The Journey to the Mayflower: God’s Outlaws and the Invention of Freedom

by Stephen Tomkins

2020 sees the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower - the ship that took the Pilgrim Fathers to the New World. It's a foundational event in American history, but it began as an English story, which pioneered the idea of religious freedom.

The illegal underground movement of Protestant separatists from Elizabeth I's Church of England is a story of subterfuge and danger, arrests and interrogations, prison and executions. It starts with Queen Mary's attempts to burn Protestantism out of England, which created a Protestant underground. Later, when Elizabeth's Protestant reformation didn't go far enough, radicals recreated that underground, meeting illegally throughout England, facing prison and death for their crimes. They went into exile in the Netherlands, where they lived in poverty - and finally the New World.

Stephen Tomkins tells this fascinating story - one that is rarely told as an important piece of English, as well as American, history - that is full of contemporary relevance: religious violence, the threat to national security, freedom of religion and tolerance of dangerous opinions.

This is a must-read book for anyone interested in the untold story of how the Mayflower came to be launched.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Religion, Historical, Church History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 7, 2020

About the author

Stephen Tomkins is the author of several books, including biographies of John Wesley and William Wilberforce. He is the deputy editor of Third Way magazine.

Reviews

[Quirkyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about the messy history of the Protestant movement in England and how some worshippers had to leave the country to seek religious freedom.

So this is not a book about the Pilgrims travelling to the New World to create a religious utopia, it’s about Separatists finding freedom to worship.

It’s also my family history, but I “ignored” that fact while reading this so I could give an objective and not biased review.

Whole volumes have been written about this subject, so this book is just a dip in the pool and a good introduction to this fascinating part of Religious History.

If you are interested in what caused people to leave the known world and found a new one, give this book a go.

[Adam Stevenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Journey to the Mayflower

I borrowed this book from my Dad because I thought the topic of non-conformist churches and the lead up to the Mayflower voyage sounded fairly interesting, I read it because I wanted to clear my desk of borrowed books, I did not expect it to be a well told, action-packed rollercoaster. A book on church history thrilled me.

The tone is set by the first paragraph which introduces a Bishop being called to pay a fine “but everyone knew the truth: the Queen wanted him burned alive.” There then follows a description of Bishop Hooper’s imprisonment, torture and the an absolutely graphic extract from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs depicting his botched execution. (On a side-note, why isn’t there a proper edition of that book available?)

We move on to an explanation behind the Marian burnings of protestants as more than mad zeal. That religion, to a Tudor mind, was more than just a part of society, it was society itself and that it had to include everyone whether they wanted or not. It also shocked me by reminding me that Britain had been Catholic for over a thousand years and that protestantism was the foreign invader from Germany - a notion so obvious but so obliterated by growing up in a nominally protestant UK, that I was surprised.

The first few chapters of this book could be as easily in the action genre as the history, there are people escaping down the Thames and using their shoes as paddles. There was a man called John Bolton who was locked in prison with ‘a marvellous evil smell’ and where his captors sometimes threw in fireworks.There was also dreams and visions, one man called Symson who dreamt of a glowing man saying ‘ha’ at him ‘which he apparently found a great comfort’.

Come the reign of Elizabeth I and things should have improved for the protestants. However, they had been radicalised and greatly engaged by the experience of persecution and expected more reform from her than they got. The Act of Uniformity, which instituted a very mild form of protestantism, was expected to be a temporary measure. This is either because Elizabeth was expected to marry and power go to her husband, or because she wasn’t expected to rule without being deposed for very long. As it was, she ruled for over forty years and what was expected to be a placeholder reform, became the basis of the Church of England as it is now.

Those who had suffered under Mary’s persecution wanted a far more rigorous form of protestantism, and they wanted it to be enforced on the country. “As much as they accepted being tolerated for now, tolerance is not what they wanted.” The first fight was about vestments. These ‘Popish’ robes needed to go as they were un-Biblical, there were struggles between clergy who didn’t wear them and the authorities who required them.

Eventually, some of those who thought the CoE didn’t go far enough set up their own private congregations. I have to say I felt very sorry for Grindal, the Bishop of London, whose sympathies were with those who thought the church needed more vigour but was forced by his position to oppress those who refused to agree with the state church.

We are introduced to Cartwright, a Cambridge professor so engaging, they took the glass out of the windows when he was lecturing so more people outside could hear. He argued that people shouldn’t separate from the Church of England but that it needed reforming, especially the functions of Bishops, which aren’t mentioned in the Bible. setting up a presbytery instead.

We are also introduced to Browne, who argued that people couldn’t automatically belong to a church, but voluntarily signed up to a covenant and have the congregation rule itself as a body of believers, separate from the state. Many later separatists were known as Browneists. We also get the interesting titbit that Browne was from Rutland and his grandfather had been given a special dispensation to wear a hat in the presence of Henry VIII, though wasn’t told why. Browne later also tried to convince people to set up Stamford as a rival to Oxford, which never happened.. poor Stamford, always the bridesmaid. Browne as a whole seems impossible to work with, seeing himself as too holy to compromise with anyone else, this will prove an issue with subsequent churches.

It’s at this point the book becomes filled with so many different independent church leaders and congregations that the book is hard to summarise. Needless to say, it is all very well explained and coherent in the book.

Particular favourites included William Hackett, a man who bit off and ate up a schoolmaster’s nose in a fight, claimed he’d wrestled lions and won, said a Catholic set a witch on him, planned to overthrow everyone and become the King of Europe, and believed he was Christ - only to be arrested in Billingsgate, hanged, drawn and quartered.

I also enjoyed Martin Marprelate who jokingly wrote to ‘his Canterburiness’ and summarised a particularly turgid tome as light enough to transport ‘if you have a strong horse’. Martin Marprelated was of course refuted by Mar-Martin, who was in turn refuted by Mar-Mar-Martin.

There was also a man called Barrow who managed to write an enormous body of work illegally whilst in prison, including a who full-length book written in the margins of, and responding to, another book.

Oh.. and references to the Church of England’s torturers, now known as a praise band.

To escape increasing persecution, some separatists moved to Holland. The trouble is, separatists got to separate and from one church (which called itself the Ancient Church because it was twenty years old) there became five or six. On church became the Baptists, who split into four, one of which consisted of one member and another of which tried to join a group of Dutch anabaptists but weren’t let in.

In the end, it was the most welcoming of the churches, led by a man called Robinson, who decided to sailed on the Mayflower (thought Robinson didn’t go as he was too old to make the voyage). Unlike the myth I’ve heard from US media, it wasn’t that they were escaping persecution, as they weren’t being persecuted in Holland, indeed the Robinson congregation was growing in respect in Leyden. It was more the Biblical pull to create a promised land - and they royally screwed it up most steps along the way.

There was much wrangling to be allowed to go in the first place, almost destroyed by a man called William Brewster, who published anti-monarchist books in his small Dutch press. (Incidentally, he boarded the Mayflower with his wife and two of his sons called Love and Wrestling, I love Puritan names). Then they spent loads of money for two ships, the Mayflower and the Speedwell. The Speedwell was in such bad condition it almost sank, they had to return to London to fix it, then it almost sank again so they ditched it. The book ends with a group of people with no knowledge on how to run a colony getting lost and finding themselves on Plymouth Rock… the rest is history.

I really enjoyed The Journey to the Mayflower, it was exciting, funny, surprising and delighted me far more than a book about a bunch of argumentative god-botherers ought to.

[Adam Stevenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Journey to the Mayflower

I borrowed this book from my Dad because I thought the topic of non-conformist churches and the lead up to the Mayflower voyage sounded fairly interesting, I read it because I wanted to clear my desk of borrowed books, I did not expect it to be a well told, action-packed rollercoaster. A book on church history thrilled me.

The tone is set by the first paragraph which introduces a Bishop being called to pay a fine “but everyone knew the truth: the Queen wanted him burned alive.” There then follows a description of Bishop Hooper’s imprisonment, torture and the an absolutely graphic extract from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs depicting his botched execution. (On a side-note, why isn’t there a proper edition of that book available?)

We move on to an explanation behind the Marian burnings of protestants as more than mad zeal. That religion, to a Tudor mind, was more than just a part of society, it was society itself and that it had to include everyone whether they wanted or not. It also shocked me by reminding me that Britain had been Catholic for over a thousand years and that protestantism was the foreign invader from Germany - a notion so obvious but so obliterated by growing up in a nominally protestant UK, that I was surprised.

The first few chapters of this book could be as easily in the action genre as the history, there are people escaping down the Thames and using their shoes as paddles. There was a man called John Bolton who was locked in prison with ‘a marvellous evil smell’ and where his captors sometimes threw in fireworks.There was also dreams and visions, one man called Symson who dreamt of a glowing man saying ‘ha’ at him ‘which he apparently found a great comfort’.

Come the reign of Elizabeth I and things should have improved for the protestants. However, they had been radicalised and greatly engaged by the experience of persecution and expected more reform from her than they got. The Act of Uniformity, which instituted a very mild form of protestantism, was expected to be a temporary measure. This is either because Elizabeth was expected to marry and power go to her husband, or because she wasn’t expected to rule without being deposed for very long. As it was, she ruled for over forty years and what was expected to be a placeholder reform, became the basis of the Church of England as it is now.

Those who had suffered under Mary’s persecution wanted a far more rigorous form of protestantism, and they wanted it to be enforced on the country. “As much as they accepted being tolerated for now, tolerance is not what they wanted.” The first fight was about vestments. These ‘Popish’ robes needed to go as they were un-Biblical, there were struggles between clergy who didn’t wear them and the authorities who required them.

Eventually, some of those who thought the CoE didn’t go far enough set up their own private congregations. I have to say I felt very sorry for Grindal, the Bishop of London, whose sympathies were with those who thought the church needed more vigour but was forced by his position to oppress those who refused to agree with the state church.

We are introduced to Cartwright, a Cambridge professor so engaging, they took the glass out of the windows when he was lecturing so more people outside could hear. He argued that people shouldn’t separate from the Church of England but that it needed reforming, especially the functions of Bishops, which aren’t mentioned in the Bible. setting up a presbytery instead.

We are also introduced to Browne, who argued that people couldn’t automatically belong to a church, but voluntarily signed up to a covenant and have the congregation rule itself as a body of believers, separate from the state. Many later separatists were known as Browneists. We also get the interesting titbit that Browne was from Rutland and his grandfather had been given a special dispensation to wear a hat in the presence of Henry VIII, though wasn’t told why. Browne later also tried to convince people to set up Stamford as a rival to Oxford, which never happened.. poor Stamford, always the bridesmaid. Browne as a whole seems impossible to work with, seeing himself as too holy to compromise with anyone else, this will prove an issue with subsequent churches.

It’s at this point the book becomes filled with so many different independent church leaders and congregations that the book is hard to summarise. Needless to say, it is all very well explained and coherent in the book.

Particular favourites included William Hackett, a man who bit off and ate up a schoolmaster’s nose in a fight, claimed he’d wrestled lions and won, said a Catholic set a witch on him, planned to overthrow everyone and become the King of Europe, and believed he was Christ - only to be arrested in Billingsgate, hanged, drawn and quartered.

I also enjoyed Martin Marprelate who jokingly wrote to ‘his Canterburiness’ and summarised a particularly turgid tome as light enough to transport ‘if you have a strong horse’. Martin Marprelated was of course refuted by Mar-Martin, who was in turn refuted by Mar-Mar-Martin.

There was also a man called Barrow who managed to write an enormous body of work illegally whilst in prison, including a who full-length book written in the margins of, and responding to, another book.

Oh.. and references to the Church of England’s torturers, now known as a praise band.

To escape increasing persecution, some separatists moved to Holland. The trouble is, separatists got to separate and from one church (which called itself the Ancient Church because it was twenty years old) there became five or six. On church became the Baptists, who split into four, one of which consisted of one member and another of which tried to join a group of Dutch anabaptists but weren’t let in.

In the end, it was the most welcoming of the churches, led by a man called Robinson, who decided to sailed on the Mayflower (thought Robinson didn’t go as he was too old to make the voyage). Unlike the myth I’ve heard from US media, it wasn’t that they were escaping persecution, as they weren’t being persecuted in Holland, indeed the Robinson congregation was growing in respect in Leyden. It was more the Biblical pull to create a promised land - and they royally screwed it up most steps along the way.

There was much wrangling to be allowed to go in the first place, almost destroyed by a man called William Brewster, who published anti-monarchist books in his small Dutch press. (Incidentally, he boarded the Mayflower with his wife and two of his sons called Love and Wrestling, I love Puritan names). Then they spent loads of money for two ships, the Mayflower and the Speedwell. The Speedwell was in such bad condition it almost sank, they had to return to London to fix it, then it almost sank again so they ditched it. The book ends with a group of people with no knowledge on how to run a colony getting lost and finding themselves on Plymouth Rock… the rest is history.

I really enjoyed The Journey to the Mayflower, it was exciting, funny, surprising and delighted me far more than a book about a bunch of argumentative god-botherers ought to.

[Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit to being disappointed with the lack of detail about the Mayflower, which is what I wanted when I picked this up. There is very little about the Mayflower at the end of the story. As the title indicates, it is instead an in-depth review of the roughly 80 years history of church reformers in England and Europe and their persecutions, imprisonments and executions which led to the sailing of the Mayflower. Tomkin's work recounts the many reformers who risked everything to effect change in the Church of England or to create new religions. The detail was at times overwhelming for me, but the central theme and telling of the history of the English reformation held my attention and the detail provided new insights and knowledge. Those who appreciate religious freedom owe a great debt to the Puritans who came to the new world intent on pursuing that freedom.

[Donna Winters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Opening Chapter One in the year 1555, Tomkins details the various religious leaders and groups which disagreed with the Church of England, eventually leading to the Mayflower voyage in 1620. Be prepared for a plethora of individuals’ names and denominations, an assortment of conflicts over diverse doctrinal points, and the frequent jailing and deaths of English separatists and Puritans. Overall, this book taught me how great the religious differences were, how fervently they were espoused, and how unbending the monarchy was about proposals to reform the state church. No small wonder English congregants left for Leiden, and later for the New World. In their minds, they had no future for their brand of congregational religion unless they departed for uncolonized soil.

Overall, this book kept me reading to see who would go to jail next, which congregations would fold, and which would join together, often only to separate later. The writer is a master of this specific niche of British history and the divergent paths followed by religious leaders of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. I thank him for bringing a different voice and different kind of story to readers interested in this era of British history.

[Ryan Michaud · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not really a book about the Mayflower do don't let the title distract you. The Mayflower is covered in the end. Rather it starts with the persecution of Mary (Bloody Mary) and the conflict between the Catholics/Protestants of Mary trying to make England a Catholic state. Author then moves on to Elizabeth and the conflict between the Puritans and the state church of England, driving and leading many to the underground church. Author is painting a large historical back picture to what the times and setting were like for an English congregation in Scrooby to leave to Netherlands and then make the trek to the new world. The book is good but sometimes tedious and dry in the detail.

[Tim Gillett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Should the British state be involved at all with a person's religious beliefs? These days, although we have the Church of England and the Queen as the supposed defender of Anglican faith, there is no compunction on British subjects to believe, observe or follow the established Anglican Christian church.
Less than five hundred years ago, which is quite recent - in the time of our great, great, great, great, great grandparents - you could face imprisonment and death for publicly going against the official Anglican Christian practice as laid down by the English monarch. As ludicrous as this sounds, it is all the more tragic that thousands of Britons were executed, or I would suggest murdered, for defying the state line and instead following their God according to their own beliefs and wisdom drawn from the Bible.
The Journey Of The Mayflower catalogues in detail the names, chronology and fate of those English Christians who disagreed with the way they were told to believe and practise their religion. The dissenters who survived persecution and death, eventually left Britain, first for the European continent and then to America in the hope that there they could practise their own form of Christianity which they believed to be the purest form of following Christ.
Their differences would today be described as minor. For example, soon after Elizabeth I became Queen in 1558, she restored priestly robes and left it up to those receiving Holy Communion as to whether they were sharing the real body and blood of Christ or a symbol of him. This was too much for many protestants who wanted her to go further following the years of Catholic Mary I who had burned to death and executed thousands of subjects who'd refused to renounce Protestantism for her restoration of the Catholic faith.
These reforming protestants now wanted their new queen Elizabeth not only to get rid of priests' robes but also "saints' days, kneeling, the sign of the cross at baptism, confirmation." These Puritans, as they became known, believed that the essential core teaching of Christ had become adulterated by traditions that had been brought in and developed by the Catholic church. They insisted that only "biblical forms of worship" should be used in church which meant no organs, no singing, no exchanging rings in marriage ceremonies.
So begins a period in which, while Elizabeth I and her henchmen were concentrating on trying to find the remaining practising Catholics in Britain, locking them up and murdering them, groups of dissenting Protestants unhappy with her form of Protestantism, and for a time got away with practising their stripped back version of practising and celebrating Christianity.
However, as Stephen Tomkins relates in The Journey To The Mayflower, not only did they start to be singled out by Elizabeth and her bishops, but they often squabbled among themselves and differed in their own interpretations. That led to them splitting with each other and setting up new groups giving themselves new names.
They were led by charismatic individuals who didn't recognise the hierarchy of the church of England and therefore operated outside it. Take Cambridge university graduate and schoolteacher Robert Browne for example. A Christian who wanted to teach and preach religion but, because he would not accept bishops could not apply to become a priest, became a Christian preacher outside the church's authority. He argued that rather than the Queen or bishops telling people how to practise their Christianity in a national church structure, it was for Christian communities helped by their elders to decide. Stephen Tomkins writes that Browne argued that "true religion is an essentially personal and communal response to God and therefore voluntary, in which case forcing the unwilling to church fails to make them Christian, but makes the church unchristian."
He went further by saying that you could not count children of Christian believers and worshippers as Christians. Browne said that "if a voluntary commitment and free choice are essential to church membership, it is fair to conclude that children are not born into the church, but must make a decision to join it." Therefore babies and children should not be baptised. Browne's thinking caused ructions among some of his own supporters who said it was "tantamount to Anabaptism." Interestingly, such a thought that you can't decide whether you want to become a practising Christian until at least your teens, is commonplace among Britons in the twenty first century where great emphasis among the Christian churches is placed on Confirmation.
The likes of Browne led what became known as Separatism. Browne took his Separatist followers to the Netherlands as complaints by faithful protestant ministers were made to the bishops, but he would later return to England where he was imprisoned thirty two times, eventually dying in Northampton jail.
Those who supported and distributed Browne's and other Separatists' writings were hunted down by the Queen's men and murdered. They included John Copping and Elias Thacker who were hanged at the abbey gate in Bury St Edmunds as they insisted "the Queen had absolute authority in secular rule and none in religion."
Such killings described in The Journey To The Mayflower reinforces my already held belief that, without being unkind to the hundreds of thousands of good practising Anglicans and their deep Christian faith, it is incredible that anyone can follow and be proud of being part of the Church of England when it was set up by and came about mainly as a result of the whims of a murderer who couldn't get his own way - King Henry VIII. Furthermore, more murders of her subjects were committed by Elizabeth I? How can Henry have claimed, having put to death his own wives, or Elizabeth claimed to have been a defender of the faith, of Christian faith? It is a mockery of Christianity. Therefore surely the church of England is fundamentally flawed from that day forward. How can one respect a king or queen as their spiritual leader?
Similar arguments can be made against Catholic Mary I who murdered Protestant subjects. Such despicable behaviour was totally against the teaching of Christ. It's not hard to understand why anyone would continue to practise the Catholic faith with examples of Catholic leadership like that.
However I guess that today’s Anglicans and Catholics would argue that their belief and churches are a world away from the 15th and 16th centuries. I still find it bizarre though that a monarch can be the supreme governor of something spiritual as in the Church of England. I’ve never accepted that the anointing of a new King or Queen with holy oils gives the new monarch a divine right by God to reign of their subjects. I guess 400 or so years ago, I'd have been led off to the Tower, imprisoned and executed for such a public utterance.
Stephen Tomkins' book is very detailed, so much so that I needed to read some passages more than once and turn back pages to recap to fully understand where we were and who was so and so. There are so many names but he describes well the parts they played in the struggle for freedom of religious expression in 16th and 17th century England.
His research is profound. He tells us, for example - "between may 1589 and February 1590 the number of Separatists in London prisons doubled to fifty two." Ten Separatists had died in prison, a policy which Stephen Tomkins says the Queen's authorities were thinking was quite wise - "why risk martyring your enemies when you can let them die quietly in jail?"
I found myself supporting the Separatists against the Protestant Church. As Tomkins quotes Separatist writer and leader Henry Barrow who "nailed a fatal crack in the Protestant state church. The church of England was founded on the right to judge its mother church (the Catholic church), condemn its failings, and, if it would not rectify them, to separate." In so doing, "it unintentionally gave permission for its subjects to form their own separate churches." It is a point allied to the repeated argument in Tomkin’s book that you cannot force a state religion on the subjects. People must be free to interpret the Bible for themselves.
I learned from Tomkins' book that many Separatists fled to the Netherlands where they were able to practise and grow stronger communities.
I also learned that the Mayflower pilgrims were not the first posse of Christians to cross the Atlantic to start a life of religious freedom. There were expeditions in the early years of the 1600's. Ironically, Tomkins writes that the Mayflower Christians didn't sail to America to "escape persecution and worship freely." They'd been able to do that in the Netherlands. Rather, it was to try to rejuvenate their church by keeping the youngsters of families, working and supporting the families, rather than leaving home. That way they hoped that the young would build up the church. Many also lived in poverty in the Netherlands. They hoped the Promised Land would offer them new hope and new life, likening it to the Israelites escaping servitude in Egypt.
Stephen Tomkins has filled a void in my education. I wasn't taught in history or religious education at school how established religion changed and was largely inflicted on England. Nor was it an option in my degree, half of which was in Theology. I think it should be a compulsory school subject as what happened has had such an influence on our nation and its people. What the Separatists fought for, lost their lives for, emigrated for, has largely come about in England in the 21st century. There is a host of different Christian churches, some growing. But the two that tried to force themselves onto the nation's people - the Catholics and the Church of England - are, it seems in deep and dangerous decline. Perhaps if Robert Browne had been alive today, his campaigns and sermons and writings would have been aimed at grappling with the lethargy the English have towards Christianity. He would have been fully exorcised in trying to wake them from their apathetic stupor to try to save Christian belief and practice in England before its diminishing numbers of believers dies away.

[Shrike58 · Rating 3 out of 5]

As for why I picked up this book, it was mostly to get a better sense of why the folks who hit the beach at "Plymouth Rock" in 1620 left the Seven Provinces of the Netherlands, when I was always left with the impression that was a viable option. Such was not actually the case, but before one gets to that point the author takes you through the trauma of the reign of Mary Tudor, and how that went a long way towards aborting any relatively clean transition to a national protestant church in England, leaving opinion shattered, particularly since the Church of England was seen as backward on so many theological issues from the perspective of continental theological thought. At the very least the people who became the "Pilgrims" were left permanently allergic to any form of state church, and ultimately broke with predestination and infant baptism, on the way to becoming the denomination that we recognize as Baptist. While I certainly credit the author as knowing his history, he does spend a lot of time in the weeds before he meanders to his destination; even Tomkins seems to weary of people who seemed deeply attracted to the "narcissism of small differences."

[Sami · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tomkins' has written an impressive history here, with in-depth researching revealing the long, multinational story leading up to the departure of the Mayflower to the 13 colonies on this side of the Atlantic in 1620. However, I found the first 100 or so pages of the book to be incredibly dense and difficult to get through, and though Tomkins insisted that the story of the Mayflower actually began about a century before it actually set sail, I'm not sure all the familial drama among Mary, Elizabeth, and their ancestors needed to be described in such detail. I would have preferred a quick summary that would have enabled me to enjoy the history without getting lost in the many, many names of those involved in the Catholic and Anglican churches and the Protestant underground. It is disappointing that so few days after reading the book, I only remember a few of the key characters involved, and I think that the book just overwhelmed me with information. Nonetheless, it was interesting to explore a history that I knew nothing about, and Tomkins was certainly an expert worth learning from.

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don’t let the title fool you, the Mayflower, and the establishment of colonies in America, only features in the final pages. This is a history of Puritan and Protestant thought in England from the reign of Mary to the voyage of the Mayflower. It is thoroughly fascinating and taught me many new things about various branches of Protestantism that I did not know despite spending the first 23 years of my life attending a Presbyterian church. I would have rated the book a five if it were not for the stretches in it where the minutiae of Puritan thought became hard to follow and where the shifting allegiances of the major players made it hard to remember who was arguing with whom.

[Stacy Moll · Rating 5 out of 5]

My quest to read books about historical events from a different point of view continued with, The Journey to the Mayflower by Stephen Tomkins. It is interesting to learn what the other side in an event thought about that event. We were always taught the the people on the Mayflower, came to America to escape persecution and for religious freedom. This book points out that this is the reason they left England, but they found welcome in the Netherlands and did not need to leave. The members behind the push to go to America believed that they were the modern day Israelites, driven from their home, England, in the wilderness, Netherlands, and on their way to the promised land, America.

[Anne Walters custer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the religious climate that produced the pilgrims. This book was full of fascinating details that made me appreciate the period, including the dangers faced by the Puritans and the theological debates of the day. It unfortunately got bogged down at points and I often found it difficult to keep all the players straight. This book would have benefited from a list of characters to reference while reading when I lost track of who was who or who held which belief when. A timeline would also be beneficial. Recommend for those interested in church history.

[Stuart B. Jennings · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that shatters the myth of a gentle Anglicanism as implied in Eddie Izzard’s ‘death or cake’ joke.
Men and women discovered a conscience about what they felt was right and wrong in church structures and worship and what they should opt out of or into. Many paid a terrible price for their stance
The latter part of the book goes on depict the bickering and falling out between the separatists themselves, who on occasions proved to be as intolerant of each other as the state church was of them

A well researched and clearly written narrative that brings the period to life

[Philip William · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well researched book covering the puritan movement in England from the reign of 'Bloody Mary' to 1620.

The book describes how the Church of England tries to suppress the puritan movement by imprisonment, banishment and similar but is very unwilling to martyr anyone as they are heavily influenced by Foxes 'Book of Martyrs' and see puritans as more patriotic than Roman Catholics.

The puritans move between London, prison, East Anglia, Scotland and Holland but these are the wilderness years and they only go to the promised land with the Mayflower.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the book I thought it was going to be, but my mistake. I was looking for a book that would be more evenly split between Europe and America. This one is 98% Europe focused. Way too much detail of the story of the Separatists for my interest, but nonetheless I learned a lot about the Reformation, the nuances of the different ecclesiastical schools of thoughts and the imposed role of religion in ruling the lives of civilians in late 16th Century Britain.

[Joshua Horn]

This book chronicles the early separatists who sought to break away from the Church of England in all their successes, failure and foibles. It's well written, though it deals with many different characters so I'd imagine it would be easy to loose sight of the broader picture if you're not familiar with the story.

It is a valuable resource, and, to my knowledge, seems to be quite well researched.

[Bill Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is exceedingly tedious to read, with details after details of the tribulations suffered by those who dissented from the established church in England. The most useful lesson to learn from the book is that religious fanaticism is and always has been disastrous for the individual as well as for society in general.

[Carolyn Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Packed with historical information about separatists and those who separated from separatists and those who separated from . . . well, you get the drift. For me it proved, once again, that religion can be more divisive than inclusive, and those who break from an intolerant system my not go on to promote tolerance when they set up their own system.

[isabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

was it rly that deep

[Valerie Connor-Thresher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and educational read about church history and the events leading up to their departure on the mayflower

[Serge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using this book when we return for AP US History to trace he roots of religious dissent in American political thought

[Ryan Nirula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, reads like a novel.

[Matthew Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent account of English separatism narratively driven toward the Mayflower expedition.