In Our Time - The Pilgrim Fathers

Episode Date: July 5, 2007

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Pilgrim Fathers and their 1620 voyage to the New World on the Mayflower. Every year on the fourth Thursday in November, Americans go home to their families and sit down to a meal. It’s called Thanksgiving and it echoes a meal that took place nearly 400 years ago, when a group of religious exiles from Lincolnshire sat down, after a brutal winter, to celebrate their first harvest in the New World. They celebrated it in company with the American Indians who had helped them to survive.These settlers are called the Pilgrim Fathers. They were not the first and certainly not the largest of the early settlements but their Plymouth colony has retained a hold on the American imagination which the larger, older, violent and money-driven settlement of Jamestown has not.With Kathleen Burk, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at University College London; Harry Bennett, Reader in History and Head of Humanities at the University of Plymouth; Tim Lockley, Associate Professor of History at the University of Warwick

Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk, forward slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, every year on the 4th Thursday in November, Americans go home to their families and sit down to a meal called Thanksgiving. It echoes a meal that took place nearly 400 years ago when a group of English religious exile sat down after a brutal winter

to celebrate their first harvest having crossed over into what was called the New World. They celebrated in company with American Indians who would help them survive. These settlers are called the Pilgrim Fathers, and although they were not the first, and certainly not the largest of the early settlements, they retain a hold on the American imagination far out of proportion to their historical significance. With me to discuss the Pilgrim Fathers are Tim Lockley, Associate Professor of History at the University of Warwick, Harry Bennett, reader in history and head of humanities at the University of Plymouth,

and Kathleen Burke, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at University College, London. Kathleen Burke, the pilgrim fathers arrived in Plymouth in America in 1620. They're often seen of as the first British European settlers in America, which isn't true. Can you give us a sense of who was actually there in 1620? Well, one of the earliest pilgrim leaders, William Bradford, referred to the vast and unpeopled continent countries of America. And this was not true, as you say. The French were in Canada, and indeed the pilgrims were working. about being attacked by them. Spain locked up all of South and Central America, and indeed was

as far the Florida's ruined by Spain. And Americans, you're quite right, Americans do forget about Jamestown because the English colonized Virginia in 1607. This was not a good precedent because after the first year, 400 colonists, only 40 were left alive after what was called the starving time when they cut up and salted their wife, one of them did. But the problem with Jamestown and was that it wasn't colonists, it was soldiers and it was gentry who did not think it behooved them to work.

And so therefore the Jamestown settlement struggled until 16, 20, 21, which of course is when the Pilgrim fathers arrived. But there was an idea, as Bradford said, that it was devoid of civil life and it was an on-people continent. And it's interesting that we've mentioned the French and the Spanish being there,

but not the fact that there were a great number of American Indians are. But that's not entirely the case where they went. right in sense that the Native Americans, it was their continent. But in 1617, 1819, French fishermen in Maine had infected the Indians with the bubonic plague. And so the area where the Pilgrim fathers did land was essentially devoid. One local tribe had two men over the age of 60 left. That was it.

So it was unpeopled in that area. So he was right. Did he know that? I'm sorry to Niglewere, but did he know that? I just thought it was part of the general idea that there were these continents over there, which were empty and waiting for Europeans to fill them up with civilization and empty considered... People who are so-called savages were part of an emptiness.

Well, that's the point. I mean, you went on with that particular quote by Bradford being devoid of all civil inhabitants, where there are only savage and brutish men. The point of being civil is you wore clothes and you had a settled government. And the Indians, the Native Americans, did neither. So therefore, they were not civil people,

and therefore they weren't the same. But you pointed out quite rightly, the French with her, the Spanish with her, and the English-British had had a go in James Town in 1607, which had not been at great success at all. Can you just give us a bit of background to the going, as it were? At the end of the 16th century, you have the Spanish Armada, so that had been survived, a victory had been won, but there were still fears coming from there.

The gunpowder plot in 1605, more fears coming from there, fears directed towards people who were against the government in using religion or being religiously against the government. So you had a great deal of potential unrest there. Can you bring that into the picture? Yes, I mean, there were two difficulties in Britain. One was the problems about Catholicism, which was symbolized by Spain, of course,

and the gunpowder plot. The other was symbolized by extreme Puritans, which, of course, the separatists who thought they had to hold themselves as a godly group against the infectious parts of the church and the rest of the country. And James I, who came to the threat, in James the 6th and first, forgive me, who came to the throne in 1603, was very concerned about both, particularly about radical Puritans,

which is what the Pilgrim fathers were, of course. They held themselves separate, and James thought this was a real attack on the structure and safety of the realm. As I understand it, after the Spanish war, one of the great inheritances for this country was an enormous number of ships. Massive shipbuilding went on, the looting of the Spanish traders, the privateers, or almost a privatized industry,

meant that there was a boom, there was a sort of navy in waiting, and the idea of going on ships, exploring, trading, conquering, as it were, had bitten in to the English imagination, particularly in the West Country. This had been going on for a century, actually. The West Country was the centre of this,

money in England, I mean money in London, and some in the West Country, but it was the West Country that provided the ships, provided the sailors, provided the sea dog captains. And they had been exploring Sir Francis Drake, circumnavigated the globe, but Spain had stopped this in the sense the Spanish war stopped it. And you're quite right that once Spain had been defeated, you not only had safety on the oceans,

but you also had these massive unemployed sailors and so forth. But the idea of going west had already gripped the imagination. It was just safer to do so now. And Elizabeth had not allowed them to do so, whilst Spain, was a threat. And the end of the threat meant that the monarch, who didn't help but could stop, they actually gave permission now to do so. So yes, there was a great explosion. But the point of Virginia as well is that not only did they go there for greed, they went there to provide a base to attack the Spanish treasureships. Yes. Harry Bennett, just trying to get more background

about this, this 16-20 voyage. It began, curiously enough, this, Great passage across America began among small religious communities in the East Midlands. So let's concentrate on a Nottinghamshire village of Scrooby. What was going on there in the early 17th century? Well, in the early 1600s, the East Midlands, as you say, is home to a number of fairly radical

Puritan congregations. One of these is at Badworth in Nottinghamshire, another's at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire. Worksop in Nottinghamshire is another congregation which is fairly radical in its puritist and indeed in its separatist beliefs. And these congregations are led typically by ministers who've come out of Cambridge. And they are increasingly separatist in their belief. Really after the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 when there is an attempt to really address the Puritan agenda

and nothing really comes out of that for the Puritans other than a Bible in English. Their substantive demands are not met. Then there is what might be described as an attack on these communities. There is an increased level of repression against them. So, for example, the congregation at Babworth, Richard Clifton, who's the minister there, loses his living and is forced to seek employment,

as you might describe it elsewhere. and he is given, his congregations, as you might describe it, takes place in secret at Scrooby Manor in Nottinghamshire, where they're accommodated by the tenant, one William Brewster, who's the sort of local postmaster. So you have at Scrooby a sort of refugee congregation, which is in hiding, as it were, from the authorities. And they are increasingly concerned for the future of themselves, for their family, and indeed for the religious principles which they hold high. It's very helpful that you brought in the King James Bible because there's an obvious threat from the Roman Catholics. The Spanish were Roman Catholics. They were going to come and get the English.

The gunpowder plot was a Roman Catholic plot. But King James's Bible was King James, it was his Bible, and it was one of the subtext was to prove the divine right of kings, and the other was to eliminate the extremes all over the place in religion, whether it was the Catholics or the Puritans because they were defeated in the argument which led to the formation of the Bible. So they did ber begin to feel very excluded

and they were not only excluded religiously but of course it spilled over which is the interesting thing into politics and civil life. That's right. I mean one of the problems I think with the way we view things today is that we view religion and politics as essentially separate items. Then religion was politics and politics was religion. The two are really absolutely fused.

So any question, of schism, whether it's Roman Catholicism or whether it's extreme Puritans who desire separation from the Church of England in one form or another. This is bad. This is a threat to the state. And some of the Puritan divines who are oppressed during say the 1590s, they are oppressed, they're brought to trial, 1593 quite spectacularly, not on a charge of heresy, but on a charge of treason. Yes. Tim Loxley, we have a patch of at the time. We have Catholics of various degrees of intensity

of high Anglicans, low Anglicans, different sorts of Puritans, other Protestants and so on. I want to talk about the separatists because of the separatists who went in 1620, a small group. What were the separatists? And if you can just tell our listeners what they stood for, what they believed in, and what that spilled

over to in the rest of their view and society. I think it's easy to pick up on a lot of what Harry just said. I mean, separatists pose a threat to English society because they want to be separate from the Church of England at a time when being separate from the Church of England is slightly treasonous. And it's worth making a distinction between Protestants who want to be separatists and the group that we often call the Puritans, the ones who go to Massachusetts in the 1630s,

who are usually content to stay within the Church of England and they try to reform it to make it more pure from within. And separatists, in a way, give up on the Church of England. they think it's no longer reformable. They need to start again. They are often described as congregationalists because they believe in the power of the congregation and they don't believe in church hierarchy like bishops, archbishops,

and of course the top of the church hierarchy is the king himself. And that's why they pose a particular threat. And it's why they're persecuted in the East Midlands, much more so than the Puritans, who for a long time in the 1610s and 20s are sort of tolerated because they're not posing anywhere near the same threat. That changed in the 1620s,

with a new Archbishop who clamps down on the Puritans as well and as part of the course of the Puritan migration in 1630 and that's why these separatists eventually feel they have to leave England because they can't worship how they want to worship. And they go to, but it's interesting that this group, this religiously led group,

this religiously infused group, religiously committed group, are pushing into ideas which develop into ideas of freedom, democracy and so on. It's an interesting aspect of the religious development over the last 2000, often overlooked that sometimes the religious core burns or radiates into areas way outside religion. And this is a case. This is one of the reasons I think why they became emblematic in America.

It wasn't just religious. It was to do with other things as well. Yeah, I think the separatists are an interesting group because they do have this very important religious belief and it does drive their entire existence. They share with the puritan's belief in how important everyday life is and that everyday life has symbolic meaning. Nothing is just by chance or by accident. Everything is loaded with meaning.

And it's usually reloaded with religious meaning. So every decision they take is God's purpose. I mean, the clearing of the Indians out of New England because of plague is seen as one thing that God had done for them to make this land open and available for them to settle. And so everything, they have lived with this, I guess, vital existence. And nothing is coincidental. Very briefly, Harry Bennett, in 1606, this group of separatists,

left England for America, sorry, for America, but for Holland. First of all, in Amsterdam, that was too, as it were hot for them, and they went to Leiden. They said there for 10 or 11 years to practice their religion, which they found much more congenial. And then, because of the threat of a Spanish-Dutch war, which would bring oppression back, they left Holland to come back to Plymouth, to come back to England, to try to... What prompted them to leave Holland?

What prompted them to leave Holland was really the possibility, well, the strong... Two things, essentially. The first is that there is growing tension, growing tension over what might come in the form of increased religious oppression within Holland. and within the Dutch Reformed Church there's a movement to get rid of unlicensed ministry as you might describe it. There's also growing tensions

over the Netherlands and over its relationship with Spain. There's also an attempt by the English to, by the crown to get extradited certain Puritan figures within Holland who still seem to be messing

within English and indeed in Scottish affairs. So there's a move actually to sort of attack them in various ways. And there's also a mood, I think, within the Puritans, that if we stay here much longer, we're going to wither on the vine, that as it were, we are increasingly aging, our young are increasingly sort of Dutch in their manners and customs, and that they desire a quintessentially English existence, which they don't feel that they can actually have within England. And they saw the Dutchers being very corrupting and taking their children away from in that sense. So, Kathleen Buckley came back to England and eventually landed up in Plymouth, in the... in the autumn of 1620 and got the Mayflower. Can you tell us how they negotiated to be on the Mayflower

because they weren't the sole occupants of this boat? No, they had met up with a gentleman who was a representative, Thomas Weston, of the Merchant Adventures in London, who were investors who financed these sorts of voyages, colonial voyages in the hopes of making a lot of money. And the men from Laiden came, but as far as the merchant's ventures were concerned, there weren't enough.

And so they put in, they insisted that they take with them what were called the strangers, that is to say non-separatists. And so almost half of the voyage, of the members of the passengers, the Mayflower, were not separatists, in fact. And this was going to, of course,

have important consequences once they reached America. Can we, so they get the money, they drive quite a hard bargain. They're going to go there. And can you tell us what the deal is with their backers? Yes, well, they were bamboozled in a sense.

The deal was to start with that each of the male members of the separatist congregation had the equivalent of a share, the same as a merchant. They were to work four days for the merchant ventures, two days for themselves, and then they could all pray all day Sunday. What then happened, of course, was that the ventures changed their mind

and said, no, you have to work all. all days for us, none for you, and they were forced to sign this. Once they got to America, of course, they decided they weren't going to. Can we just a bit of detail, Harry. As I understand it, this is a wooden galleon. It's only 100 feet long, although it's on three decks, and you've got 101, 102 passengers, half of them separatists. Then you've got the crew, then you've got the stores.

Yeah, you're dealing with a packed vessel here. You're not dealing with perhaps something that's particularly seaworthy. I mean, I think one of the things to really bring out is that one of the ships that was to accompany the Mayflower, the Speedwell, which originally took the pilgrims from Delshaven in the Netherlands to Southampton where they joined the Mayflower, when they set off from Southampton in 1620, the idea is that they're there straight on passage to the new world. But of course what happens is that the Speedwell springs a leak and has to put into dark. They then set off the following day after undertaking repairs. And again, the Speedwell springs an almighty leak,

and they have to put in Plymouth, which is the port where they ultimately set off from. There is also some talk as well that not just about the size of the vessels and their lack of seaworthiness, but whether indeed the crew of the Speedwell actually sabotaged the vessel because they weren't looking forward to a voyage in fairly cramped conditions over to the new world. Can you just give us a picture? They're on the sea for, on the waves for about two months,

and the mast breaks halfway long, one person is bald, one person dies. Can you get some idea of what was going on, and what seems to us a tiny space for this number of people? It's a pretty miserable voyage, but it's not one that's unique. All 17th century voyages across the Atlantic are on similar type of ships. Some are even in worse conditions if you only have to think of all the slave ships that go from West Africa to the Caribbean. When they would have a ship of similar size, you'd have perhaps 400 slaves crammed into that cargo. But anyway, for European colonists, they're on small ships. They're on cramped conditions. What food do they take?

They have to take a variety of salted food that can survive, salted meats, dried food, biscuits, that sort of stuff. Fresh water or beer, they have to take something to drink obviously. And if they're sensible, they're taking fresh vegetables and fresh fruit. which are going to combat the seafarers dreaded disease of scurvy. And they didn't do that successfully because certainly several of the pilgrims when they were in Plymouth suffered from scurvy. That's not something that they avoided very readily. Just a quick footnote here, a celebration of beer,

because that was not only meant that it was safe to drink, unlike water, but also it helped prevent the scurvy. And scurvy really appeared in the vessel when the beer virtually ran out. You were about to say, when you were speaking earlier, Kathleen, about the deal the Mayflower Compact made on the boat with virtually all the adults. 41 men were involved. This was between the separatists and those who were non-separatists, those who were going out as merchants, colonised and so on.

And it became great importance of Mayflower Compact in the Plymouth Colony, but also in American imagination. Can you tell us what the basic deal was and why it was so significant? Well, the Mayflower Compact is only one paragraph long. They were more succinct in those days. And essentially what it says, to carry out the duties and the wishes of God, we will come together and have a community in which laws will be made and duties to be done and all men will agree to obey these laws, essentially.

And it's two things. It's partly a covenant. It's between them. and God, Moses and God recall, so the idea of a religious covenant, but it's also a compact and this reflects the ideas of a number of political philosophers

that the best sort of political society is a compact amongst men to obey and to carry out duties. So it's interesting because it incorporates in this one paragraph important ideas both religious and political, which I think in a sense is unique.

And one of the interesting is a separatist, rather than minority are drawing the others in and they're calling, sorry about this but they are calling the shots aren't they? They're saying this is what it's going to be. They have a very thin majority and of course they'll all vote together.

They can out vote the strangers as they recall capitalized strangers of non-capital are the non-separatists which are also capitalized. So on that 41 they were in a slight majority. Right. But what did sorry I'm fascinated by this? Did they have votes on it? Did they have to use

a slight majority? Yes. everyone before they they were already on site of land and they decided this had to be organized before they went into the new world and this was drawn up and every man had to sign it if he didn't know how to write he had to make a mark unless he was too ill to do so

and essentially no one was going to leave the ship till this was done so is there a sense that we've got a boat carrying across ideas because they had to have elected leader on this as I understand it is that true but one of the problems and why we shouldn't forget why we need the Mayflat Compact is because they leave England before the Charter of the Plimuth Council for New England has been granted. So they don't have a political organisation.

They've jumped the gun. So they're on the boat and they don't have any kind of system of organising themselves. There's no formal legal structure. The Royal Charter would have given them a system, would have given them not only the right. And it would have set out who was the leader and how you choose leaders and how you frame laws. Why did they jump the gun? I think they're over-hasty. I think they're also, they do have their own qualms about what these is going to appear in the final charter.

and it's certainly not unknown for groups to leave England before charters are granted. I mean the pilgrims are also a bit wary of charters because it ties them in ways that they maybe don't want to be tied. And so they have this charter, which is granted after they've left, but they need the Mayflower Compact before they land so they don't just descend into bickering and factions. I'm rather taking with this idea, Harry, of this being a boat of ideas. Is that too fanciful?

I think it is in a sense. I mean, I think you can regard... This is too fancy of a lot of it is a boat of ideas. I think it's a boat, well, a ship of ideas, which emerges almost by accident. I think it's fine to see the Mayflower Compact as this sort of foundation stone for all these fantastic ideas, the foundation, perhaps, of American democracy, which comes out of it.

But I think you've got to look at the immediate imperatives of a bunch of people on the high seas are going to find themselves on the shores of the new world. They've got to come together. They have absolutely got to recognize. reconcile any difficulties because if they don't they really will be damned quite literally. So as it were, these are a set of ideas,

but they're emerging from a situation of extreme expediency. Let's open up the ideas a bit more. One paragraph, it's fantastic, isn't it? That's the biggest revelation I listen is that you could actually create something in one paragraph. A country in one paragraph. You couldn't... Never mind. That's a talk about bureaucracy.

But inside that becomes a seed for... ideas which developed of religious freedom, curiously enough, although it became intolerant of personal freedom, of liberties, of democracy, of utopianism, seemed to spring out of that paragraph. Yes and no, I don't agree, and they didn't agree that it was going to be religious freedom.

No, but it's prior later. Tell me how wrong, that's okay. No, no, I'm not telling you right or wrong. It's an interesting question. I mean, as it was mediated through the next hundred years, It took on a meeting, meaning I think, that it didn't have when they actually went out. Remember, they weren't going out for freedom. Freedom only in a sense to do what they wanted.

They wanted to control. And one reason that it was not a wholly successful colony was because it was difficult to get others to agree with their ideas of what constituted religion and politics. So I suppose it's a really strange idea that this is the origins of democracy, because it's not the origins of American oligarchy. But it is more democratic. than a lot of other English-speaking society is more democratic than you get in England

I mean most adult males have some kind of vote in to elect Freeman and they elect their leader and down in James Town they're still following the king No but that's not true That's not true

James Town 1619 is the first elected assembly in North America And it's that not That wasn't in the Greek Sorry It predates the James The Maple House settlement By a whole year

And so representative government exists in Virginia as well and you get far more say over your life in the new world than you do in England. But one might say that's the interest of charters because the charter to Jamestown does say that

there'll be an elected, you know, that the colonists themselves can elect an assembly and carry out the laws as long as they aren't contravening the laws of England. Nothing says this in the Mayflower compact. Can we get back to what was happening at sea

So they land on, I call it Plymouth Rock, they land in the end of the year. Which is obviously not a good time to be landing. Winter is closing in very rapidly at the state. A few months later, 50% of them are dead. Yes. So how did the 50% survive, first of all? And when they came out of that winter, what had they got in front of them? They face a very, very hard time.

I mean, essentially, they're dealing with sort of makeshift shelters almost on the beach, almost on the sort of shores of the new world. also taking advantage of some of the grain stores which have been left by the local Native Americans, which as a result of the bubonic plague, are there literally for the taking. They're also, of course, foraging for game in various ways. It is very, very hard. They really are on the absolute shores of existence at this particular stage. And even when they come through the winter, given that they've lost 50% of their people,

I think it pays great testament to their powers, their determination that they don't simply give up at this particular stage, but believe that they've got the ability to go on from this point, even though they have been reduced by 50% to actually found a successful colony. That's part of the sort of separatist mindset, isn't it? And everything is a trial, everything is a test sent by God. You need to overcome this. We are in the desert. Absolutely.

And we will be tested and we will be strong for it. If you can get over that, then it shows how worthy you are. But they were, in a practical sense, they were greatly helped by two or three Indians at the time, particularly a man called Squanto, who happened when didn't go into it,'s too elaborate to speak English. And he came in, and the first word from an Indian, the English heard when they went to America was welcome. And he taught them a great number of things about survival there, which enabled them to survive. Can you develop that, Kathleen? A little interesting footnote, Squanto, his name, is actually referring to the Indian equivalent of Satan.

But I'm not sure the Puritans knew, the pilgrim fathers knew that. Essentially, they didn't know how to grow English grains and seeds on the very bad soil. And what he did was to show them how, that you had to mix in dead fish with the seeds. And so he showed them how to take mounds of earth, mix the seeds, several dead fish, put beans along with the corn so the bean tendrils would grow up the corn stalks and provide shade for the

for the vegetables that grew up underneath indeed he actually without this they probably would have died it's almost no doubt about it could be called a godsend really couldn't he? He was probably called precisely that by the pilgrim fathers and he lived with them until he died as I understand it or was around there

He was around there. I mean, Esquanto is not an unmitigated good. I mean, he had his own agenda, shall we say. And there was some elements of perhaps not always working with the good of the pilgrims, not for the bad, but for his own, his own preoccupations. But as you say, without him, you think they would not have survived? Well, they knew they wouldn't have survived. And so when they had this Thanksgiving meal, Squanto and other Indians came to share the meal with them? Well, yes. They arrived there in, what, December 16th,

Some time in May, Squanto showed them how to grow these fruits. At harvest time, in late September, early October, they decided, since they had survived, they would have this Thanksgiving. They invited the Indians, not just Squanto, I believe there were about a hundred there. And the other iconic American thing is they went out and shot wild turkeys. Turkeys had been known in England since the middle of the 16th century. In fact, it was a usual English Christmas dish. But they went out and shot these wild turkeys.

sorts of game, and they had a huge feast. And it wasn't called Thanksgiving with the capital T. That was a later development. But they gave thanks for actually having survived. And the fact that they had all these Indians there was a testament. I think that they, A, they knew they couldn't have, and B, they had quite good relations with the surrounding Indians. And this was partly one of the benefits that Squanto helped them. He introduced them, he explained them to each other, he encouraged them to work together. But there are important reasons why local Indian groups and Massasoit, the Indian leader, got on well with Puritan, the Pilgrim colony in Plymouth, partly political for his own sake in that he saw the pilgrims as a useful ally against other Indian tribes, especially the Narragansett. And the pilgrims were certainly not above picking on or picking off Indian tribes that were alien to their agenda.

I mean, they attacked a group of Indians where, roughly where modern-day Boston is, in the mid-1620s, and in alliance with Massasoit, so they were, they did have this sort of military alliance going on. And so it's not a... It's up to Pico tribe,

no, though that's in the 16th, 30s. Yes, this is an attack on a place called Wes O'Guset, and it involves the... I guess it's all about the fur trade, which is one of the ways that the... the pilgrims were looking to make money was by controlling the fur trade with local Indian tribes. And Massasoe and the pilgrim fathers are in cahoots about this.

Having said that, pilgrim relations with Indians, as a generality, are much better than they are often between European settlers and Native Americans, certainly better than they are in James Town. I think it also helps as well that the Puritans as a separatists, the pilgrims as a military force are also quite well led by a soldier of fortune, Miles Standish, that they encounter in the Netherlands. And I think the early encounters...

Did he become a separatist? In effect, yes. And the early encounters, when of course Native Americans begin to encounter firearms for the first time leave a very great concern on the part of the Native Americans not to repeat the experience.

They said of, Kettlingberg, we've been talking about the facts and the details of it and we've been talking about how religious ideas spread then a bit and eventually more into other ideas and maybe parted them. That's another

argument but interesting the argument. But they went there for religious audit. How did the colony fare in its first few years in relation to what they'd hoped to come from this new England? They wanted a new England, not the old... How did it fare in terms of what they'd hoped would happen?

Well, it only fared for about ten years. years, in fact, because they kept themselves to themselves, they didn't go out and were not fruitful and multiplying with other colonists that happened to be, and particularly other Europeans, obviously, they didn't mate with the Indians, as it were, as it was called then, because they were not Christian enough. They were in a part of the country that is not very fertile. No matter what they could do, there was a limit to what they could actually accomplish. And by about 1627, there were still only about 300 colonists. A couple of years later, there weren't even 200.

And they just did not develop. And essentially what happened was that they were annexed by Massachusetts and the Puritans. Because from 1630 onwards, thousands and thousands of pilgrims started to go across. The great Puritan migration. Between 12 years, about 40 or thousand went from that. That's a different program. Let's stick with these people. How significant, Tim, was this plimiscont to the later settlement of America?

because we've claimed, I've claimed, that it has a, and it has been claimed, you've claimed, that it had greater significance than its numbers and its short life suggests. So can we move on to that? Yeah, it has a resonance, partly because of its story, because it is a story of heroism. It's a story of struggle,

but ultimately triumphant, because it does survive. It does have these ideas of democracy. It does have a pure and noble core, I guess. and that obviously resonates with future generations. It's picked up, especially in the 19th century where people start to think about American history, Americans themselves start to think about American history in the longer term.

And they look to their origins, and these are the favourable origins that they like to look at, because the pilgrims compare very favourably with their counterparts in Jamestown, who are seen to be profit-orientating, they are very quickly slave-holding, those aren't people you necessarily want to commemorate as your founding fathers,

whereas the pilgrim fathers, and this nomenclature comes in in the 19th century, is a much better story, you know, to remember. And that's where Abraham Lincoln, in the second half, 1863, was it went back for his great day of, Rememps in American unity, it was the Thanksgiving Day.

It was non-religious celebration. That's right. But I think we should not forget the importance of it actually in the 18th century. I think it's in 1741 when they were going to get rid of whatever Plymouth Rock was, that a 95-year-old man was carried down to the,

where they were going to the pier and said, you can't do that. My father said that was where the Puritans landed. And essentially what happened over the next 20 years was that it became a symbol between loyalists and patriots that how you thought about this Plymouth Rock symbolized whether it should stay there because you were a loyalist or it should be moved elsewhere because you were a patriot.

So the idea of the Pilgrim fathers as a political eye, icon actually predates the 19th century. All right. And then interesting, you've got the, when you get into the 19th century, that's history being reinterpreted again in terms of the sort of civil war and the schism between north and south, in terms of, you know, which is more valuable, is it James Town or is it, is it Plymouth? So is it where I think the Pilgrim fathers represent this kind of way of reading America's origins. I think the Pilgrim fathers really in the 19th century become what might describe is the official history, the right history.

I think you better open up the idea of Jamestown so we know what the dialogue is between Jamestown and Plymouth. Jamestown being, which of you is going to live, James Town being a different sort of settlement with a different sort of history. James Town is where life is nasty, brutish and short. It's violent, it's hedonistic, it's populated almost entirely by young men

for a long period of its history for the first 10 or 15 years that the number of women there is infinitesimally small. It quickly moves into being a slave society dominated by tobacco culture. It has violent relations with local Indian tribes. You know, despite what Disney said about Pocahontas, you know, there are wars going on between the Pauhattan Indians and the James Down Settlers, and which eventually leads to the extermination of most of the Indians.

So it's a very violent, different history. So in a sense what Harry is saying, that you're looking for what your origin of your history are, you've got James Sound and you've got Plymouth and you choose Plymouth, but maybe is that the... I don't necessarily think that Plymouth is an accurate reflection of American society in some respects, because... the idea of James Town being about capitalism,

well, America becomes a very capitalist society and very organised about capitalism, America still is a very violent society. And again, you can look right back to Jamestown and say, well, it started out as a very violent society. And it didn't treat Native Americans well for a long time. In the 1930s, I think the Native American population reaches its nadir of a fraction of what it had been pre-contact.

And it's only in the last sort of 20 or 30 years that Native Americans have been rehabilitated. So not James Town is, but in the last few minutes, let's go back to Plymouth in America, Kathleen. What resonant, why, when, as it were, let's say, it was opted for as one of the starting points, or the great starting point for the European America, where America has became layered on top of indigenous Americans. What can you just tell us what was really drawn from that? Why there were, it's been mentioned, but just go into why. and people were so keen on that being their origin?

Well, partly, I suppose, because it was in New England. I mean, it's partly New Englanders didn't like slaves theoretically. Partly they couldn't grow the sorts of crops there that required slave labor. So it's quite easy to be virtuous in that sort of way. John Quincy Adams pointed... So you're allowing no sense of altruism or... What I'm saying is men's motives are mixed, are they not? Two ideas about America.

You go there for gold. you go there for God, but neither is unmixed. On the other, on Pilgrim fathers, God won. But they, as you quite promptly said earlier in the program, they drove a hard bargain. They were going there for God, but they weren't going there to be poverty-stricken. So therefore, the idea that Jamestown is only,

only gold, they had an Anglican church there, which for many people was quite acceptable. All right. I think Kathy put some very interesting points forward. And I think one of the interesting things is looking at the Pilgrim fathers. You know, on the one hand we can describe

them as the foundation stand of American democracy, or one can place that kind of reading on it. But as Kathy said, they're also the foundation stand of American oligarchy as well. There is this fascinating sort of yin and yang, golden god oligarchian democracy, which

is associated with the Pilgrim fathers. And I think in a way perhaps that does go to the heart of modern America. Tim, we've been using the nine pilgrim fathers, and can you tell us when that was coined? It is much later development. It is a 19th century idea. I mean, the idea of fathers, links back, of course, to founding fathers and pilgrim fathers. It becomes out of this sort of late 19th century, and then into the 20th century, a part of the official history, in a way, of America. You only have to talk to American schoolchildren. I mean, what they know about their foundations is the Pilgrim fathers.

They generally know very little about Jamestown, despite. to the fact that this year has been the 400th anniversary and the Queen even went to Virginia. They generally know about pumpkins, they know about black hats and they know about turkeys and that's what they know. But it's interesting that we have these separatists going, must keep on with these separatists

who were so determined to do what they did and then other Puritans who were related in that Puritanism, if not in the toughness of their ideology, came in 1630 and days it were swept through in the north, didn't they? Kathleen. Yes, Puritans have had something of a bad

oppressed, but it's their own fault because they wrote a lot of it themselves. H. L. Minkin in the 20th century defined a Puritan is a man who thinks it somewhere. Someone is having a good time. And the idea that Puritans are those who were determined to

draw the worst out of a situation. But Pilgrim fathers didn't have that. They had this residence of something higher and happiness in God. Puritans, everything is damned except us, we hope. And so just the PR, almost, one might say, is on the pilgrim side.

But you're right. The idea that somehow the pilgrim fathers, who were not first, who were not successful, have become the iconic image of early America, is in certain respects quite inexplicable. If one does not tie into politics or the idea of a compact, because the idea of a political compact is the whole foundation of the Constitution. And the pilgrims did it first. Yes, they were the seed. And that's the fascinating thing about them.

And they're still an influence in America today. Absolutely. A very big influence. As Tim said, as Tim mentioned, you know, most Americans appreciate any of the good things, the iconic images, the Turkey, things like that, rather than the kind of other side of things. You know, for example, you know, the Pilgrim fathers' religious toleration. Yet these are the people at Salem in the 1690s

or perhaps being rather less than tolerant. Yes. On the other hand, when you say they, They only wanted to survive. They didn't want to increase and multiply. They wanted to survive and continue with their worship. I'm afraid we'll have to end up. We're nearly overrun.

Kathleen Burke, Harry Bennett. Tim Lockley, thank you very much. Next, we're talking about the indecency trial of Madame Bovary. Thanks for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.com.