Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony)

The Pilgrims, also known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were the English settlers who travelled to North America on the ship Mayflower and established the Plymouth Colony at what now is Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States. John Smith had named this territory New Plymouth in 1620, sharing the name of the Pilgrims' final departure port of Plymouth, Devon, England. The Pilgrims' leadership came from religious congregations of Brownists or Separatists who had fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands.

These Separatists held many of the same Calvinist religious beliefs as Puritans, but unlike Puritans (who wanted a purified established church), Pilgrims believed that their congregations should separate from the Church of England, which led to their being labelled Separatists. After several years of living in exile in Holland, they determined to establish a new settlement in the New World and arranged with investors to fund them. In 1620, they established the Plymouth Colony, in which they erected Congregational churches. The Puritans' later establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony eventually became more powerful in the area; but the Pilgrims' story nevertheless became a central theme in the history and culture of the United States.

Around 1605, congregations in Nottinghamshire, England led by John Robinson, Richard Clyfton, and John Smyth quit the Church of England to form Separatist congregations. These held Brownist beliefs—that true churches were voluntary democratic congregations, not whole Christian nations—as taught by Robert Browne, John Greenwood, and Henry Barrowe. As Separatists, they held that their differences with the Church of England were irreconcilable and that their worship should be independent of the trappings, traditions, and organization of a central church.

The Separatist movement was controversial. Under the Act of Uniformity 1559, it was illegal not to attend official Church of England services, with a fine of one shilling (£0.05; about £24 today) for each missed Sunday and holy day. The penalties included imprisonment and larger fines for conducting unofficial services. The Seditious Sectaries Act 1592 was specifically aimed at outlawing the Brownists. Under this policy, London Underground Church members were repeatedly imprisoned from 1566, and then Robert Browne and his followers were imprisoned in Norfolk during the 1580s. Henry Barrow, John Greenwood, and John Penry were executed for sedition in 1593. Browne had taken his followers into exile in Middelburg, and Penry urged the London Separatists to emigrate in order to escape persecution,^{[citation needed]} so after his death they went to Amsterdam.

The Archbishop of York, Matthew Hutton, displayed some sympathy to the Puritan cause, writing to Robert Cecil, Secretary of State to James I in 1604:

The Puritans though they differ in Ceremonies and accidentes, yet they agree with us in substance of religion, and I thinke all or the moste parte of them love his Majestie, and the presente state, and I hope will yield to conformitie. But the Papistes are opposite and contrarie in very many substantiall pointes of religion, and cannot but wishe the Popes authoritie and popish religion to be established.

Many Puritans had hoped that reforms and reconciliation would be possible when James came to power which would allow them independence, but the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 denied nearly all of the concessions which they had requested—except for an authorized English translation of the Bible. The same year, Richard Bancroft became Archbishop of Canterbury and launched a campaign against Puritanism and the Separatists. He suspended 300 ministers and fired 80 more, which led some of them to found more Separatist churches. Robinson, Clifton, and their followers founded a Brownist church, making a covenant with God "to walk in all his ways made known, or to be made known, unto them, according to their best endeavours, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them".

Archbishop Hutton died in 1606 and Tobias Matthew was appointed as his replacement. He was one of James's chief supporters at the 1604 conference, and he promptly began a campaign to purge the archdiocese of non-conforming influences, including Puritans, Separatists, and those wishing to return to the Catholic faith. Disobedient clergy were replaced, and prominent Separatists were confronted, fined, and imprisoned. He is credited with driving people out of the country who refused to attend Anglican services.