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Now faith is the substance of things hoped for.
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The evidence of things not seen.
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Abel, Enoch...
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..Noah.
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Abraham.
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Sarah.
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These all died in faith.
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Confessing that they were both strangers and pilgrims on the Earth.
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But they desired a better country.
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That is a heavenly one.
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Wherefore God was not ashamed to be called their God.
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That he has prepared for them
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a city.
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I think William Bradford knew they were on a journey
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in this world towards heaven.
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They were transient citizens of the world and ultimately
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citizens of heaven.
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And they were on a journey towards purity, that is what they sought,
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that's what took them out of England,
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that's what took them over to Holland.
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That's what took them from Holland over to the New World.
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Summer was fading fast when on September 6th 1620,
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a small group of pilgrims, including a one-time farm boy from Yorkshire,
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named William Bradford, set out across the North Atlantic,
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on an ageing ship called the Mayflower.
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Their historic voyage would come to define the moment America was born.
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It is worth reminding ourselves that, at the time,
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they were a very, very small group of very extreme people...
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..and if we'd never heard of them ever again,
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nobody would be surprised.
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The fact they are, in the long term, extraordinarily successful,
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that they found the world's greatest democracy,
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throws retrospective lustre.
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They are, one might say, if you wanted to be pretty critical,
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they're religious nutters who won't settle
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for anything except the most literal
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reading of the Bible,
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they want to transform a nation state
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into something that resembles what they take to be a godly kingdom.
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They weren't the people that you would expect to be founding a new colony.
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They weren't soldiers, they were not emissaries of a foreign government,
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they were not particularly well provided with supplies.
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At least half of them were Separatists,
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that is to say radical Protestants who were religious exiles.
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They weren't the people
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you would automatically expect to be founding
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a new outpost of the British Empire.
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Fewer than 50 of the 102 passengers were adult men,
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many well past their physical prime, at least 30 were children,
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and nearly 20 were women, including three expectant mothers.
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By the time they set sail,
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England had still not succeeded in establishing
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a truly viable colony on the shores of the New World
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and few expected their chances of survival,
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let alone success, to be any better.
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They don't register at all, numerically.
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It's a tiny handful of people, many of whom don't survive.
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If we're thinking about migration to the Americas
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in the 17th and 18th century,
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we're talking about ten million Africans, for instance,
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as against this tiny handful of English men and women.
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The fascinating thing about the Pilgrims' story is how this tiny group of people
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managed to tell the story in such a way as to erase that whole other history.
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If you ask people
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where does America start,
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they'll say it starts in Plymouth Rock.
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Despite the fact that Jamestown was founded in 1607,
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and Plymouth was found in 1620, it became our story of national origin.
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Somehow, with the passage of time, the arrival of this frail,
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unlikely band would come to be seen as the true
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founding moment of America,
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and the story of their coming enshrined as the quintessential
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myth of American origins,
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commemorated each year on the fourth Thursday in November,
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at Thanksgiving,
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a feast that almost certainly never took place as we imagine it did.
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Because the Pilgrims had been so enshrined
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in the national imagination,
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we need to go back, and ask questions
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about why we picked that story.
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An important exercise,
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when we are thinking about something that has been so central to
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our national imagination.
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We would scarcely remember the Pilgrims at all
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were it not for the unusual man who came to lead them
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in the New World,
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William Bradford,
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and the unusual book he left behind,
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a luminous text unlike
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any other account of early American settlement,
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extraordinary both in what it says
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and in what it passes over in silence.
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He was a person of very delicate sensibilities
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and very keen perceptions.
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He watched the flutterings of their little conventicle
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and its ups and downs with the greatest concern,
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and registered it in this wonderful prose.
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Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation is one of the great books of American
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literature and history.
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That book, more than anything, is a kind of bible in its own way.
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It's steeped in the Bible, obviously,
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when it comes to its language,
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but when it comes to the history of Plymouth Colony, it is the text.
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Bradford laboured over the manuscript for more than 20 years,
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"scribbled writings", he said, pieced up in times of leisure,
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stolen from his duties as governor, and written in the third person,
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as if to a far-distant future.
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From my years young in days of youth,
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God did make known to me his truth.
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And called me from our native place
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for to enjoy the means of grace.
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In wilderness he did me guide
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and in strange lands for me provide.
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In fears and wants,
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through weal and woe...
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..a pilgrim passed I...
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..to and fro.
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In England, the place that is most closely associated
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with the origins of the Pilgrims is a village called Scrooby,
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which is right at the northern corner
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of the county of Nottinghamshire.
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It was an area where religious divisions
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were particularly conspicuous,
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where there was still quite a large number of lingering Roman Catholics
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in an area that had recently been evangelised
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by radical Protestantism.
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You have the right people at the right time in the right area
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with the same ideas, and I think that's what happened up here,
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in this part of the country.
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Got John Robinson at Gainsborough.
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Got William Brewster there at Scrooby.
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You have Richard Clyfton here at Babworth.
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William Bradford in Austerfield.
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So spiritually strong and so young,
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they supported each other,
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and I think that is why it took off here and maybe
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not in other places.
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William Bradford was born in the tiny village of Austerfield,
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and baptised on March 19th 1590,
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in the ancient stone church of St Helena's,
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a three-mile walk down the lane from the village of Scrooby.
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His family were yeomen, with farmland of their own.
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Though far from wealthy, they were far from poor.
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But his childhood would be blighted by the death of virtually everyone
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close to him. His father William when he was one,
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his grandfather William when he was six,
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his mother Alice when he was seven,
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his sister Alice and his grandfather John Hanson
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when he was 12.
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He was sent to live with his uncle, Robert,
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who hoped he would prove useful working in the fields.
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His family's economic security had been badly shaken by
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four failed harvests in a row,
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and by the devastating depression that followed.
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The standard of living of the average English labourer
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was rapidly declining. There was something very close to famine.
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It was a very uncertain world in which even people from the yeomanry,
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as the Pilgrims were, were always worried they were about to slip back
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into this state of near destitution, in which many people lived.
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In addition to that,
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the kind of people who became the nucleus of the Plymouth Colony
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honestly believed that, in England,
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they were being forced to live amid sin, amid iniquity,
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and there is evidence that there was a great deal of immorality going on.
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Incidence of fornication, adultery, drunkenness.
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And what emerges from this is a picture of
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quite a troubled and disturbed and agitated world.
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Lonely and intelligent,
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in a world that felt increasingly precarious to him,
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William fell ill when he was 12,
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with what he called "a long sickness",
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which took him from the fields, kept him bedridden for months,
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and drove him to seek solace in the Bible.
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The reading of Scriptures, he said, made a great impression upon him.
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The more that he read, the more troubled he became,
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and the gulf between the world he saw around him
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and the simplicity and purity of the Gospel.
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Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...
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He had this profound sense as a 12-year-old
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that the congregation he was a part of was corrupt.
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That the Church was moving them in a direction that was not right.
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That they prayed to the depraved beliefs of mortal men
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that were moving them away from God, and so this was a deep conviction.
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I think there you have the beginnings of
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a very complex and inward-looking person,
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who was improbably preparing for the ultimate journey.
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When he was well again,
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William began to fall under the spell
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of an evangelical Puritan preacher named Richard Clyfton.
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Not long after, he found his way to the home of William Brewster,
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the warm-hearted, Cambridge-educated postmaster, and bailiff
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of Scrooby Manor, where he came to feel he had found a spiritual home
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and where, each week, a private congregation gathered to hear
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Clyfton and another charismatic minister, named John Robinson.
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They preached on the need to purify the Church of England
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of all Roman Catholic influence and everything worldly,
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of anything not contained in Scripture.
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Your carcasses shall fall.
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'I think the sense of faithfulness to Scripture is at the heart of it.
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'They want to go right back to the roots and strip away all the human
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'accretions that have come into the worship and the life of the Church
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'and get back to a primitive purity.
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'It's no accident that the larger movement
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'from which the Separatists came
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'were called Puritans by their opponents,
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'because that's what they were campaigning for - greater purity,
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'greater faithfulness,'
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to what they believed they read in Scripture.
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Nothing he read made a deeper impression on him
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than a passage from the book of St Matthew
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in which Christ explains to his disciples
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where the true Church lies.
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"For where two or three are gathered together in my name...
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"..there am I in the midst of them."
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That's obviously the key Separatist text,
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that Christ will be with you without a bishop, without a Church,
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without any ecclesiastical organisation,
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and that prayer, conversion,
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commitment is enough for the presence of Christ.
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That's an extraordinarily radical text, when you think about it.
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'They reject hierarchy in the Church,
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'the hierarchy of bishop, priest and deacon that has come
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'from Catholicism, that still exists in the Church of England.
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'So they look for an equality among members of the Church,
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'that's an equality of members of the body of Christ.'
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Everybody's got equal access to it.
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By 1603,
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William was on the road to being committed to the radical idea that
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the true love of God might mean
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separating from the Church of England altogether.
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And that's when the real trouble begins,
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because you look at who is the head of the only Church in England,
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the head of the Church from Henry's time is the monarch.
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It's not just the Church, it's the monarch that you are flying
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in the face of. That's what makes this so dangerous
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and so worrying for the authorities.
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If you are going to make a stand on religion and get away with it,
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then what else are you going to make a stand on?
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Your carcasses will fall...
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'The issues at stake are literally more important than life and death,
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'it's your eternal life, or your eternal death.
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'If your monarch is jeopardising your eternal life,
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'you are a very unreliable subject,
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'because anyone who separates from the Church
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'is not just separating from the Church
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'but they're separating from royal authority,'
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and that's potentially very dangerous.
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Bottom line - what was at stake?
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You can punish somebody for not attending the church,
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you can be fined.
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If you persisted, you could be imprisoned,
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so you could think about it.
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And Elizabeth, after the act against Puritans, in 1593,
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had made the next step banishment.
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But I think, with James, these folk were risking everything.
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00:16:12,680 --> 00:16:16,480
He was newly to the throne, not popular,
257
00:16:16,480 --> 00:16:19,280
he wasn't going to have any dissenters.
258
00:16:22,400 --> 00:16:24,360
You can't really understand the Pilgrims' story
259
00:16:24,360 --> 00:16:27,800
without understanding James I, King of England at the time,
260
00:16:27,800 --> 00:16:30,200
the man from whom they were fleeing.
261
00:16:30,200 --> 00:16:33,360
James I was a man who passionately believed in unity,
262
00:16:33,360 --> 00:16:36,160
he believed it was immensely important that the kingdom
263
00:16:36,160 --> 00:16:39,640
should be unified under a single canopy of law and order,
264
00:16:39,640 --> 00:16:42,440
and he didn't want to see any form of discord
265
00:16:42,440 --> 00:16:46,240
or the creation of rival factions, rival centres of power.
266
00:16:46,240 --> 00:16:50,960
There were explicit rules that said you couldn't have private religious
267
00:16:50,960 --> 00:16:54,200
meetings in houses, ministers should not convene
268
00:16:54,200 --> 00:16:56,280
private groups of people.
269
00:16:56,280 --> 00:17:00,280
These conventicles were judged illegal and subversive.
270
00:17:03,120 --> 00:17:05,560
In the spring of 1607,
271
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with nothing worldly left to lose
272
00:17:07,360 --> 00:17:10,440
and convinced their souls were hanging in the balance,
273
00:17:10,440 --> 00:17:14,200
John Robinson led the congregation at Scrooby Manor across
274
00:17:14,200 --> 00:17:16,160
the last fateful barrier,
275
00:17:16,160 --> 00:17:19,400
to outright separation from the Church of England.
276
00:17:21,280 --> 00:17:25,480
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers?
277
00:17:27,520 --> 00:17:30,840
For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?
278
00:17:33,440 --> 00:17:37,640
And what communion hath light with darkness?
279
00:17:40,480 --> 00:17:44,720
And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?
280
00:17:46,360 --> 00:17:53,160
For ye are the temple of the living God, as God hath said,
281
00:17:53,160 --> 00:17:55,160
"I will walk in them.
282
00:17:56,920 --> 00:17:58,480
"I will dwell in them.
283
00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:02,160
"And I will be their God.
284
00:18:03,200 --> 00:18:05,240
"And they will be my people.
285
00:18:08,080 --> 00:18:12,960
"Wherefore come out from among them
286
00:18:12,960 --> 00:18:15,720
"and be ye separate."
287
00:18:19,640 --> 00:18:22,120
So, many, therefore...
288
00:18:24,000 --> 00:18:28,640
..whose hearts the Lord had touched with heavenly zeal for his truth,
289
00:18:28,640 --> 00:18:33,000
they shook off this yoke of anti-Christian bondage,
290
00:18:33,000 --> 00:18:36,880
and, as the Lord's free people,
291
00:18:36,880 --> 00:18:41,760
joined themselves by a covenant of the law into a Church estate
292
00:18:41,760 --> 00:18:44,280
in the fellowship of the Gospel,
293
00:18:44,280 --> 00:18:49,280
to walk in all his ways according to their best endeavours whatsoever it
294
00:18:49,280 --> 00:18:50,680
should cost them.
295
00:18:52,000 --> 00:18:53,440
The Lord assisting them.
296
00:18:55,640 --> 00:18:58,200
And that it cost them something,
297
00:18:58,200 --> 00:19:00,160
this ensuing history will declare.
298
00:19:00,160 --> 00:19:02,560
THUNDER RUMBLES
299
00:19:06,400 --> 00:19:09,160
By the autumn, when William Brewster himself
300
00:19:09,160 --> 00:19:12,080
was fined and threatened with imprisonment,
301
00:19:12,080 --> 00:19:14,880
it was clear that only one option remained.
302
00:19:16,320 --> 00:19:18,680
To worship God as they saw fit,
303
00:19:18,680 --> 00:19:22,240
they must separate not only from the English Church
304
00:19:22,240 --> 00:19:24,360
but from England altogether.
305
00:19:26,600 --> 00:19:28,480
The conventicle began to discuss
306
00:19:28,480 --> 00:19:30,880
where they might go to find the freedom
307
00:19:30,880 --> 00:19:33,040
that they so earnestly sought.
308
00:19:34,200 --> 00:19:37,400
They settled, for the moment at least, on Holland.
309
00:19:39,640 --> 00:19:43,280
Holland had emerged as the Protestant part of the Netherlands,
310
00:19:43,280 --> 00:19:46,440
opposed to Catholic rule in the south.
311
00:19:46,440 --> 00:19:49,080
It was a place of refuge for evangelicals
312
00:19:49,080 --> 00:19:51,200
in a time of threat and challenge.
313
00:19:51,200 --> 00:19:52,720
That looked like the place
314
00:19:52,720 --> 00:19:55,280
where God's purposes might be being served.
315
00:19:55,280 --> 00:19:57,520
It was also a boom time,
316
00:19:57,520 --> 00:20:00,720
because peace brought an expansion in the cloth trade.
317
00:20:00,720 --> 00:20:02,640
So you can see the attraction -
318
00:20:02,640 --> 00:20:06,480
from here to the Humber Estuary and to Amsterdam is not very far.
319
00:20:09,320 --> 00:20:13,480
And so they join the radical Protestants of their time, the Dutch.
320
00:20:13,480 --> 00:20:17,840
But James, for the monarchy, let them go there.
321
00:20:17,840 --> 00:20:21,200
If that's where they're happy, no reason why they shouldn't go there.
322
00:20:21,200 --> 00:20:24,120
The Dutch are our allies, we've been fighting on the side of the Dutch.
323
00:20:24,120 --> 00:20:26,760
If you want to live there, fair enough.
324
00:20:26,760 --> 00:20:28,520
Good riddance!
325
00:20:28,520 --> 00:20:31,120
And no doubt, many of them would have thought
326
00:20:31,120 --> 00:20:34,840
that they would settle there quite happily, and that would be it.
327
00:20:39,720 --> 00:20:43,040
Holland was a completely different environment from what they were used to,
328
00:20:43,040 --> 00:20:44,680
and because they were foreigners,
329
00:20:44,680 --> 00:20:47,280
they ended up getting really lousy jobs.
330
00:20:47,280 --> 00:20:49,000
Instead of farms,
331
00:20:49,000 --> 00:20:53,160
they ended up basically in little factories creating clothing,
332
00:20:53,160 --> 00:20:56,960
and they would work literally from dawn till dusk.
333
00:20:56,960 --> 00:20:58,960
A bell would go off in the morning
334
00:20:58,960 --> 00:21:03,080
and they'd work to the very end of the day, often with their children.
335
00:21:06,840 --> 00:21:09,560
But for all the trials and hardships,
336
00:21:09,560 --> 00:21:12,760
at least they were free for the first time to worship
337
00:21:12,760 --> 00:21:16,240
as they wished, in accordance with God's will.
338
00:21:18,320 --> 00:21:21,120
Such was the true piety,
339
00:21:21,120 --> 00:21:25,760
the humble seal and fervent love of this people
340
00:21:25,760 --> 00:21:28,560
whilst they thus lived together,
341
00:21:28,560 --> 00:21:31,560
towards God and his ways...
342
00:21:33,320 --> 00:21:38,520
..that they came as near the primitive pattern of the first Churches
343
00:21:38,520 --> 00:21:42,120
as any other Church of these latter times have done.
344
00:21:49,120 --> 00:21:51,560
In late November 1618,
345
00:21:51,560 --> 00:21:56,040
a brilliant blue-green comet appeared in the night skies.
346
00:21:56,040 --> 00:22:00,400
"We shall have wars," the English ambassador to the Netherlands wrote,
347
00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:02,080
and he was right.
348
00:22:02,080 --> 00:22:05,320
Europe was on the verge of an enormous conflict,
349
00:22:05,320 --> 00:22:09,200
the beginning of what we now refer to as the Thirty Years' War.
350
00:22:09,200 --> 00:22:13,120
A great religious conflict involving all the great powers of Europe,
351
00:22:13,120 --> 00:22:16,200
which Protestants such as the Pilgrims saw as a great confrontation
352
00:22:16,200 --> 00:22:19,560
between good, in the shape of Protestant Christianity, and evil,
353
00:22:19,560 --> 00:22:21,720
in the shape of Roman Catholicism.
354
00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:23,600
And this, in the eyes of many,
355
00:22:23,600 --> 00:22:26,600
was a cataclysmic global confrontation
356
00:22:26,600 --> 00:22:29,960
which might very well lead to the end of the world.
357
00:22:29,960 --> 00:22:32,000
It might herald, if you like,
358
00:22:32,000 --> 00:22:34,480
the Second Coming of Christ and the Day of Judgment.
359
00:22:34,480 --> 00:22:38,200
Things were that urgent, the stakes were that high.
360
00:22:38,200 --> 00:22:42,720
Everything seemed to be on the edge of complete meltdown,
361
00:22:42,720 --> 00:22:48,160
and so they decided it's time to pull the ripcord once again,
362
00:22:48,160 --> 00:22:52,000
even if it meant leaving everything they had known all their lives.
363
00:22:53,080 --> 00:22:56,640
But where do you go? You are Englishmen, after all.
364
00:22:57,600 --> 00:22:59,760
But you can't go back to England.
365
00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:03,080
And I think that's why they plumped for the New World.
366
00:23:03,080 --> 00:23:05,280
If you can't go back to England,
367
00:23:05,280 --> 00:23:09,240
at least maybe they could find the freedom they're looking for there.
368
00:23:11,400 --> 00:23:14,360
After weighing and rejecting numerous options,
369
00:23:14,360 --> 00:23:16,400
they settled in the end on an area
370
00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:20,280
at the mouth of the Hudson River, near present-day New York.
371
00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:26,320
What they had to do to get there required an awful lot of them.
372
00:23:26,320 --> 00:23:29,680
They really had to figure out how they were going to do this.
373
00:23:31,120 --> 00:23:32,920
Like many people from cults,
374
00:23:32,920 --> 00:23:36,200
they were really naive when it came to the rest of the world.
375
00:23:36,200 --> 00:23:38,040
These were not wealthy people.
376
00:23:43,800 --> 00:23:48,120
They had all but despaired of finding anyone willing to finance
377
00:23:48,120 --> 00:23:52,960
the hugely costly, high-risk undertaking when, in early 1620,
378
00:23:52,960 --> 00:23:56,920
they were approached in Leiden by a 35-year-old cloth merchant
379
00:23:56,920 --> 00:23:59,120
from London named Thomas Weston,
380
00:23:59,120 --> 00:24:02,640
who offered to organise financing for the expedition
381
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:05,560
through a group of businessmen hoping to break into
382
00:24:05,560 --> 00:24:08,320
the transatlantic trade in fish and fur.
383
00:24:10,920 --> 00:24:14,800
And that is the beginning of all sorts of trouble for them.
384
00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:19,680
The right time to make that westward crossing of the Atlantic to
385
00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:22,080
the New World is to set out in the spring
386
00:24:22,080 --> 00:24:24,600
and certainly no later than the summer,
387
00:24:24,600 --> 00:24:28,800
because of the way that the prevailing winds are working, and so on.
388
00:24:28,800 --> 00:24:32,040
So the Pilgrims get themselves ready in Leiden in the spring,
389
00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:36,440
and it's June when they discover that Weston hasn't organised any transport.
390
00:24:39,080 --> 00:24:41,920
With no word about either financing,
391
00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:45,640
supplies or the ship that would take them across the Atlantic,
392
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:46,960
trusting in God,
393
00:24:46,960 --> 00:24:51,160
the Pilgrims pulled up their roots and set off for England anyway.
394
00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:56,040
And so, they left...
395
00:24:57,680 --> 00:24:59,440
..that goodly and pleasant city
396
00:24:59,440 --> 00:25:02,480
which had been their resting place for nearly 12 years.
397
00:25:04,400 --> 00:25:09,680
But they knew they were Pilgrims and looked not much on these things
398
00:25:09,680 --> 00:25:12,080
but lift up their eyes to the heavens...
399
00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:15,960
..their dearest country...
400
00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:20,360
..and quieted their spirits.
401
00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:29,960
The journey across the Channel was swift and uneventful
402
00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:32,880
and when they arrived, to their enormous relief,
403
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:35,840
they found waiting for them at the dock a second ship,
404
00:25:35,840 --> 00:25:40,520
which Thomas Weston had secured for them at the last possible moment.
405
00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:43,080
It was called the Mayflower.
406
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:50,320
Here, they had their first encounter with the Mayflower's master,
407
00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:53,200
Christopher Jones, and with its hard-bitten,
408
00:25:53,200 --> 00:25:56,760
rough-and-tumble crew, and with the strangers,
409
00:25:56,760 --> 00:25:59,960
the motley assortment of non-Separatist recruits
410
00:25:59,960 --> 00:26:02,480
the investors had insisted go with them.
411
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:08,320
Suddenly, these Leideners, who had spent ten years cultivating
412
00:26:08,320 --> 00:26:11,480
their own spiritual, very inward bond,
413
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:13,600
found themselves on a ship,
414
00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:17,800
sharing their space with the strangers who came from a completely
415
00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:20,440
different place, with the understanding that,
416
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:22,440
we're not just sharing this ship with them,
417
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:26,480
we're going to be living with these people for the foreseeable future.
418
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:34,000
It was a long process before they could finally get away to sea,
419
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:37,760
out onto the open Atlantic, and it was far too late in the year.
420
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:41,240
If you wanted to go to America, Virginia or New England,
421
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:45,200
you should try to leave February or March at the latest so you could get
422
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:48,200
there in the spring and give yourself a full spring and summer to
423
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:49,720
become accustomed to the New World
424
00:26:49,720 --> 00:26:52,640
and to do all the things you had to do before the winter set in.
425
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:55,320
In fact, of course, they ended up leaving in September,
426
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:57,400
which was about as bad as it could be.
427
00:26:59,720 --> 00:27:04,120
On September 6th 1620, fearfully late in the season,
428
00:27:04,120 --> 00:27:06,280
undersupplied and overcrowded,
429
00:27:06,280 --> 00:27:10,800
with autumn storms already whipping the North Atlantic into menacing
430
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:12,880
furrows of white-capped waves,
431
00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:15,520
the Mayflower left Plymouth Harbour
432
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:18,520
and set out on her own across the Atlantic.
433
00:27:20,040 --> 00:27:21,800
Edward Winslow,
434
00:27:21,800 --> 00:27:25,680
a 24-year-old printer travelling with his wife Elizabeth,
435
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:28,240
never forgot the moment they set sail.
436
00:27:29,320 --> 00:27:32,160
Wednesday, 6th September.
437
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:35,440
The wind, coming east, north-east,
438
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:37,840
a fine small gale,
439
00:27:37,840 --> 00:27:40,120
released from Plymouth,
440
00:27:40,120 --> 00:27:44,600
having been kindly entertained and courteously used by diverse friends
441
00:27:44,600 --> 00:27:46,160
there dwelling.
442
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:53,640
The Mayflower lost sight of Land's End sometime towards the end of
443
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:56,520
the first week of September 1620.
444
00:27:59,080 --> 00:28:02,400
William Bradford remembered her finally setting forth
445
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:04,800
under a prosperous wind.
446
00:28:04,800 --> 00:28:07,880
But the journey would be far from easy.
447
00:28:22,720 --> 00:28:25,120
When they finally set sail,
448
00:28:25,120 --> 00:28:28,680
they are going against the prevailing westerly winds,
449
00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:31,160
then struggling against the Gulf Stream...
450
00:28:32,440 --> 00:28:35,640
..and they made incredibly slow progress,
451
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:37,400
2mph across the Atlantic.
452
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:43,960
Some of them tried to create little cabins within this,
453
00:28:43,960 --> 00:28:47,120
which just made these little suffocating cells,
454
00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:49,280
and chamber pots everywhere.
455
00:28:49,280 --> 00:28:52,600
There was a boat that had been cut up into pieces that some people were
456
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:55,120
trying to use for a bed.
457
00:28:55,120 --> 00:28:59,160
There were two dogs, a spaniel and a giant slobbery mastiff.
458
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:02,600
And it is a voyage from hell.
459
00:29:02,600 --> 00:29:05,000
Push!
460
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:09,960
Somewhere far out in the Atlantic, Stephen Hopkins' wife Elizabeth
461
00:29:09,960 --> 00:29:14,000
gave birth to a baby boy, who they named Oceanus.
462
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:18,200
They almost turned back.
463
00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:19,840
The sailors, at one point,
464
00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:23,800
said they'd be happy to earn their wages but they are not going to risk
465
00:29:23,800 --> 00:29:25,320
their lives.
466
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:27,600
Bradford spells it out.
467
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:29,280
He describes it as awful.
468
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:34,440
And these terrible sailors, who were a blight on humanity,
469
00:29:34,440 --> 00:29:40,000
and the strangers, some of whom were worse, loaded up with all this gear,
470
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:41,880
animals, people.
471
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:44,520
It's amazing that they came out alive.
472
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:49,400
And by the end of it, people are getting sick.
473
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:54,080
And so there was a real sense of urgency aboard,
474
00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:57,960
particularly for Master Jones, who knew, at some point,
475
00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:00,520
he had to get these people off his ship.
476
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:06,280
Two people had died and more were failing fast when,
477
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:10,720
early on the morning of Thursday November 9th 1620,
478
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:13,280
after more than two months at sea,
479
00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:17,280
a crew member spied a line of high bluffs gleaming far off
480
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:22,040
in the early dawn light, and shouted out excitedly to Captain Jones.
481
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:27,560
It was the first land they had seen in 65 days.
482
00:30:27,560 --> 00:30:30,120
They've arrived off the coast of Cape Cod,
483
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:32,840
but they're 200 miles off course,
484
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:37,280
and so Master Jones heads them south towards the Hudson River and,
485
00:30:37,280 --> 00:30:39,880
unfortunately, there are no reliable charts,
486
00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:42,320
and they unsuspectingly find themselves
487
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:45,280
in one of the most dangerous pieces of shoal water
488
00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:47,200
on the Atlantic coast,
489
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:49,880
and it looks like this is going to be the end of them.
490
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:52,560
And Jones makes a very historic decision.
491
00:30:52,560 --> 00:30:54,560
He says, "We're not going south.
492
00:30:54,560 --> 00:30:56,640
"We're going to take this breeze to the north,
493
00:30:56,640 --> 00:30:59,680
"around the rest of what they called Cape Cod,
494
00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:01,760
"to whatever harbour is there,
495
00:31:01,760 --> 00:31:04,800
"and I'm getting these people off my ship."
496
00:31:09,280 --> 00:31:10,840
On November 11th,
497
00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:14,960
they rounded the tip of Cape Cod and sailed into the relative calm and
498
00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:19,800
safety of the great bay where, even before they dropped anchor,
499
00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:23,880
long-festering tensions between the strangers and the Pilgrims
500
00:31:23,880 --> 00:31:26,200
broke out into the open.
501
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:31,640
This day, before we came to harbour,
502
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:35,160
observing some not well affected to unity and concord,
503
00:31:35,160 --> 00:31:39,360
it was thought good there should be an association and agreement that we
504
00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:44,040
should combine together in one body and submit to such government and
505
00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:49,480
governors as we should by common consent agree to make and choose,
506
00:31:49,480 --> 00:31:52,520
and set our hands to this that follows,
507
00:31:52,520 --> 00:31:53,880
word for word.
508
00:31:57,560 --> 00:32:01,760
The point of the compact was to ward off the danger of division
509
00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:04,960
and dissolution after they'd got to the other side.
510
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:08,640
The thing that is key about it is, it's a contract.
511
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:11,520
We're going to agree on this particular goal
512
00:32:11,520 --> 00:32:12,960
and get everybody's name
513
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:16,240
on this document and make a commitment to this.
514
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:22,280
On the morning of November 11th 1620,
515
00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:26,200
the Mayflower compact was offered up for signature.
516
00:32:26,200 --> 00:32:30,840
The first to sign was John Carver, one of the wealthiest men on board.
517
00:32:32,120 --> 00:32:35,200
The last, a servant named Edward Leicester.
518
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:41,680
In the end, the vast majority of the men on board put their names to
519
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:45,000
the paper. 41 adult men in all,
520
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:48,880
90% of the adult male population of the Mayflower.
521
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:53,000
Once the signing was complete,
522
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:56,680
the colonists acted collectively for the first time,
523
00:32:56,680 --> 00:32:59,760
and elected John Carver to be their governor.
524
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:05,640
And against all odds, here they are, off this very dangerous coast,
525
00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:09,400
knowing that there is this huge continent ahead of them.
526
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:12,320
This was an alien environment.
527
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:15,640
It's as if they have been set down on another planet.
528
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:19,760
And there it is, in all its mystery, before them.
529
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:25,880
Then, with their ship safely anchored off Cape Cod,
530
00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:29,560
16 armed men ventured ashore in a small boat
531
00:33:29,560 --> 00:33:33,720
and stepped on dry land for the first time in two months.
532
00:33:36,520 --> 00:33:39,320
Being thus past the vast ocean
533
00:33:39,320 --> 00:33:41,880
and a sea of troubles,
534
00:33:41,880 --> 00:33:47,280
they now had no friends to welcome them or inns to repair to
535
00:33:47,280 --> 00:33:51,440
for to refresh their weather-beaten bodies, no houses,
536
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:55,600
much less towns, to repair to to seek for succour.
537
00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:02,080
As for the season, it was winter,
538
00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:05,200
and they that know the winters of that country
539
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:07,400
know them to be sharp and harsh...
540
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:11,440
..subject to cruel and fierce storms.
541
00:34:14,120 --> 00:34:22,160
Besides, what could they see but a hideous, desolate wilderness,
542
00:34:22,160 --> 00:34:23,720
full of wild beasts...
543
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:27,160
..and wild men?
544
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:33,600
When they arrived in this territory,
545
00:34:33,600 --> 00:34:37,920
they believed that their journey was ordained by God,
546
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:41,720
that they had a mission that they were to fulfil,
547
00:34:41,720 --> 00:34:44,320
and the desolation that they found
548
00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:46,400
was God's Providence.
549
00:34:46,400 --> 00:34:49,800
It was meant to be that way for them.
550
00:34:56,880 --> 00:34:58,840
On his return to the Mayflower,
551
00:34:58,840 --> 00:35:02,040
William Bradford was greeted with staggering news.
552
00:35:03,560 --> 00:35:07,480
Five days earlier, his 23-year-old wife Dorothy
553
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:11,280
had somehow fallen overboard while the ship lay at anchor
554
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:13,880
and drowned in the icy waters of the harbour.
555
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:19,280
But in Bradford's history, it is nothing more than a footnote.
556
00:35:20,720 --> 00:35:22,560
He has this double job.
557
00:35:22,560 --> 00:35:26,400
He has to be true to the events but also bring them into
558
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:31,120
a larger narrative of Providence and care.
559
00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:35,480
Many of the things that he doesn't tell
560
00:35:35,480 --> 00:35:37,880
simply don't fit into that design,
561
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:41,360
and I think that the death of his wife was one of those.
562
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:44,240
He couldn't not honour it,
563
00:35:44,240 --> 00:35:48,120
but there was no way to honour it,
564
00:35:48,120 --> 00:35:50,800
so it disappears from the history.
565
00:35:55,040 --> 00:35:58,920
Late in life, Bradford penned the lines of a simple poem.
566
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:02,160
Faint not, poor soul
567
00:36:04,520 --> 00:36:06,440
In God still trust
568
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:10,720
Fear not the things thou suffer must
569
00:36:12,760 --> 00:36:15,280
For whom he loves he doth chastise
570
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:21,080
And then all tears wipes from their eyes.
571
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:32,640
On Friday December 15th,
572
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:36,840
with its cargo of sickened and sea-weary passengers and crew,
573
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:40,880
the Mayflower sailed west across the vast windswept bay
574
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:44,040
towards the dark, wintry shore that awaited them.
575
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:47,520
They called it Plymouth.
576
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:54,240
It was an Indian settlement that had been abandoned.
577
00:36:54,240 --> 00:36:58,160
It seemed, physically speaking, a proper place.
578
00:36:58,160 --> 00:37:02,080
It had a nice slope down to the harbour and fields beyond,
579
00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:04,920
and that seemed to be a convenient place.
580
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:10,640
The Mayflower had to anchor a mile offshore,
581
00:37:10,640 --> 00:37:12,240
because the harbour at Plymouth
582
00:37:12,240 --> 00:37:14,880
wasn't deep enough to let the ship right up,
583
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:18,160
so that they had to ferry the supplies,
584
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:21,840
the goods, so slowly, in from the Mayflower.
585
00:37:25,080 --> 00:37:26,800
Friday, 22nd.
586
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:30,320
Storm still continued.
587
00:37:31,720 --> 00:37:33,720
But we could not get a land,
588
00:37:33,720 --> 00:37:35,480
nor they come to us aboard.
589
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:42,320
This morning, goodwife Alison was delivered of a son,
590
00:37:42,320 --> 00:37:43,880
but dead born.
591
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:49,000
Sunday, 24th.
592
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:52,920
Our people on shore heard a cry of some savages,
593
00:37:52,920 --> 00:37:54,560
which caused an alarm
594
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:56,680
and to stand on their guard,
595
00:37:56,680 --> 00:37:58,480
expecting an assault.
596
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:01,880
But all was quiet.
597
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:09,320
The Pilgrims had just set to work
598
00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:11,880
building a 20-foot-square common house
599
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:16,160
for protection against Indian attack when the temperature began to drop
600
00:38:16,160 --> 00:38:18,800
and the weather to close in mercilessly.
601
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:25,440
One by one, the weakened immigrants began to succumb to dysentery,
602
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:27,720
pneumonia, scurvy.
603
00:38:31,520 --> 00:38:35,120
By February, people were dying in droves,
604
00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:37,880
some huddled in the makeshift settlement,
605
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:40,360
many more back on the Mayflower.
606
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:47,200
The conditions on board that ship must have been absolutely awful.
607
00:38:48,200 --> 00:38:53,600
They can't go ashore, they're all suffering from scurvy.
608
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:57,360
That sweet ship, the Mayflower,
609
00:38:57,360 --> 00:39:00,760
at the end, it was like a death house on the water.
610
00:39:02,760 --> 00:39:07,920
It pleased God to visit us then with death daily,
611
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:10,240
and with so general a disease...
612
00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:14,840
..the living were scarce able to bury the dead...
613
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:19,040
..and the well in no measure sufficient
614
00:39:19,040 --> 00:39:20,680
to tend the sick.
615
00:39:30,240 --> 00:39:33,040
The days were growing longer and the death rate
616
00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:35,120
had finally begun to subside
617
00:39:35,120 --> 00:39:40,000
when, on Friday March 16th, cries of panic and alarm rang out,
618
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:42,560
as a lone Wampanoag warrior,
619
00:39:42,560 --> 00:39:46,040
naked except for a loincloth and carrying a bow,
620
00:39:46,040 --> 00:39:49,120
broke cover from the line of trees near their huts
621
00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:52,040
and walked boldly into the camp.
622
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:58,360
He saluted us in English, and bade us welcome.
623
00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:01,120
He was the first savage we had met withal.
624
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:03,160
He said his name was Samoset.
625
00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:08,600
He told us the place we now live is called Patuxet,
626
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:11,480
and that about four years ago all the inhabitants died
627
00:40:11,480 --> 00:40:13,440
of an extraordinary plague.
628
00:40:15,280 --> 00:40:18,800
The Wampanoags are looking for an ally.
629
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:22,040
They're suspicious of the Pilgrims when they first come,
630
00:40:22,040 --> 00:40:25,080
they stay away from them at first, they watch them,
631
00:40:25,080 --> 00:40:28,000
but eventually they realise that an alliance
632
00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:30,600
is going to be best for them as well,
633
00:40:30,600 --> 00:40:34,960
because they're being dominated by other Indian tribes who are
634
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:40,720
not affected by the epidemic, who are forcing them to pay tribute.
635
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:45,920
It was not just political convenience, it was survival.
636
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:50,520
If you do not have power backing you, and you are a weakened people,
637
00:40:50,520 --> 00:40:54,080
then the enemies that naturally exist around you
638
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:55,560
will take advantage.
639
00:40:57,040 --> 00:41:00,040
Our leadership knew very well the tough decisions
640
00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:02,800
that needed to be made at the time,
641
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:06,560
in order to ensure that Wampanoag people continued to exist
642
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:08,280
in Wampanoag territory.
643
00:41:12,720 --> 00:41:16,040
Six days later, the emissary returned,
644
00:41:16,040 --> 00:41:20,240
bringing the principal leader of the Wampanoags and 60 of his men,
645
00:41:20,240 --> 00:41:22,880
including one named Tisquantum,
646
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:28,320
who served as interpreter as the two sides concluded a remarkable accord,
647
00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:31,200
agreeing not to harm each other's people,
648
00:41:31,200 --> 00:41:34,600
and to come to each other's aid in the event of attack.
649
00:41:37,680 --> 00:41:41,400
Tisquantum would remain with the struggling group on the site of
650
00:41:41,400 --> 00:41:45,000
his former home, to help with the spring planting.
651
00:41:47,240 --> 00:41:50,440
The Pilgrims were obviously very close to losing everything
652
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:52,080
after that first winter,
653
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:56,480
and I think there was a recognition that they both needed each other.
654
00:41:56,480 --> 00:41:59,640
Not that they understood each other terribly well,
655
00:41:59,640 --> 00:42:02,680
but they were desperate, they were both desperate.
656
00:42:15,520 --> 00:42:18,120
Two weeks after concluding the treaty,
657
00:42:18,120 --> 00:42:20,600
the immigrants gathered at the harbour
658
00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:23,720
to bid a sombre farewell to the Mayflower,
659
00:42:23,720 --> 00:42:27,400
which, on April 5th 1621, set sail for England
660
00:42:27,400 --> 00:42:32,840
with Master Jones, an empty hold and a drastically diminished crew.
661
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:37,880
It was one of the last voyages she would ever take.
662
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:42,400
Two years later, the Mayflower, rotting at anchor on the Thames,
663
00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:46,240
would be sold for scrap and disappear to history.
664
00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:52,480
The Pilgrims' only anchor and lifeline was gone.
665
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:54,320
They were on their own.
666
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:05,520
Autumn came and the days dipped down into darkness.
667
00:43:05,520 --> 00:43:09,440
With William Bradford now at the helm as their new governor,
668
00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:13,360
the Pilgrims had finished erecting 11 crude structures in all,
669
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:16,880
seven dwelling houses and four common buildings.
670
00:43:18,440 --> 00:43:22,240
They had also managed to bring in a successful harvest of corn,
671
00:43:22,240 --> 00:43:27,480
thanks to Tisquantum, and as the leaves began to turn, they prepared,
672
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:29,280
Edward Winslow reported,
673
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:31,920
to, "in a special manner, rejoice together
674
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:35,360
"after we had gathered the fruits of our labours."
675
00:43:38,640 --> 00:43:41,120
No-one at the time called it Thanksgiving.
676
00:43:42,320 --> 00:43:45,800
William Bradford made no mention of it in his history.
677
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:51,200
There isn't much of a record, there's a paragraph, I think,
678
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:53,880
in Winslow, that describes what's come to be known
679
00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:56,120
as the first Thanksgiving.
680
00:43:56,120 --> 00:43:58,440
It says nothing about an invitation,
681
00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:01,360
it was just that the English were doing this thing
682
00:44:01,360 --> 00:44:04,120
and Massasoit showed up with these 90 men.
683
00:44:04,120 --> 00:44:06,200
They stayed for three days,
684
00:44:06,200 --> 00:44:08,280
they went out and got five deer
685
00:44:08,280 --> 00:44:11,440
to add to what the English were cooking.
686
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:13,880
They played games together.
687
00:44:15,040 --> 00:44:18,320
There's, like, four little facts of what happened,
688
00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:20,400
and then the rest of it is fluff
689
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:23,040
that's been added over the centuries.
690
00:44:26,560 --> 00:44:28,920
Over time, the humble event,
691
00:44:28,920 --> 00:44:32,280
all but disregarded by the Pilgrims themselves,
692
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:36,760
would be recast as one of the most important and defining moments
693
00:44:36,760 --> 00:44:38,440
in American history.
694
00:44:42,040 --> 00:44:47,600
We love the story of Thanksgiving because it's about alliance and
695
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:53,280
abundance and envisioning a future where Native Americans
696
00:44:53,280 --> 00:44:57,160
and colonial Americans can come together
697
00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:01,480
and celebrate the Providences of a single God.
698
00:45:02,560 --> 00:45:05,920
But part of the reason that they were grateful
699
00:45:05,920 --> 00:45:08,880
was that they had been in such misery,
700
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:13,120
that they had lost so many people - on both sides.
701
00:45:14,720 --> 00:45:18,240
But we don't think about the loss, we think about the abundance.
702
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:22,640
CANNON FIRES
703
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:24,640
On November 9th 1621,
704
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:28,880
a shout went out from a lookout on Burial Hill,
705
00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:31,560
followed by the loud booming of a cannon
706
00:45:31,560 --> 00:45:33,320
as, far out in the bay,
707
00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:36,920
the first sails they had seen since the departure of the Mayflower
708
00:45:36,920 --> 00:45:39,400
loomed on the eastern horizon.
709
00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:44,680
They'd had no contact with the outside world for more than a year.
710
00:45:47,040 --> 00:45:50,920
It turned out to be an English relief ship called the Fortune,
711
00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:52,760
sent by Thomas Weston.
712
00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:55,960
A third the size of the Mayflower,
713
00:45:55,960 --> 00:45:58,640
the tiny vessel carried 35 new recruits
714
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:02,240
and a stinging letter from Thomas Weston himself,
715
00:46:02,240 --> 00:46:05,240
rebuking the colonists for having failed
716
00:46:05,240 --> 00:46:08,680
to send back any cargo with the Mayflower.
717
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:12,000
They desperately needed to find something
718
00:46:12,000 --> 00:46:14,440
they could ship back to England to pay their debts,
719
00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:18,160
and that just wasn't available in those early years in New England.
720
00:46:18,160 --> 00:46:20,040
So there were all kinds of challenges
721
00:46:20,040 --> 00:46:22,480
which they were not well prepared for.
722
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:35,680
Work on a massive fortification had been completed just four months when
723
00:46:35,680 --> 00:46:40,480
two new ships, also sent by Thomas Weston, appeared in the harbour.
724
00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:47,280
Their arrival would trigger the darkest crisis
725
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:49,080
in the Pilgrims' history.
726
00:46:51,040 --> 00:46:54,640
None of the 60 new colonists were Separatists.
727
00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:59,040
They had come to set up what amounted to a rival trading post
728
00:46:59,040 --> 00:47:02,000
at Wessagusset, 30 miles up the coast.
729
00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:06,720
They were not there for religious reasons,
730
00:47:06,720 --> 00:47:10,160
they did not have a social cohesion, they did not have family structures,
731
00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:12,520
they were there for financial reasons,
732
00:47:12,520 --> 00:47:15,240
and it was a collection of young men.
733
00:47:15,240 --> 00:47:19,040
And things very, very quickly start deteriorating there.
734
00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:23,760
In March 1623,
735
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:26,320
news reached Plymouth that the settlement
736
00:47:26,320 --> 00:47:30,000
was in the gravest danger from a region-wide conspiracy,
737
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:34,480
whose aim was to eradicate all English settlements in New England.
738
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:42,040
Mr Weston's colony had by their evil and debauched courage
739
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:44,960
so exasperated the Indians among them,
740
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:47,360
as they plotted their overthrow.
741
00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:51,160
And because they knew not how to affect it
742
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:54,120
but fear we would revenge it upon them...
743
00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:56,400
they secretly instigated other peoples
744
00:47:56,400 --> 00:47:58,280
to conspire against us also...
745
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:01,200
..thinking to assault us
746
00:48:01,200 --> 00:48:03,280
with their force at home.
747
00:48:05,800 --> 00:48:08,960
But their treachery was discovered unto us,
748
00:48:08,960 --> 00:48:13,160
and we went to rescue the lives of our countrymen and take vengeance on
749
00:48:13,160 --> 00:48:15,240
them for their villainy.
750
00:48:16,720 --> 00:48:21,600
The veterans of the Thirty Years' War were brutes, hammerers...
751
00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:28,440
..and they went up there, a young Indian boy, they hung,
752
00:48:28,440 --> 00:48:31,440
and then the rest they stabbed to death,
753
00:48:31,440 --> 00:48:33,760
and cut off one of their heads,
754
00:48:33,760 --> 00:48:37,400
and brought it back and put it on a pole in the middle of Plymouth.
755
00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:45,200
Five months later,
756
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:49,240
William Bradford married a recently arrived 32-year-old widow
757
00:48:49,240 --> 00:48:54,080
named Alice Southworth in a ceremony attended by the entire community.
758
00:48:55,840 --> 00:48:59,920
The Pilgrims usually shunned decoration, ornamentation.
759
00:48:59,920 --> 00:49:03,000
But when Bradford gets married,
760
00:49:03,000 --> 00:49:06,800
people notice one piece of ornament.
761
00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:09,720
A piece of linen soaked in Wituwamat's blood.
762
00:49:10,880 --> 00:49:13,520
Visitors to Plymouth commented upon it.
763
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:26,960
In 1627, the Pilgrims faced a new problem.
764
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:31,240
Their investors in London, convinced of the colony would never
765
00:49:31,240 --> 00:49:35,760
show a profit, cut their losses and wound up their partnership.
766
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:41,200
Most of the massive debt left behind was assumed by eight of the colony's
767
00:49:41,200 --> 00:49:43,760
most stalwart members.
768
00:49:43,760 --> 00:49:48,600
But salvation was at hand in the surprising form of the beaver trade.
769
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:53,920
The demand for beaver skins arose entirely from
770
00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:55,920
the demand for beaver hats.
771
00:49:55,920 --> 00:49:58,040
The price rocketed up because
772
00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:02,400
England found itself at war with France and Spain.
773
00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:05,080
And beaver fur became more scarce in Europe
774
00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:07,400
and so the price went up dramatically.
775
00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:13,520
So, everything came together in 1627 and 1628.
776
00:50:13,520 --> 00:50:16,640
Price had gone up, Pilgrims had found the furs.
777
00:50:16,640 --> 00:50:18,800
The opportunity presented itself
778
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:21,720
and back came beaver skins in their thousands.
779
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:27,080
Investors in London saw that if you took this business model
780
00:50:27,080 --> 00:50:30,600
the Pilgrims had developed, then you might be able to build
781
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:33,600
a much, much bigger colony with not hundreds of colonists
782
00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:35,760
but thousands of colonists.
783
00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:39,240
And so they took the Plymouth Colony prototype and they turned it into
784
00:50:39,240 --> 00:50:41,960
something far, far bigger on a far bigger scale.
785
00:50:44,840 --> 00:50:46,960
In the spring of 1630,
786
00:50:46,960 --> 00:50:49,880
the first of a massive fleet of 18 ships
787
00:50:49,880 --> 00:50:51,640
left England for a bay
788
00:50:51,640 --> 00:50:54,040
40 miles north of New Plymouth,
789
00:50:54,040 --> 00:50:56,440
bringing 1,000 well-supplied
790
00:50:56,440 --> 00:50:58,120
Puritan immigrants.
791
00:50:59,600 --> 00:51:02,160
They named the bay Boston.
792
00:51:04,800 --> 00:51:08,520
All through the summer, the great ships continued to arrive.
793
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:12,440
By mid-September,
794
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:17,080
the new settlement already had a population of nearly 1,000,
795
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:21,600
three times larger in ten weeks than the tiny community Plymouth had
796
00:51:21,600 --> 00:51:24,360
gathered to itself in ten years.
797
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:28,720
Those are just small beginnings.
798
00:51:30,480 --> 00:51:33,280
Greater things have been produced by his hand
799
00:51:33,280 --> 00:51:35,320
that made all things of nothing.
800
00:51:36,640 --> 00:51:39,280
And gives being to all things that are.
801
00:51:42,640 --> 00:51:46,320
And as one small candle may light a thousand,
802
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:49,720
so the light here kindled hath shone to many...
803
00:51:52,320 --> 00:51:54,280
..yea, in some sort,
804
00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:56,120
to our whole nation.
805
00:51:59,960 --> 00:52:02,320
Let the glorious name of Jehovah...
806
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:05,320
..have all the praise.
807
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:20,080
Well, in some ways, of course, it is a success story,
808
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:24,400
because, completely against the odds, they survived.
809
00:52:24,400 --> 00:52:26,160
They put down roots.
810
00:52:27,600 --> 00:52:30,520
They established a colony.
811
00:52:30,520 --> 00:52:33,040
So, in that sense, it was a success.
812
00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:41,960
The sense in which it is poignantly not a success is, I think,
813
00:52:41,960 --> 00:52:45,840
for Bradford, the sense that the community he had hoped for
814
00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:49,840
didn't materialise in the sweet way that he had hoped it would.
815
00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:57,760
In 1630, not long after the founding of the colony at Boston,
816
00:52:57,760 --> 00:52:59,880
William Bradford, 40 now,
817
00:52:59,880 --> 00:53:02,920
and beginning his tenth year as governor,
818
00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:06,640
sat down to write a history of Plymouth Plantation,
819
00:53:06,640 --> 00:53:10,920
sensing, perhaps, from the moment the new settlement began,
820
00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:14,680
how dramatically his own community would be transformed,
821
00:53:14,680 --> 00:53:18,200
and determined to leave an account of who his people were,
822
00:53:18,200 --> 00:53:21,880
and what had happened to them, and why they mattered.
823
00:53:23,680 --> 00:53:27,120
As an historian writing for posterity,
824
00:53:27,120 --> 00:53:30,720
he can tell the story and preserve the meaning
825
00:53:30,720 --> 00:53:35,360
of their vision and their implantation...
826
00:53:36,520 --> 00:53:39,920
..even as that vision is being dissipated
827
00:53:39,920 --> 00:53:42,280
and not being held by others.
828
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:45,040
And this is a great despair for Bradford,
829
00:53:45,040 --> 00:53:47,680
that they've gone through all of this hell
830
00:53:47,680 --> 00:53:51,160
to create this wonderful, exceptional community of saints,
831
00:53:51,160 --> 00:53:53,240
but it doesn't happen.
832
00:53:53,240 --> 00:53:55,800
It just fragments and blows apart.
833
00:53:55,800 --> 00:53:59,080
Instead of his little congregation of saints,
834
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:02,920
he has his best friend moving off, forming other towns,
835
00:54:02,920 --> 00:54:05,200
leaving the Mother Church.
836
00:54:09,760 --> 00:54:11,600
Oh, poor Plymouth.
837
00:54:13,120 --> 00:54:14,600
How does thou moan.
838
00:54:16,560 --> 00:54:19,000
My children all from thee are gone.
839
00:54:20,880 --> 00:54:23,600
And left thou art in widow state.
840
00:54:26,440 --> 00:54:28,400
Poor, helpless...
841
00:54:29,680 --> 00:54:33,200
..sad and desolate.
842
00:54:37,920 --> 00:54:40,400
At the end of his life,
843
00:54:40,400 --> 00:54:45,080
in what to me is especially moving,
844
00:54:45,080 --> 00:54:47,760
he turned to Hebrew.
845
00:54:47,760 --> 00:54:49,800
He learned Hebrew.
846
00:54:51,120 --> 00:54:57,000
He thought he'd get closer to God in conversation with the sacred script.
847
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:01,520
Anything to deepen his understanding of what was happening.
848
00:55:07,040 --> 00:55:08,680
Though I am grown aged...
849
00:55:10,320 --> 00:55:14,920
..I've had a longing desire to see with mine own eyes
850
00:55:14,920 --> 00:55:19,800
something of that most ancient language and holy tongue...
851
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:26,080
..in which the law and oracles of God were writ.
852
00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:32,480
My aim and desire is to see
853
00:55:32,480 --> 00:55:36,320
how the words and phrases lie in the holy text.
854
00:55:38,680 --> 00:55:41,720
And to discern somewhat of the same...
855
00:55:44,720 --> 00:55:46,720
..for my own content.
856
00:55:59,600 --> 00:56:01,280
HE SPEAKS HEBREW
857
00:56:18,480 --> 00:56:22,440
William Bradford died on May 9th 1657,
858
00:56:22,440 --> 00:56:26,800
having served as governor for 31 of the 37 years
859
00:56:26,800 --> 00:56:29,080
he had lived in the New World.
860
00:56:30,480 --> 00:56:32,320
He was 67 years old.
861
00:56:35,120 --> 00:56:37,200
In the years to come,
862
00:56:37,200 --> 00:56:40,680
the world his people had come to in search of a new Jerusalem would be
863
00:56:40,680 --> 00:56:42,680
transformed utterly,
864
00:56:42,680 --> 00:56:46,920
and the Pilgrim experience itself could easily have been forgotten.
865
00:56:49,080 --> 00:56:51,680
Bradford's book was lost.
866
00:56:51,680 --> 00:56:56,640
It was taken by the British during the Revolutionary War.
867
00:56:56,640 --> 00:56:59,280
And people tried to recover it, people tried to find it,
868
00:56:59,280 --> 00:57:01,800
people tried to trace it.
869
00:57:01,800 --> 00:57:05,440
And nobody knew what had happened to their history,
870
00:57:05,440 --> 00:57:10,280
their great gospel of the founding of the nation.
871
00:57:11,880 --> 00:57:17,520
All hope of the book's recovery had been lost when, in 1855, a scholar
872
00:57:17,520 --> 00:57:21,760
browsing in a book store in Boston chanced upon a recently published
873
00:57:21,760 --> 00:57:25,280
English history of the Anglican Church in America,
874
00:57:25,280 --> 00:57:28,400
and his eye fell upon an unmistakable quotation
875
00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:31,400
from the missing Bradford journal.
876
00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:34,880
Excited enquiries revealed that the long-lost manuscript
877
00:57:34,880 --> 00:57:38,120
had somehow found its way, no-one knew how,
878
00:57:38,120 --> 00:57:42,000
into the library of the Bishop of London at Fulham Palace.
879
00:57:43,080 --> 00:57:46,600
And eventually they petitioned to bring the book back to America.
880
00:57:46,600 --> 00:57:48,920
That petition was granted.
881
00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:55,360
And when the text itself returned, it was a scriptural event.
882
00:57:55,360 --> 00:57:59,200
So it was another kind of plantation.
883
00:57:59,200 --> 00:58:05,400
It was re-implanting that first history back in its home,
884
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:07,920
and nationalising that story.
885
00:58:09,920 --> 00:58:12,600
The Pilgrims' story was complete.
886
00:58:12,600 --> 00:58:17,960
The journey was over, and the Pilgrims themselves, 250 years on,
887
00:58:17,960 --> 00:58:19,560
had prevailed.
888
00:58:20,800 --> 00:58:24,000
Somewhere, William Bradford might have smiled.
889
00:58:25,720 --> 00:58:29,680
But then a place did God provide
890
00:58:29,680 --> 00:58:34,920
in wilderness, and did them guide onto the American shore...
891
00:58:36,560 --> 00:58:38,880
..where they made way for many more.
892
00:58:41,400 --> 00:58:44,160
They broke the ice themselves alone...
893
00:58:46,400 --> 00:58:48,400
..and so became a stepping stone...
894
00:58:49,560 --> 00:58:52,240
..for all others who, in like case...
895
00:58:54,280 --> 00:58:57,080
..are glad to find a resting place.
75127
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