Mayflower aristocrats: There were none. The descendants of the Mayflower passengers have become leaders in the United States during the past 330 years, but the Mayflower folks themselves were humble people.
The Puritans who established the towns of Salem, Boston, Cambridge, and Dorchester from 1628 were upper middle class, educated and cultured. Not so the Pilgrims who founded their colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. They were lower middle class—working men, artisans, farmers, country villagers from Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in England—of no social standing and of no standing whatever in England.
The people of the Mayflower have been called "Pilgrims" because for conscience' sake they wandered from their homes in England to the Netherlands, then, after years there, back to England to take ship (and such a ship) to the New World in North America, to try their fortune in a mere wilderness. They hoped to find there at last a freedom they knew they could not then enjoy in Old England.
The 102 passengers on the Mayflower were a small part of a convinced, strict, religious group that arose in sixteenth-century England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. They were called Separatists because of their church polity and Brownists because of Robert Browne, their founder, who later departed from his own particularist doctrines.
To recall the meaning of the Pilgrims' separatism we must remember that when Henry VIII declared himself the head of the Church of England in 1534, he was not founding a Reformation church. He intended only to make himself, instead of the Pope, the head of the Catholic Church in England, with such changes in conduct and method as might be good for the church, but no changes in doctrine or ritual. But a genuine spiritual force was at work at the same time among the English people. One hundred years before, the reforms of John Huss and Jerome had spread to England, where John Wycliffe had proclaimed them, modified to suit the English soul, with a vigorous attack on popery and other unscriptural errors. He even put the Bible in the English tongue of the day, before threats against his life drove him into retirement.
Beginnings of Reformation in England
Years later came the Lutheran reformation in Germany, and the German merchants and artisans in London spread the Lutheran revived gospel, and a reformation of English hearts began. By this time Henry VIII was king of England, and people began to die for the reformed faith. When Henry made himself head of the English church, he had no intention of founding an English Lutheran church. But his son Edward had been nurtured under men of a genuine reforming spirit, and when the child became king in 1547, he permitted his advisors to form a Protestant Anglican Church.
Never in sound health, Edward VI died in his teens, and was followed by his oldest sister Mary, who, reared by her mother, the Spanish Catherine, was a determined Roman Catholic. She became the wife of Catholic Philip II of Spain, harsh and intolerant ruler of Spain and the Netherlands. Mary was called "Bloody," because many Protestants died for their faith in England during her reign.
Elizabeth I took the throne when Mary died in 1558. She was resolved to be a strong Queen and to tolerate no religious variations. She wanted the English Catholicism of her father Henry to be the religion of England, and personally unresponsive to religious convictions, she would brook no interference or divergence.
Puritanism Begins to Grow
However, there arose during her reign a protesting group that wanted to change things in England. Called in derision "Puritans," they wished to make the Calvinism of Switzerland and of Scotland the religion of England. They urged the elimination of all, particularly Roman Catholic, existing practices, and worse in Elizabeth's eyes, insisted on doing away with the bishops, who, like the Roman Catholic bishops, wielded great power in the church. Claiming that there was no foundation in the Bible for these ruling bishops, the Puritans asked for the substitution of pastors and elders who would, on the Swiss model, guide the local congregations and send delegates in conclave for the over-all business of the church. They still wanted, however, state support of the church.
Elizabeth was bitterly opposed to the Puritans, because they would disturb the religious status quo and put too much power in the hands of the people. Elizabeth, shrewd in politics, knew that the bishops gave her the best means of keeping England from going Lutheran or Calvanist, and of preventing outbreaks of religious enthusaism for which she had no understanding or sympathy. Hence she had no mercy on the rising Puritan movement, and sanctioned laws that prevented meetings of Puritan sympathizers as well as the printing and circulation of Puritan literature.
Strangely enough, Elizabeth's successor to the throne in 1603, James I, in spite of the Calvinist training he had received in his native Scotland, vowed also that he would "harry" every Puritan out of England. But, led by able men of impeccable middle-class standing, and even better, Puritanism continued to grow. Cambridge University, the center of Puritan learning, strong in its valid scholarship, continued to turn out zealous, well-equipped advovocates of Puritanism, and Parliament saw an increasing number of Puritans occupying its seats, elected from "infected" districts. The fact was that England's people were ripe for something more than Henry VIII's English Catholicism, and no royal opposition, whether from Elizabeth or James, could stop it.
However, another foreign influence was at work in England. The Netherlands in the sixteenth century, even while it was accepting en masse the reformed faith of Calvin, was under the iron hand of the Catholic Spanish King Philip II, son of the emperor Charles V, before whom Luther at Worms had bravely declared, "Here, I stand. I cannot do otherwise; God help me. Amen."
This man Philip was opposed to any kind of reform anywhere, and it was a double cross to him that his subjects in the northern Lowland provinces were seeking independence, both religious and political. Fortunately for Europe, for history, and for the cause of human freedom, the Hollanders were able to secure their independence, and the Calvinist kingdom of Holland resulted.
Amid these turmoils of reformation endeavors, a Roman Catholic priest named Menno Simons defected, and began to teach a very thoroughgoing reform: adherence to the Bible and its principles; a simple form of church organization, locally empowered; elimination of all distinctly Roman Catholic beliefs and practices; administration of baptism by pouring, and only to those who had reached the age of accountability; and, as in the early church, the complete separation of church and state, with no aid or control from the state over the church and the thorough divorcement of the church from governmental or political affairs. "Menno's principles were widely accepted in Switzerland and in the Netherlands, but of course not countenanced by the ecclesiastical or secular powers of that day.
Anabaptists, Brozvnists, Separatists
The Anabaptists, or Again-Baptists as they were called in derision, were bitterly persecuted by all—Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists. In the Spanish-controlled Netherlands they suffered particularly, for the Spanish Roman Catholics hated them, and the Calvinist Reformed Church not only disliked their teachings but feared that their extreme views would make the reformed church's relations with the Catholics, bad as they were, even worse.
Under these circumstances hundreds of Anabaptists fled the Netherlands, seeking some sort of haven of peace. Man) of them came to England, and being hardworking farmers and artisans, were welcomed for their industry and skill. But the Anabaptists of that day were not passive and quiet, seeking only peace for themselves, like their modern descendants, the Mennonites. They were vigorous missionaries who could not keep silent concerning the important Bible truths they held. The very air of England was vibrant with the feeling of freedom, and the humble but zealous Hollanders found equally humble ears among the English common people ready to listen to old Christian truths freshly presented.
Among those attracted to their views on freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and local, spiritual church government, instead of episcopal control, was a young clergyman by the name of Robert Browne. He settled at Norwich, where half the population was made up of Hollander refugees, many of them Anabaptists, and as pastor there, Browne preached vigorously the views he espoused. Another leader was one Robert Harrison, and another John Greenwood, who led the more noted Henry Barrowe into the Separatists' views. Hence the names Brownist and Barrowist were given to the new group, but the name chiefly attached was Separatist or Independent, because these humble folk, who long had left the iron hand of politico-ecclesiastical control, were demanding (1) independence of each congregation of Christians from every other, what we now call the congregational form of polity maintained by many important Protestant bodies in the United States and Great Britain today; and (2) complete separation of church and state, a doctrine given at least lip service by nearly all Protestant denominations in the United States today, firmly embodied in word and principle in the Federal and every State Constitution, and clearly defined in numerous decisions of the United States Supreme Court.
The Separatists' doctrine of separation of church and state was hated and ridiculed in that day, and its advocates were imprisoned and even burned at the stake in England as traitors to the British crown. Their belief in separation prevented the Separatists from using any sort of political influence in their own favor. Their doctrine of congregational independence was both a weakness and a strength—a weakness because it prevented them from presenting a united front to their opponents: a strength because there was no central organization of Separatists at which the agents of the Crown could strike, leaving the bailiffs the onerous task of rooting out each little gathering of the hated sectaries.
The Independents, inevitably in view of their concept of freedom, were united on only a few major points, and in practice included a wide range of beliefs on various religious matters. Eventually, out of the humble, low-class Anabaptist-Separatist background emerged the very respectable, modern Congregationalists, practicing infant baptism; the active, growing Baptists, for the most part practicing immersion at the age of accountability; and the Society of Friends, or Quakers, with no ritual of any kind and a minimum of church organization. The Congregationalists of New England practiced union of church and state in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire as late as 1833, when Massachusetts, the last of the three to do so, adopted separation. The Baptists and the Quakers have remained active advocates of separation of church and state.
Temporary Refuge in Holland
Both Anglicans and Puritans hated the Separatists, and they were dealt with sternly and intolerantly. Knots of Separatists maintained themselves as small enclaves in the cities, and in some upcountry villages. One of the latter was Scrooby, near the conjunction of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Nottinghamshire. Like other Separatist groups, the Scrooby congregation was made so uncomfortable that they took refuge in Holland, proceeding to Leyden in 1609 after a year spent in Amsterdam. William Brewster, a well-educated layman who had been an agent of the archbishop of York at Scrooby Manor House, and the Reverend John Robinson were leaders of this congregation.
But they were not happy at Leyden. There the Scrooby farmers were up against the competition of the far-more advanced methods of skilled Hollander farmers, nor were they able to fit themselves for the highly skilled manufacturing methods of the then large and progressive city of Leyden. They saw too that the second generation of exiles were likely to grow up more Hollander than English. It was therefore decided to move again, and Virginia in the New World to the West seemed the place to go. English authorities, who had reluctantly permitted these dissidents to leave England only because they would be no trouble to them in Holland, were willing for them to go even farther away, to North America.
Hence the voyage of a number of the Leyden group to England and their subsequent sailing on two little vessels, the Mayflower and the Speedwell, from Plymouth, England. The Speedwell had to turn back, and the Mayflower, owing to errors in its captain's reckoning, intentional or otherwise, was steered after a hard nine-week voyage into Massachusetts Bay, and its passengers were unloaded on a stony beach on a bleak clay in late November.
This was outside the territory of the Plymouth Company, a newly formed branch of the Virginia Company, which was sponsoring them. They were now at a place where they had no legal right to be. They had among them a few not of their religious persuasion. Therefore a compact was drawn up, and all the men signed, declaring their willingness to obey the decisions of the company of settlers and to accept what leadership the people would elect. After the untimely death of the colony's first governor, John Carver, the governorship fell naturally to William Bradford.
So the wanderers of Scrooby and of Leyden established the first English colony in the North, with only Jamestown, Virginia, preceding them. They were not aristocrats, unless aristocrats of courage, of faith, of industry, and of freedom.
