Bradford and Plymouth Colony 35“purify” Anglicanism, these critics were called puritans.
At first the name was a pejorative assigned to them by
their opponents, but later it became a badge of honor.
Puritans objected to the way Elizabeth’s bishops
interpreted the Protestant doctrine of predestination.
Their reading of the Book of Genesis convinced them
that all human beings were properly damned by
Adam’s original sin and that what they did on Earth
had no effect on their fate after death. To believe oth-
erwise was to limit God’s power, which was precisely
what the Catholic Church did in stressing its ability to
forgive sins by granting indulgences. The Anglicans
implied that while God had already decided whether or
not a person was saved, an individual’s efforts to lead a
good life could somehow cause God to change His
mind. The Anglican clergy did not come right out and
say that good works could win a person admission to
Heaven—that heresy was called Arminianism. But
they encouraged people to hope that good works were
something more than ends in themselves. Puritans dif-
fered as to whether or not the ideal church should have
any structure beyond the local congregation. Some—
later called Congregationalists—favored a completely
decentralized arrangement with the members of each
church and their chosen minister beholden only to one
another. Others, called Presbyterians, favored some
organization above the local level, but one controlled
by elected laymen, not by the clergy.
Puritans were also of two minds as to whether
reform could be accomplished within the Anglican
Church. During Elizabeth’s reign most hoped that it
could. Whatever they did in their local churches, the
puritans remained professed Anglicans. After James I
succeeded Elizabeth I in 1603, however, their fears
that the royal court might be backsliding into its old
“popish” ways mounted. James was married to a
Catholic, and the fact that he favored toleration for
Catholics gave further substance to the rumor that he
was himself a secret member of that church. This
rumor proved to be false, but in his twenty-two-year
reign (1603–1625) James did little to advance the
Protestant cause. His one contribution, which had a
significance far beyond what he or anyone else antici-
pated, was to authorize a new translation of the Bible.
The King James Version (1611) was both a monumen-
tal scholarly achievement and a literary masterpiece.
Bradford and Plymouth Colony
In 1606, worried about the future of their faith,
members of the church in Scrooby, Nottinghamshire,
“separated” from the Anglican Church, declaring it
hopelessly corrupt. In seventeenth-century England,
Separatists had to go either underground or into
exile. Since only the latter would permit them to
practice their religious faith openly, exile was it. In
1608 some 125 members of the group departed
England for the Low Countries. They were led by
their pastor, John Robinson; church elder William
Brewster; and a sixteen-year-old youth, William
Bradford. After a brief stay in Amsterdam, the group
settled in the town of Leyden. In 1619, however, dis-
heartened by the difficulties they had encountered in
making a living, disappointed by the failure of others
in England to join them, and distressed because their
children were being “subjected to the great licen-
tiousness of the youth” in Holland, these “Pilgrims”
decided to move again—to seek “a place where they
might have liberty and live comfortably.”
The Pilgrims approached the Virginia Company
about establishing a settlement near the mouth of the
Hudson River on the northern boundary of the com-
pany’s grant. The London Company, though unsym-
pathetic to the religious views of the Pilgrims, agreed
with their request. Since the Pilgrims were short of
money, they formed a joint-stock company with other
prospective emigrants and some optimistic investors
who agreed to pay the expenses of the group in
return for half the profits of the venture. In
September 1620, about 100 strong—only thirty-five
of them Pilgrims from Leyden—they set out from
Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower.
Had the Mayflower reached the passengers’
intended destination, the Pilgrims might have been
soon forgotten. Instead their ship touched America
slightly to the north on Cape Cod Bay. Unwilling to
remain longer at the mercy of storm-tossed December
seas, they decided to settle where they were. Since they
were outside the jurisdiction of the London Company,
some members of the group claimed to be free of all
governmental control. Therefore, before going ashore,
the Pilgrims drew up theMayflower Compact.“We
whose names are underwritten,” the compact ran, “do
by these Presents, solemnly and mutually in the pres-
ence of God and one another covenant and combine
ourselves under into a civil Body Politick...andby
Virtue hereof do enact...such just and equal laws...
as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the
general Good of the Colony.”
Thus early in American history the idea was
advanced that a society should be based on a set of
rules chosen by its members. The Pilgrims chose
William Bradford as their first governor. In this simple
manner, ordinary people created a government that
they hoped would enable them to cope with the
unknown wilderness confronting them.
The story of the first thirty years of the Pilgrims’
colony has been preserved in Of Plymouth
Plantation,written by Bradford. Having landed on
the bleak Massachusetts shore in December 1620 at
a place they called Plymouth, the Pilgrims had to
endure a winter of desperate hunger. About half of