Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony)

As Pilgrims (English Pilgrim Fathers or Pilgrims ), the first English settlers in New England are called. They sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 across the Atlantic and founded the colony of Plymouth ( Plymouth Colony ) in present-day Massachusetts.

The name " Pilgrims " came on only in the middle of the 19th century and was William Bradford's book "History of Plimoth Plantation " ( "They knew theywere pilgrims " ) removed. The " Pilgrim Fathers " called themselves after the language of the Apostle Paul "saints" ( " saints" ).

Although the Pilgrims were not the first English settlers in the later territory of the United States - as the Jamestown Colony was in Virginia already in 1607 been created - to play the Pilgrim Fathers as pioneers in American folklore, including with regard to the Thanksgiving feast, a prominent role.

The " Pilgrim Fathers " were called Separatists, that belonged to a particularly radical current in English Puritanism, which completely broke away from the Church of England and an absolute municipal autonomy demanded. That is, they believed that each congregation ( congregation ) is directly responsible to God or Christ. Thus they had a Congregational church order.

Separatist Congregationalists were a theological direction within the Calvinism. Although they were emerged from the Puritans, but rejected the Presbyterian Church constitution. The office of bishop was for the " Pilgrim Fathers " an "invention of Satan ", the sign of the cross ruthless and Christmas a pagan superstition, because they were not attested in its view, in the Bible.

Prehistory

The members of the group had of the Church of England (Church of England ) separately because they were of the opinion that the Church had not completed the tasks begun by the English Reformation. Some members of the group left under the leadership of Pastors Richard Clifton, John Robinson and William Brewster of the church elders in their home and at Scrooby ( Nottinghamshire ) and emigrated to Amsterdam to escape persecution by the Anglican Church. From Amsterdam, she moved on near Leiden, where they remained twelve years. Since they were allowed to do as a foreigner only poorly paid work and because of the Dutch influence, which they were exposed, were many of them in 1617 to the conclusion that it was for them the best to move to the New World.

They also had concerns about the ruling at that time in Holland morale and for their children who had to grow up in a Dutch environment. In addition, written some members of the group, such as Brewster, fonts, and sent them to England, who were considered by the local government as subversive. The British exerted diplomatic pressure on the Dutch out, to prevent this, and the Dutch government began to comply. Brewster and the other authors narrowly escaped arrest.

Slightly less than half of the English exiles in the Netherlands decided in 1620 to sail aboard the Speedwell to Southampton. There she teamed up with a larger group of separatist Congregational aboard the Mayflower. After a stopover in southern England Plymouth stabbed, provided with a land patent from the London Virginia Company, in September 1620 with 102 passengers on board in the lake. Their goal was Northern Virginia near the Hudson River. On board the Mayflower was also a smaller group of non- separatists, mostly Anglicans, Congregationalists who named the "strangers" ( strangers ).

Arrival in America

Strayed through autumn storms in the North Atlantic off course, the Mayflower reached after a two -month voyage to Cape Cod the American coast. In November 1620 we went to near present-day Provincetown at anchor.

After they realized that they would need to make another long voyage to reach their original target, the colonists decided to change their original plan and to establish a branch at the place where they were now. As the land patent for Virginia was issued and therefore the future settlers did not have the right to colonize the area in New England, feared more "foreigners", they would not be treated fairly in the colony. Therefore authored 41 separatists its own statutes, known as the Mayflower Compact. In it, they established among other things that they wanted to form a self-governing community (self -rule, self -government) and would be subject to all residents the same " just laws " ( "just and equal laws" ). They were convinced that this form of government corresponded to the will of God.

After some time they realized that the sandy soil at Provincetown they could not feed. Therefore, a group of them decided to sail to the other side of the bay of Cape Cod. On December 21 they landed near the present-day Plymouth ( Massachusetts). Much of the remaining settlers followed five days later. Your small coastal settlement they called " Gods Own Country ", a term that is generally familiar to today.

The first winter the colony survived only through the support of the natives who helped out the colonists with food and taught them their own, the local climate and soil better adapted agricultural techniques; this peaceful cooperation is still celebrated in the Thanksgiving feast. With increasing emergence of the colony, the latest from the Pequot War in 1637, the ratio of the two groups, however, was often marked by excessive violence on both sides.

Most important primary source for the views of the Pilgrim Fathers of the 1620-1647 authored by Governor William Bradford history of the colony. Comparison with Thomas Morton's book of 1637 ( in which a much friendlier view of indigenous people and the landscape is mediated ) shows what extreme views tended the Pilgrims to land and residents.

Later history

The direct successor of the original Pilgrim Fathers community is today's First Parish Church in Plymouth, which broke up in 1801 under the influence of their pastor of the Trinitarian Congregational traditional theology and joined the Unitarians; Today it is one of the very liberal Unitarian Universalist Association of. Many community members who disagreed with this change, then founded a new Congregational church until today, today The Pilgrimage Church, also in Plymouth. In addition, there is in San Diego, California, the Puritan Evangelical Church of America, which represents the original Puritan theology.