Stuff
I learn about the Pilgrims. So how did
this group come to be? Why were there 4
voyages from 1620-31? How did they decide to go? Survive?
After Henry VIII parted the the
pope, he told the church leaders he was now head of the church. He wanted no change in worships, but wanted
to adopt reformation beliefs. Archbishop Cranmer and the bishops
conferred and decided he’d never accept Calvinism with its strict behavioral
demands, and instead picked Lutheran doctrine.
So the Anglicans were Catholic worship/Luther’s theology. This got mixed
reviews but no riots. 90% of English
thought of themselves as Catholic. But
after Henry’s son Edward IV ruled only 5 years, sister Mary, born of Katherine
of Spain, came to power and tried to force Catholicism back into the church.
Bloody Mary went after any reticent Protestant or even someone who wanted to
talk it over. Result: Several thousand
forced to flee, often to Netherlands where the English traded. Holland was the commerce capital and made a
vibrant economy by freely allowing refugees to come with their foreign ideas.
And the Low Countries were the place for fabric weaving. Wales and Western England were the place for
sheep and wool. East Anglia (Eastern
England) was heavy in ship commerce, and Northern England was getting
acquainted with Presbyterianism. Holland
was Calvinist and thus most of the new ideas were Calvinistic that spread to
Britain. When the Low Countries declared
independence from Spain, 10,000 Englishmen rushed to help their cause.
There was a city in Yorkshire
(north) that was blamed for the beheading of Mary Stuart. She was Elizabeth’s cousin, raised in France
and quite Catholic. When she assumed the
throne of Scotland, she clashed with John Knox and the Presbyterians
there. So much so, that about 8 years
after she’d become queen, she fled leaving behind her infant son, James. This
was a big problem for Elizabeth of England, who secretly ordered her placed on
house arrest, because Mary was the
rightful heir of the English throne, had Parliament not recinded Elizabeth's bastardness. But
Parliament had seated Elizabeth instead of Mary because Elizabeth was
Protestant. A revolt might dethrone Elizabeth. 18 years later, Mary was
beheaded way up north at a Yorkshire castle. Elizabeth claimed someone had
countered her orders (even though it solved everything. Nephew James could now become the future
Protestant King of England, since she had no heirs) Who dunnit? Calvinists
hated Catholics with a passion and the church nearby had a Calvinist (Puritan)
pastor. The scapegoated Scrooby church
was exiled in mass to Holland.
There, others from Worchestershire
(west) and East Anglia, being persecuted, also joined them. Congregation grew
to 250 people in Lieden, Netherlands.
And it became a center for printing Puritan/Separatist (Calvinist) books
and tracts to be secretly smuggled back to England. There were writers like William Brewster
(former Cambridge professor), Robinson (the pastor), and Edward Winslow. Some soldiers who had joined the Dutch revolt
like Miles Standish, a rich woolens merchant, Thomas Brewer, who bankrolled
everything, and a lot of illiterate but devout peasants. It was tough times. Most could only do the menial jobs of textile
trade and they lived in much poverty.
Dissatisfaction made them want to go elsewhere, even though Holland
allowed them precious free speech.
Robert Cushman, a merchant, negotiated with the British Virginia Company
to allow a settlement next to Jamestown.
The Government (Privy Council) okayed reluctantly under the reasoning
that it was better to have these radicals harass the Spanish in the new world,
rather than to stay home and harass us.
Two old rotten boats and some cautious investors were found to fund the
project.
45 “Pilgrims”(members of Leiden
congregation) and 25 other adventurers joined plus a crew to make 102
people. They encountered rough storms in
the western Atlantic and miraculously survived. Landed in November near present
day Provincetown, MA as the weather was getting wintery and the crew refused to
go south to VA. Too late to build houses, they stayed aboard and went
hunting/exploring on land. Wrote the Mayflower Compact. That winter, a mystery
disease killed 50 of the 102. Only six
pilgrim women survived. Many of the non-pilgrims were non-believers and
ex-cons. Brewster and Brewer held them together while Standish enforced
order.
They found an abandoned Indian
village. The Pawtuxets had been wiped out
by white-man’s disease, contacted from befriending fisherman (offshore area had
been fished by English and Irish for 100 years). There were fields and huts. The pilgrims found corn (almost unknown in
Europe) and the village had several brooks. In the days before pipes, in order
to found a town, you had to have a brook to bring fresh water, washing water
and carry away waste going through the townsite. And they met one lonely former
resident, Squanto, who had been captured into slavery and taken to Europe
before his tribe died. He’d escaped,
found his way to the house of a guy who worked for the Virginia company, who
hired him as a coastal guide on the next fishing voyage, then let him escape
back to his native land. Squanto gave the Pilgrims life-saving advice on
poisonous plants and planting corn.
The Pilgrims were bent on sharing
the gospel with the natives, #2 priority after settling. But they had brought no seed, not enough
candles, hardly any livestock but much Dutch cheese. The women often figured things out. They observed how Indians would break off a
pine branch, wait for sap to bead at the wound, then smear it on the tip of the
broken branch. Makes a torch-candle they named “candlewood”. Fish were phenomenally plentiful and that is
how the Pilgrims paid off their investors over the years. Deer replaced cattle for meat and hides for
clothes. (Rarely did Pilgrims wear those
outfits they are portrayed in). Being English,
they tried making shelters of wattle and daub, but the dauby mud kept falling
out from the wet climate. Women observed
the Indians had used ‘shingles’ of bark and hide which later evolved into the
shingled and clapboard siding of New England.
Making friends with the Wampanoag tribe was key because they wanted the
Pilgrims to stay in the “ghost village” to keep the warlike Naragansetts out.
Many of the later Pilgrims had been Yorkshire peasants, so they were tough
redneck types who could survive.
Mayflower sailed back in 1623 and
other ships followed until most of the Lieden congregaton had a chance to
join. My great..grandfather Solomon
Leonard came in 1629 or 1630. Cousin to
Brewster, he and Miles Standish and Bradford founded the town of Bridgeport.
His wife, Sarah Chandler, was sister to one of the original 1620 pilgrims.
Odd stuff I learn. Pilgrims didn’t celebrate Christmas and
thought it was poor taste to rabble-rouse after Advent which was “little Lent”
with repentance and watchfulness. But
they drank beer copiously. The non-drinking
of Calvinists in our age are mainly Baptists who have added this. Some would think Puritans and Separtists don’t
like sex, but the opposite was true.
They hated Catholic teaching that celibacy was “higher” and sex was
sinful. They stressed love from
Ephesians 5 for couples and shelled out kids like mad. 2 babies were born on the 2-month voyage
over. And virtually all the women were
midwives. It was not a specialty. Moreover they understood the necessity of
clean linens and water at birth. But the
Pilgrims didn’t take baths (believed you should only bathe at certain times of
the moon). Squanto told them they needed
to because they “stincked”. So here we have a nice clean American telling the
unwashed foreigners they needed clean up their act.