Thanksgiving History: The English Roots of the The Pilgrims and the Plymouth Colony

November 26, 2014 By John Rabon

Every fourth Thursday of November, Americans come together to celebrate Thanksgiving, a meal that commemorates the Pilgrims making it through their first winter at Plymouth Colony. However, long before this holiday became an institution or even before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, they were English separatists. Ultimately discovering that being opposed to the Church of England is not the best way to get along with the authorities, they picked up and moved to America by way of the Netherlands. There, they sought to live life and practice religion as they wanted, becoming a part of America’s early history.

The English Dissenter movement kicked off in the 16th Century and comprised many groups, including the Puritans, Anabaptists, Quakers, and more, often referred to collectively as Separatists. One of these groups, the Brownists, originated with Robert Browne, a minister who believed that church congregations should govern their own affairs rather than have them determined by the Church of England. One of his adherents, a Brownist pastor named Richard Clyfton, began preaching at a church in Bawtry near Scrooby after being suspended from the Church of England under suspicion of nonconformity. As the government’s attitude became increasingly hostile to the Separatists, they began to meet in secret in contravention of the law that banned services not connected with the Church of England.

When Tobias Matthew replaced the more sympathetic Matthew Hutton as the Archbishop of York, he began a crackdown on Separatists in an effort to purge the archdiocese of any nonconforming influences. The Scrooby Separatists by this time were meeting secretly in house of William Brewster, a former diplomatic assistant to the Netherlands. As the ability to worship in England became increasingly difficult, he used his connections to help the congregation relocate to Holland.

Eventually, however, the Dutch culture didn’t agree with their stricter morality, and as the children started to identify more with the Dutch culture than the group’s conservative attitude, the Separatists felt it was necessary to leave before their cultural identity was extinguished. Not wanting to head back to England, they began to turn their attention to the west, where England and other European nations were establishing colonies. Ultimately, the Separatists felt they should settle near Virginia for the potential trade and protection the larger colony would offer, but far enough away that they could practice their beliefs without interference or influence.

The Pilgrims were then able to negotiate for their own colonial settlement that was to be located to the north of the Virginia colony and called New England. As they set to leave, Brewster, being the oldest layperson in the congregation, was tapped to lead them in the New World. Since they didn’t have enough money to be completely independent, they formed a partnership with financial backers, with the investors supplying resources to get the colony started in return for natural resources harvested in America.

Originally two ships were going to set out for the new colony, the Speedwell and the Mayflower, but the Speedwell had serious structural problems that forced the group to turn back for England and eventually leave on just the Mayflower. The original destination was near the Hudson River in New York, but winds and bad weather forced the ship further north into Cape Cod. Arriving in November, weather conditions made it increasingly difficult to get out of the cape, so the settlers decided to establish their colony in Cape Cod and named it Plymouth for the place from which they had sailed.

Arrival didn’t bring about a happy ending, though. While the settlement was being constructed, many of the colonists continued to live on the ship and had to contend with harsh conditions that brought about illness that reduced their numbers from 102 to 52. Eventually, the Pilgrims came into contact with the Pokanoket Wampanoag tribe and made a treaty of mutual protection with them.

One of the Wampanoag men, the legendary Squanto, helped the Pilgrims become successful in growing Indian corn to sustain them. Squanto had his own ties to England, having been once captured by English soldiers and living in London after his escape. His experiences in England led him to act as an interpreter and guide for the Pilgrims, helping to transform the struggling Pilgrim colony into a successful settlement.

Though the English ties of the Pilgrims fall by the wayside in the celebration of the holiday, it is worth remembering the backstory of America and the role that England played in its formation.