How was England ruled and what caused the Puritan upheaval in the 16th century? Henry VIII, king of England from 1509 to 1547, instigated the Reformation of the English church by the elimination of Catholicism. Although the Reformation stemmed from Henry's desire to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, it became a controlled revolution, supervised by the able minister Thomas Cromwell. Henry VIII broke with Rome, subordinated the church to the state, ended monasticism, and annexed vast church properties to the crown. The last were gradually sold and came into the hands of the gentry and middle classes, immensely increasing their economic strength and leading them to claim greater political power through the House of Commons.

    Henry VIII was followed by his son Edward VI (1547-1553), and then his daughter Mary I (1553-1558). After Mary’s death Elizabeth I (1558-1603) became Queen, who was also the daughter of Henry VIII second marriage to Anne Boleyn. Noted for her long preserved virginity (the Colony of Virginia was named for her), Elizabeth I was responsible for one of the greatest periods in English history, later known as the Elizabethan Age. England not only became a leading maritime and commercial power but also enjoyed a major cultural and artistic renaissance, epitomized by the great dramatist William Shakespeare.

    Religion in England had been unsettled since Henry VIII's break with the pope in 1533. Moderate Protestantism had been practiced under Henry, and more radical Protestant programs were implemented under Edward VI; but Mary had restored the Roman Catholic faith and papal jurisdiction to England. Elizabeth herself was a moderate Protestant. Her settlement again excluded papal authority, and it brought back the Book of Common Prayer, an English-language liturgy, but it did not recognize the demands of the more extreme Puritans. Pressure for further reform continued throughout Elizabeth's reign, but she resisted. The Puritans were eventually driven underground, to reappear in the early Stuart period.

    Since Elizabeth had no children and there were no other descendants of Henry VIII, the Tudor line was extinguished upon her death. Throughout her reign Elizabeth refused to designate a successor, but it is clear that she expected King James VI of Scotland to follow her. When Elizabeth died on Mar. 24, 1603, James, the son of Mary Queen of Scots but a Protestant, succeeded without incident as James I of England.

    In 1603, James became the first Stuart king of England, and he devoted himself almost entirely to English affairs thereafter. Although raised as a Presbyterian, he immediately antagonized the rising Puritan movement by rejecting a petition for reform of the Church of England at the Hampton Court Conference (1604).

    As we have seen, small numbers of English Puritans, known as Separatists, broke away from the Church of England because they felt that it had not completed the work of the Reformation. They wanted to purify the Church of England by eliminating every shred of Catholic influence. They committed themselves to a life based on the Bible. Most of these Separatists were farmers, poorly educated and without social or political standing. But not so of our ancestor William Brewster II, from Scrooby, Nottinghamshire. There is still much of importance about his life that is obscure, including his precise dates of birth and death. Various authorities put these between 1559-67 and sometime in April 1644, respectively.

    Elder Brewster, son of William Brewster I who was steward of the Archbishop of York’s manor of Scrooby, entered Peterhouse at Cambridge on 3 December 1580, but there is no record in the severely abbreviated Alumni Cantabrigiensis that he took a degree. Brewster was a contemporary at Cambridge of the dramatist Christopher Marlowe, who was at Corpus Christi, B.A. in 1583, and it is likely that he was at least acquainted with him. Both Brewster and Marlowe (Marlowe was killed in a London tavern in mysterious circumstances in 1593) were recruited as students for secret government agents be Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State William Cecil (1520-98), first Baron Burghley. Brewster was made assistant to Sir William Davidson and went with him on a mission to Holland in 1585. A promising public career was cut short, however, when Davidson was imprisoned after the execution of Mary Queen of Scotts in 1587, and Brewster was perhaps fortunate to be allowed to resign his post and return to Scrooby. There he was later appointed postmaster in succession to his father, who died in the spring of 1590.

    William Brewster, who may well have adopted his ‘radical’ views on religion, as so many of his contemporaries did, while at Cambridge. He became a leader of a group of these Separatists in the area of Scrooby included the young William Bradford, the future Governor of Plymouth colony, whose guardian Brewster became. Brewster was summoned for ‘religious contumacy’ (resistance to authority) before the High Court of Commission in 1607, but while attempting to escape secretly to Holland with a group of Separatists he was betrayed by the ship’s master and imprisoned for a time at Boston, Lincolnshire. After his release he, along with the Scrooby group, emigrated to Amsterdam, Holland in 1608. The next year they moved to Leiden (Leiden was the intellectual center of the Netherlands at that time, and the birthplace of several important Dutch painters such as Rembrandt and Jan Steen), where, enjoying full religious freedom, they remained for almost 12 years, supporting his family by setting up as a printer. About 125 members of the Scrooby Separatist congregation were there including two ministers, the Rev. Richard Clyfton and John Robinson, as well as William Bradford.

    In 1617, discouraged by economic difficulties, the pervasive Dutch influence on their children, and their inability to secure civil autonomy, the congregation voted to emigrate to America. Through the Brewster family's friendship with Sir Edwin Sandys, treasurer of the London Company, the congregation secured two patents authorizing them to settle in the northern part of the company's jurisdiction. Unable to finance the costs of the emigration with their own meager resources, they negotiated a financial agreement with Thomas Weston, a prominent London iron merchant. Fewer than half of the group's members elected to leave Leiden. A small ship, the Speedwell, carried them to Southampton, England, where they were to join another group of Separatists and pick up a second ship. After some delays and disputes, the voyagers regrouped at Plymouth aboard the 180-ton Mayflower. It began its historic voyage on Sept. 16, 1620, with about 102 passengers--fewer than half of them from Leiden.

    The first permanent settlers of New England, later known as the Pilgrims, arrived on the English ship the Mayflower at Plymouth, Mass., in 1620. The 180-ton vessel was about 12 years old and had been in the wine trade. It was chartered by John Carver, a leader of the Separatist Puritan congregation at Leiden, Holland, who had gone to London to make arrangements for the voyage to America. The ship was made ready at Southampton with a passenger list that included English Separatists, hired help (among them Myles Standish, a professional soldier, and John Alden, a cooper). Other colonists were to be taken along at the insistence of the London businessmen who were helping to finance the expedition.

    In the meantime the Leiden Separatists, who had initiated the venture, sailed for Southampton on July 22, 1620, with 35 members of the congregation and their leaders William Bradford and William BREWSTER aboard the 60-ton Speedwell. Both the Speedwell and the Mayflower, carrying a total of about 120 passengers, sailed from Southampton on August 15, but they were twice forced back by dangerous leaks on the Speedwell. At the English port of Plymouth some of the Speedwell's passengers were regrouped on the Mayflower, and on September 16, the historic voyage began.

    This time the Mayflower carried 102 passengers, only 37 of whom were from the Leiden congregation, in addition to the crew. After 65 days, the ship came in sight of Cape Cod on November 19 and sailed south. The colonists had been granted territory in Virginia but probably headed for a planned destination near the mouth of the Hudson River. The Mayflower turned back, however, and dropped anchor at Provincetown on November 21. That day 41 men signed the above Mayflower Compact, a "plantation covenant" modeled after a Separatist church covenant, by which they agreed to establish a "Civil Body Politic" (a temporary government) and to be bound by its laws.

    The following is the Mayflower Compact:

In the Name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the Faith, &c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honor of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth and of Scotland, the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620

    (John Alden, above, wooed and later married Priscilla Mullins, and was the subject of the famous 1858 poem by William Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Courtship of Miles Standish”.)

    This agreement was thought necessary because there were rumors that some of the non-Separatists, called "Strangers," among the passengers would defy the Pilgrims if they landed in a place other than that specified in the land grant they had received from the London Company. The compact became the basis of government in the Plymouth Colony. After it was signed, the Pilgrims elected John Carver their first governor.

    After weeks of scouting for a suitable settlement area, the Mayflower's passengers finally landed at Plymouth on Dec. 26, 1620. Although the Mayflower's captain and part owner, Christopher Jones, had threatened to leave the Pilgrims unless they quickly found a place to land, the ship remained at Plymouth during the first terrible winter of 1620-21, when half of the colonists died. The Mayflower left Plymouth on Apr. 15, 1621, and arrived back in England on May 16.

    To finance their journey and settlement the Pilgrims had organized a joint-stock venture. Capital was provided by a group of London businessmen who expected--erroneously--to profit from the colony. During the first winter, more than half of the settlers died, as a result of poor nutrition and inadequate housing, but the colony survived due in part to the able leadership of John Carver, William Bradford, William Brewster, Edward Winslow, and Myles Standish. Squanto, a local Indian, taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn and where to fish and trap beaver. Without good harbors or extensive tracts of fertile land, however, Plymouth became a colony of subsistence farming on small private holdings once the original communal labor system was ended in 1623. In 1627 eight Pilgrim leaders assumed the settlement's obligations to the investors in exchange for a 6-year monopoly of the fur trade and offshore fishing.

    In, probably October of the year following their arrival, a most celebrated dinner later called Thanksgiving Day. From a letter written December 21, 1621 by one of the celebrants, Edward Winslow:

    They were followed in 1629 by other Puritans under the auspices of the Massachusetts Bay Company, who settled in the area around Boston. During the Great Puritan Migration that followed (1629-42), about 16,000 settlers arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritans set out to build a "city on a hill" intended to provide a model of godly living for the world. Strict Calvinists, strongly communal, and living in closely bound villages, they envisioned a God angered at human transgressions, who chose, purely according to his inscrutable will, a mere "righteous fragment" for salvation. Dissidents of a Baptist orientation founded Rhode Island (chartered 1644). In 1639, Puritans on what was then the frontier established the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the first written constitution in North America; the colony was chartered in 1662. The settlements in New Hampshire that sprang up in the 1620s were finally proclaimed a separate royal colony in 1679. Plymouth later became (1691) part of the royal colony of Massachusetts. At that time Plymouth had between 7000 and 7500 residents.