They were held for some time before being released and sent to attend the court in Lincoln. Here, they had arranged to escape only to find the ship’s captain had betrayed them to the authorities. All men who were church members were able to vote for governor and for. Many of them had travelled from the area around Gainsborough and North Nottinghamshire down to Boston on the Lincolnshire coast. Like the other colonies, the Massachusetts Bay Colony established a government. The pilgrims were passengers on board the Mayflower who settled Plymouth Colony in 1620. Upwards of a million people visit it each year. But who were the Pilgrims Why had they left England And what. They called their new home the Plymouth Colony. These settlers were mostly from hardline Calvinist churches. While the original Pilgrims may never have come to Plymouth Rock, it certainly draws pilgrims of a different sort today. Before them was the wilderness of North America. This wasn’t the first time they’d tried to escape either. From 1630 to 1700, waves of settlers came to New England to escape religious persecution. Some of them became passengers on the Mayflower.Ī date that hasn’t been widely recognised in the past is when the Gainsborough Separatists escaped from the riverside on a barge called the Francis on, making their way to Holland where they lived for twelve years before some of them sailed to America. There were two main groups - one in Gainsborough and the other in nearby Scrooby. It was thought that a group of separatists worshipped in secret at Gainsborough Old Hall with kind permission of its owner William Hickman. 2020 is the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower as it set sail from England to America.Īlthough the Mayflower set sail from the south of England, it was in this region that the Separatists, who later became known as the Pilgrims, formed their ideas and decided to break away from the established church, at a time when this was illegal.

Where did the pilgrims come from