still wasn't good to be upsetting the king in England, even though they were over in Holland. And as much as day-to-day life might be a more peaceful religious practice for them. There's still a lot of unrest in Europe and in this nation in general. I mean, war is threatening between the Dutch in the North and the Spanish in the South. There's a lot of political unrest going on at this time. That's underpinning everything at this moment, isn't it? Just as it was back in England. That's right. So there was 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 centre in terms of trade and expansion. Because this is the period when colonialism begins. The colonies are being established in different places. 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. A great theme will emerge and is already starting to, even in this conversation,

the combination of commercial and religious becomes the brew of the Pilgrim Voyage. And that really does start with Holland, which was so much a banking center of the time and really the heart of the age of discovery. It was the Dutch that figured out how to finance things. And all of that was contributing to the prosperity of this place and probably the looseness of it because, you know, things are going well there. All of that is this very interesting emerging quality to their realization that in order to make this thing work, they're probably going to have to figure out how to combine those two themes, don't they?

This is very much a result of the backdrop of Holland at the time. 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. 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.

It's a fascinating shift that's happening in the world that will of course lead to everything that happens in the new world, so called. It's already happening for hundreds of years. The Age of Discovery is about colonialism. And so the Pilgrim story kind of sidles up against that. And these folks who are really looking for religious haven are actually part of this larger movement that has to do with colonialism as we are about to find out.

And all kinds of things happen, you know, not the least of which is slavery. The Dutch are very much a part of putting that together. It's also why New York eventually becomes the capital of finance because it's a Dutch. All these things are so interesting when you pin them down in the timeline of history. But it also creates economic incentive. And that's what's going to take the Saints to America. That's what's going to really drive this ship. Of course, they are still pushed by their desire for Christianity, but it also is a desire to make money.

Let's talk about the Virginia Company, where this falls in all of this. This is the English commercial enterprise that was in charge of America at this time. 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. Yes. But Virginia in those days was most of the entire eastern seaboard there. Yeah, so there'd been previous contact, certainly, in 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 case. coast around 1616. And he'd brought that map back and shown it to the king. And they had named places along that coast.

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'd just got a map and they were going to put a load of British names on it. Right. Yeah, it's just about staking the claim. There's also a very important political note to make here. We mentioned James. He's the king at the time in England. He actually negotiates an alliance with Holland against Spain on one condition that the separatist movements are banned in Holland. So this is the reach of the English king over the channel to Holland. And this negotiation leads to yet more pressure on these people. Yeah, so as we head towards 1620, you have to appreciate that it's been, it's 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.

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. So it carries them, it carries through the story and that's also some sort of. obviously that happens when they get to America and meet the indigenous communities there. So, yeah, truth 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. 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. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. How much would they have known in those days with as few information sources as you would have what was going on? How could you go across this vast,

of the Atlantic Ocean and actually plant your flag on that shore. I mean, it's a crazy notion. Even today it would be a big deal to do, let alone back then. How would they have known that this was even possible? 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, 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 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 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. I think real estate is at the core. I mean, when you see what happens in the, when the Dutch come into New York area, what becomes New York eventually, and they create New Amsterdam, and these vast estates are created up and down the Hudson River, you get a clue as to what Europe was like in those days. Just everything was owned by the aristocracy in one form or another. And then these little pockets of places where they could have their own little places. There's this land over there. this realm across the ocean where land is available. And when you have land, you have a new life and you have power and you can start to make a world. It's a fascinating change at this time. This is where it becomes an economic concern as well. This group of religious sojourners actually become very useful to the merchants who are seeking out basically labor, who can

go across and plant a settlement in this world, aren't they? Yes, although the recovery 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 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 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 that 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. As we've mentioned, this is a 12-year process

starting in at 1608 and finally in 1620, they're going to leave. When they go, a portion of the lighting group, not all, some stay, leave Leiden on, as you say, the Speedwell, which they have acquired as a vessel, and they head to Southampton, which still is the big port at the bottom at the south of England. Tell me the steps they go through to organize the eventual voyage of the Mayflower. Take me through that process. 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. They wanted people who could work at the colony 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. And so the ship, both of the ships made the 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. So there were lots of arrangements around what that deal looked like and 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 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 that sail from Southampton. because as we all know, the Mayflower is a famous ship on a famous voyage, but who's ever heard of the Speedwell? What happened there? We have such a picture in our minds of these people. What kind of clothes were they wearing? I mean, were they in traditional Puritan gear like we do in the, you know, the costumes these days?

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. 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. 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. They like big buckles. I know that much. Well, did they?

No, I mean, that's a bit like Vikings with horns on the helmets. It's one of those myths that gets carried around. We'll get into that more detail in the second episode. that we're going to do about this, but I just want to understand the basics of how they embark. So this is a commercial enterprise run by a firm out of England called the Merchant Adventurers. We haven't talked about a primary person in this named Thomas Weston, who was really pursuing this contract with these folks. The idea was that they would be set off and they were financed to do so to create this enterprise in America, doing work and creating product for this group back in England. That was the idea of the colonialism.

This contract is signed. That's the deal. And this is what happens when they embark on July 22nd, 1620. They're off and running from Leiden and that takes them to Southampton. And in Southampton, they engage another vessel, which will be called the Mayflower. And they're often running. That's basically where we're at when they head out in September of 1620, right? Yeah, that's right. So they've made all of these preparations for the void. 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. 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. It's really important for people to realize we have St. Augustine, what becomes St. Augustine in Florida, which is a Spanish. We have Jamestown and Roanoke before that in the Virginia North Carolina. That's about it. The Dutch haven't planted in what becomes New Amsterdam. This is really, really wild stuff.

And these folks head off into the Great Unknown. It takes a lot of courage to do that. 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. 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.

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.

And no wonder they're going to have a big meal someday to say, thank goodness we made it. Anna Scott, researcher at the University of Lincoln in England, has written extensively on the Pilgrims and features prominently in the history hit TV documentary we produced here at History Hit for Mayflower 400, the 400th anniversary of the voyage. This was part one.

I want to alert folks, there's another part of this coming in the next episode in which we take the next part of the voyage all the way to the new world. Thank you, Anna. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Don. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on.

And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.