Ministry of Secondary and Higher Education Jizzakh State Pedagogical Institute Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature Bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature English Language Theory and Teaching Methodology Subject

Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony)

This paper is about the English settlers of New England. For people as pilgrims, see Pilgrim. For other uses, see Pilgrim (disambiguation).

The Pilgrims were the English settlers who came to North America on the Mayflower and established the Plymouth Colony in what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts, named after the final departure port of Plymouth, Devon. Their leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownists, or Separatist Puritans, who had fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands.

They held many of the same Puritan Calvinist religious beliefs but, unlike most other Puritans, they maintained that their congregations should separate from the English state church, which led to them being labeled Separatists.After several years living in exile in Holland, they eventually determined to establish a new settlement in the New World and arranged with investors to fund them. They

established Plymouth Colony in 1620. The Pilgrims' story became a central theme in the history and culture

.

The core of the group called "the Pilgrims" was brought together around 1605 when they quit the Church of England to form Separatist congregations in Nottinghamshire, England, led by John Robinson, Richard Clyfton, and John Smyth. Their congregations held Brownist beliefs—that true churches were voluntary democratic congregations, not whole Christian nations—as taught by Robert Browne, John Greenwood, and Henry Barrow. 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 £19 today) for each missed Sunday and holy day. The penalties included imprisonment and larger fines for conducting unofficial services. The Seditious Sectaries Act of 1593 was specifically aimed at outlawing the Brownists. Under this policy, the London Underground Church from 1566, and then Robert Browne and his followers in Norfolk during the 1580s, were repeatedly imprisoned. 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, so after his death they went to Amsterdam.

During much of Brewster's tenure (1595–1606), the Archbishop was Matthew Hutton. He displayed some sympathy to the Puritan cause, writing to Robert Cecil, Secretary of State to James I in 1604:

-------------------------------------

http://president.uz, https// LEX.uz

ᶾ WWW.quaro.uz.Edwardian or Victorian

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 field to conformitie.

But the Papistes are opposite and contrarie in very many substantiall pointes of

religion, and cannot but wish 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 updated 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.

William Brewster was a former diplomatic assistant to the Netherlands. He was living in the Scrooby manor house while serving as postmaster for the

ᶾ WWW.quaro.uz.Edwardian or Victorian

village and bailiff to the Archbishop of York. He had been impressed by Clyfton's

services and had begun participating in services led by John Smyth in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. After a time, he arranged for a congregation

to meet privately at the Scrooby manor house. Services were held beginning in 1606 with Clyfton as pastor, John Robinson as teacher, and Brewster as the presiding elder. Shortly after, Smyth and members of the Gainsborough group moved on to Amsterdam. Brewster was fined £20 (about £4.35 thousand today in absentia for his non-compliance with the church. This followed his September 1607 resignation from the postmaster position,about the time that the congregation had decided to follow the Smyth party to Amsterdam.

Scrooby member William Bradford of Austerfield kept a journal of the congregation's events which was eventually published as Of Plymouth Plantation. He wrote concerning this time period:

But after these things they could not long continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted & persecuted on every side, so as their former afflictions were but as flea-bitings in comparison of these which now came upon them. For some were taken & clapt up in prison, others had their houses besett & watcht night and day, & hardly escaped their hands; and the most were faine to flie & leave their howses & habitations, and the means of their livelehood.

Leiden

The Pilgrims moved to the Netherlands around 1607/08. They lived in Leiden, Holland, a city of 30,000 inhabitants, residing in small houses behind the "Kloksteeg" opposite the Pieterskerk. The success of the congregation in Leiden was mixed. Leiden was a thriving industrial center, and many members were able to support themselves working at Leiden University or in the textile, printing, and brewing trades. Others were less able to bring in sufficient income, hampered by their rural backgrounds and the language barrier; for those, accommodations were made on an estate bought by Robinson and three partners. Bradford wrote of their years in Leiden:

For these & other reasons they removed to Leyden, a fair & bewtifull citie, and of a sweete situation, but made more famous by ye universitie wherwith it is adorned, in which of late had been so many learned man. But wanting that traffike by sea which Amerstdam injoyes, it was not so beneficiall for their outward means of living & estats. But being now hear pitchet they fell to such trads & imployments as they best could; valewing peace & their spirituall comforte above any other riches whatsoever. And at length they came to raise a competente & comforteable living, but with hard and continuall labor.

William Brewster had been teaching English at the university, and Robinson enrolled in 1615 to pursue his doctorate. There he participated in a series of debates, particularly regarding the contentious issue of Calvinism versus Arminianism (siding with the Calvinists against the Remonstrants).Brewster acquired typesetting equipment about 1616 in a venture financed by Thomas Brewer, and began publishing the debates through a local press.

The Netherlands, however, was a land whose culture and language were strange and difficult for the English congregation to understand or learn. They found the Dutch morals much too libertin^], and their children were becoming more and more Dutch as the years passed. The congregation came to believe that they faced eventual extinction if they remained there.

2.