EDWARD WINSLOW
From the only portrait of a “Mayflower” pilgrim in existence. Edward Winslow was one of the governors of Plymouth colony.
The failure of the Popham colony had discouraged the Plymouth Company, and it was not until Jamestown was a flourishing village that a permanent settlement was made in the northern part of the region which King James had granted to the Virginia Company. Those years had been years of strife and sorrow in England. The king in the narrow bigotry of his ecclesiastical views, had declared that if any refused to conform to the rules of worship prescribed by the established Church of England, he would “harry them out of the land,” and King James had kept his word. Many Englishmen had been “harried out of the land,” and had taken refuge on the continent of Europe; but the band for whom history was reserving the largest place had escaped from Scrooby in Nottinghamshire and established themselves at Leyden, Holland. Here they had prospered; but they were still English, and, seeing their children growing up with distinctly Dutch characteristics, they determined to migrate to a land where the son of an Englishman would grow up an Englishman. It is often said that the chief aim of the Puritans was to settle in a land where they could worship God as they pleased. This, however, they were quite at liberty to do in Holland. It might be said with greater truthfulness that they desired to settle in a land where they could compel others to worship God as they commanded—and this they managed quite effectively for some years after their landing.
THE PILGRIMS
They accordingly obtained from the London branch of the Virginia Company permission to settle at the mouth of the Delaware, and from the king the promise that he would “wink at their heresy.” When all was ready, the youngest and strongest of the Leyden congregation, with Brewster, Bradford, Winslow, and Myles Standish at their head, repaired to Delft Haven, where they embarked for England upon the Speedwell. At Southampton they were joined by the Mayflower, with recruits from London, and the two little vessels turned their prows toward the vast waters of the Atlantic.
PLYMOUTH ROCK
The granite boulder on which the Pilgrims are said to have landed in 1620.
The Speedwell, however, soon sprang a leak, and the two vessels entered the harbor of Plymouth in Devonshire, where as many as possible of the Speedwell’s passengers were transferred to the Mayflower, those who could not be there accommodated being placed ashore. As the Mayflower glided out of the harbor on September 6, 1620, the one hundred and two devoted souls on board waved a sad farewell to their twenty disconsolate fellow Pilgrims who stood on the quay. As the dim outlines of ancient Cornwall faded from their view, the hearts of flesh cried out, but the steady voice of the Spirit gave them courage; for to the Puritan, in spite of his faults, which were many and great, duty was always first, and the planting of the wilderness with the choicest seed, as he modestly called himself, was a solemn duty laid upon him by God.
