The Crippen - Crippin Connection - The Pilgrim Fathers and the Mayflower 1620

The CRIPPEN - CRIPPIN Connection - Contents

  The Pilgrim Fathers & The Mayflower

The foundation of the first British Empire (i.e. of the empire as it existed before 1783) was closely connected with religious divisions in England and the refusal of toleration to Nonconformists by James 1. Elizabethan efforts to found colonies on the eastern coast of North America had been unsuccessful, but a settlement was made in Virginia in 1609, and it attracted the attention of a body of Puritans, belonging to Scrooby and Gainsborough, who had fled from England to Holland. They entered into negotiations with a London Company to which the Virginia Company had ceded some of its rights, and obtained permission to found a colony near the mouth of the Hudson River. The English Government put no obstacles in the way, and the exiles sailed from Delftshaven in July 1620.

They called at Southampton, from which on 5th August, 120 of their number sailed for America in the Mayflower and the Speedwell. The last-named vessel was compelled to return as unseaworthy, but about 100 left Plymouth on 6th Sept. in the Mayflower. They reached the coast of North America in December, but stress of weather prevented their making for their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson, and they landed in the region of Cape Cod, where they founded the colony of New Plymouth, as "loyal subjects of our dread sovereign, King James" (21st December 1620).

Before landing they had drawn up a written constitution for the new colony, agreeing to form themselves into a "body politic," and promising due obedience to laws which they were to draw up. They suffered many hardships on their arrival, and about half their number died in the first winter.

The dangers by which they were surrounded led them to try a shortlived system of having all things in common. The London Company, which had permitted their settlement near the Hudson, made difficulties about the position of the new colony, and the colonists were unable to bring their democratic constitution - government by the whole body of freemen - into operation until 1627. By that date they had received small accessions to their numbers, which were greatly increased after the grant of a charter to the Massachusetts Company in 1629.

The name " Pilgrim Fathers " is sometimes loosely used for all the settlers up to 1629 and even later, but it properly belongs to the emigrants in the Mayflower.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Ames, The Mayflower and her Log; B. McManus, The Voyage of the Mayflower.

From: The British Encyclopedia 1933

  The CRIPPEN – CRIPPIN Connection

According to various researchers in the United States, Jabez Crippen married Thankful Fuller on July 9th 1707, in Colchester, Conneticut. Thankful being the Great Grand-Daughter of Edward Fuller, one of the Mayflower Pilgrim Fathers. Volumes have been written and researched and more can be found on the following web-sites:

Crippen - Crippin - Grippen - Grippin Ancestry

The Pilgrims & Plymouth Colony

Pilgrim Fathers Story Begins

Martha's Vineyard (Wampanoag)

General Society of Mayflower Descendants

Pilgrim Society

Plimoth Plantation

Caleb Johnson's Mayflower Web Pages

Historic Delfshaven

Completely revised December 2001, this page was last updated Saturday, January 05, 2002.

 © John Crippen, 2001, 2002

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