The Pilgrims Land at Plymouth

William Bradford, who was one of them and later wrote their history, tells how people in the villages where Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire meet broke with the established church and joined themselves “by a covenant of the Lord” into a church (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 1 (pp. 13–15)). Persecuted, they resolved in 1607 and 1608 to cross to the Low Countries, where they had heard there was freedom of religion (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 1 (pp. 13–15)). After about a year at Amsterdam they moved to Leiden, with John Robinson as pastor (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 3 (pp. 23–24)).

Among their reasons for leaving Holland Bradford gives the hardness of the life, the loss of their children to the ways of the country, and a hope of advancing the gospel (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 4 (pp. 30–32)). The greater number stayed at Leiden and kept Robinson with them (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 6 (p. 53)); he died there in 1625 (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1625 (p. 248)). Of those who left, Bradford wrote that “they knew they were pilgrimes” (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 7 (pp. 72–73)).

Their patent was for Virginia, and they had come to land outside it (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, book 2, 1620 (pp. 109–110)). Before going ashore at Cape Cod, on 11 November 1620, the men signed an agreement to “covenant and combine” themselves into a “civil Body Politick” and to obey such “just and equal Laws” as should be made for the general good (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, book 2, 1620 (pp. 109–110)) (Mayflower Compact text and dating clause). In December they chose a harbour across the bay for their settlement, Plymouth (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 10 (pp. 106–107)). Within three months, Bradford says, half the company of a hundred and odd had died (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, book 2, 1620 (p. 111)).

On Cape Cod the newcomers took buried corn and beans, meaning, Bradford says, to pay for them, which they did some six months later (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 10 (p. 100); 1621 (p. 124)). One party was attacked with arrows and fired back (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 10 (pp. 103–104)). In March 1621 Samoset walked into the settlement, and after him Squanto, a native of the place who had been carried off by a shipmaster to be sold in Spain (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, book 2, 1620–1621 (pp. 114–116)). With Squanto came the sachem Massasoit, and a peace was made: his people were not to harm the English, stolen goods were to be restored on both sides, and each was to aid the other in war (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, book 2, 1620–1621 (pp. 114–116)). Bradford records that a great sickness had swept the region about three years before the English arrived and that thousands had died (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1621 (pp. 123–124)). After the first harvest, a letter from Plymouth says, Massasoit came with some ninety men and was feasted for three days, and his men brought five deer (Mourt’s Relation, letter of 11 December 1621 (Dexter ed., pp. 132–134)).

In 1623, on a warning from Massasoit that other Indians, provoked by the thefts of a second English settlement, meant to destroy both, the colony’s captain, Miles Standish, killed several of their leaders (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1623 (pp. 157–159)). Robinson wrote from Leiden: “oh! how happy a thing had it been, if you had converted some, before you had killed any” (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1623 (pp. 197–198)). In 1630 John Winthrop, governor of a further company bound for New England, wrote that they would be “as a citty upon a hill” (Winthrop, Model of Christian Charity heading and closing section).