Hey guys, welcome back to History with Mrs. Lee. Today we are talking about pilgrims, Puritans, the Mayflower Compact, and Massachusetts. All right, so we're going to go ahead and get started with the pilgrims.
You may have learned about them when you were a kid. And their leader was William Bradford. He looks a little like Shakespeare there. Okay, and in the 1500s and 1600s, The King of England decided that he wanted everybody to be the same religion as him. He was a Christian, but he was part of what was known as the Anglican Church.
And if you weren't part of the Anglican Church, you were persecuted. And persecuted means to be treated very badly. Maybe it's because of the color of your skin, of your religion, or your political party.
But the pilgrims were being treated badly by the king and his leaders. in England. So they decide we are not interested in staying in England anymore.
We want freedom of religion. The pilgrims get in touch with the Virginia Company of London and they ask permission to move to Jamestown. They say, can we move to Jamestown?
Can we have freedom of religion? And Virginia Company of London says, sure, come on over. Well, their boat, the Mayflower, gets 500 miles off track in the Atlantic Ocean.
And instead of settling down in the Atlantic Ocean, they move to Jamestown. Here in Virginia, they end up up here in Connecticut. So this is actually a closer look. They will settle in what is known as Plymouth Colony. Now before they get off the boat, the pilgrims realize, uh-oh, we are not in the right place.
There will not be any English people there. There will not be any government already set up for us with rules for us to follow. So let's go ahead and let's take care of the situation.
and let's create our own government to take care of issues that might arise in our colony. And so in 1620, they create the Mayflower Compact. This is important to us because it is the first self-government in America. Now, Mayflower Compact is similar to the House of Burgesses. Remember that the House of Burgesses is a representative government.
Mayflower Compact is basically the same idea, it's just that it's a smaller community. Both a representative government and a self-government, everyone gets a voice, unlike their time in England where they were being ruled by a king or a monarch who made all the laws for them. But with this Mayflower Compact, they have a smaller community, so every person is going to vote directly on the issues.
So this seems like a good idea that they're going to try to avoid some government issues when they land in Plymouth. But another issue arises and that is the fact that Massachusetts is in New England and it is very cold there and the soil is very rocky. Fortunately for the Pilgrims, they meet some Native Americans who are friendly with the Pilgrims and these Native Americans teach the Pilgrims how to farm and hunt in the area.
Now when they farm in Plymouth, they are going to be doing what is called subsistence farming. They will not be able to grow cash crops here, but instead they'll be able to have small gardens and grow food to take care of themselves and their families. Ten years later, we have another group of people that are being persecuted in England, and this is the Puritans.
Their leader was a man named John Winthrop. Now, the Puritans were also being persecuted, and they want to come to America to seek religious freedom as well. They are going to settle in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which is close to present-day Boston.
Now, even though they're looking for religious freedom for themselves, they will not be willing to give it to others. The Puritans were very strict about their faith, and they wanted everybody else to be Puritans just like them. Some people in the Puritan group...
are going to find it to be way too strict, and we'll talk more about them next unit, but this includes Thomas Hooker, and he is going to decide, you know what, I can't handle this Puritan lifestyle anymore, and he's going to go establish the colony of Connecticut, and then we will also talk about Roger Williams and Ann Hutchinson, and they will leave the Massachusetts Bay Colony because it's too strict of a lifestyle there, and they will set up the colony of Rhode Island for religious freedom as well. But the most important things that you need to know from this video is that 1620 is the year that we get the Mayflower Compact. The Mayflower Compact is important because it's the first self-government, and both the Pilgrims and the Puritans came to America seeking religious freedom.