# Catholics on the "Mayflower" ca 1620 **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 17, 2009, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-on-the-mayflower-ca-1620/486265 "2009-02-17T14:57:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-on-the-mayflower-ca-1620/486265/1 "2009-02-17T14:57:21Z")
Years ago, i read somethaing about several servants (of the richer puritans on board the MAYFLOWER) being closet catholics. There was also speculation that captain Christopher Jones may have been a catholic as well 9although he surely would have kept it a secret). Anyway, what would a Catholic’s position been in the Plymouth colony-was he or she considered a devil 9or worse)? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-on-the-mayflower-ca-1620/486265/2 "2009-02-17T17:05:39Z")
Your question gave me an opportunity to flip through the CD-ROM I got from Plymouth Plantation, filled with period documents. Infortunately, a quick scan doesn’t come up with much. I did find this analysis of the situation. It’s a Catholic site, but I don’t think they’re prejudiced, just more aware of Pilgrim attitudes towards Catholics (Bolding mine): > [@](#): > > The religious conditions were no less ominous for the Pilgrims. At the opening of the sixteenth century, all Christian Europe, with slight exceptions, was Catholic and loyal to the papacy; at the close of that century England herself was the mother of three antipapacy sects: the State Church and its two divisions; the Nonconformists, or Puritans; and the Separatists, or Pilgrims. At the time of the sailing of the “Mayflower”, the Puritans had become as fully disenfranchised by the Anglican Church as the Pilgrims had estranged themselves from both; each distrusted the others; **all three hated the Church of Rome**. Gorges and his associated had found the French and their Jesuit missionaries a stumbling-block in the way of securing fur-trading privileges from the Indians. The alleged gold and copper mines of Smith and of Gosnold were now regarded as myths; unless something could be done at once, the opportunities offered by their charter monopoly would be worthless. A permanent English settlement in America was the only sure way of preventing the French and the Dutch from acquiring the Virginia territory. The Gorges company knew of the cherished hopes of the Pilgrims to find a home away from their English persecutors, and, after much chicanery on the part of the promoters, the company agreed to found a home for the Pilgrims in the new world. The articles of agreement were wholly commercial, and the “Mayflower” sailed for Virginia. History differs in its interpretation of the end of that voyage, but all agree that the Pilgrims, in landing at Plymouth, 22 December, 1620, were outside any jurisdiction of their patrons, the Virginia Company. The Pilgrims themselves recognized their difficulty, and the famous “Compact” was adopted, before landing, as a basis of government by mutual agreement. Gorges protected his company’s investment by obtaining from James I the new charter of 1620 which controlled, on a commercial basis, all religious colonization in America. The struggle of race against, race, tribe against tribe, neighbour against neighbour were all encouraged so long as the warfare brought gain to the mercenary adventurers at home. **The Pilgrims, finding themselves deserted by the instigators of this ill-feeling, were forced by the law of self-preservation to continue religious intolerance and the extermination of the Indians**. Thus it is that we find the laws the customs and the manners of these first English settlers so interwoven with the religio-commercial principle. The coming of the Puritans, in 1629-30, added the factor of politics, which resulted in establishing in America the very thing against which these “Purists” had fought at home, namely, the union of Church and State. Here, again, at Puritan Salem, Gorges and Mason cloaked their commercialism under religion, as the accounts of La Tour and Winslow attest, and so effective were their machinations that, as early as 1635, Endicott’s zeal had not left a set of the king’s colours intact with the red cross thereon – that relic of popery insufferable in a Puritan community. > **[CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Massachusetts](https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10024c.htm)** > > One of the thirteen original United States of America. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts covers part of the territory originally granted to the Plymouth Company of England ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-on-the-mayflower-ca-1620/486265/3 "2009-02-17T17:54:00Z")
Aside from Thomas Harrington’s overstatement that the Pilgrims engaged in “extermination” against the Indians, that article seems pretty accurate and I have never encountered any claim that any Catholic passenger was aboard the Mayflower. (While there were some confrontations between the immigrants and local peoples during the first winter, before they debarked from the Mayflower, once they had landed and Samoset and Squanto had befriended them, they arranged a truce with Massasoit. William Bradford then enforced good behavior by the Pilgrims toward the Indians until his death in 1657, by which time Massachusetts was well overrun by the later arriving Puritans who had no such scruples against inter-ethnic warfare.) ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-on-the-mayflower-ca-1620/486265/4 "2009-02-17T18:13:18Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > William Bradford then enforced good behavior by the Pilgrims toward the Indians until his death in 1657, by which time Massachusetts was well overrun by the later arriving Puritans who had no such scruples against inter-ethnic warfare.) You’re forgetting the Pequot War, which was largely a war of extermination against the Pequot, and which the Plymouth colony participated with gusto, and which was during Bradford’s lifetime. It’s true that the relationship between Plymouth and the Indians was generally good, but I think the person to credit for the good relationship isn’t Bradford so much as Massasoit (and it was with his death relationships started to worsen, with the arrest (and probably murder) of Wamsutta) and King Phillip’s War. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-on-the-mayflower-ca-1620/486265/5 "2009-02-17T19:54:09Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > You’re forgetting the Pequot War, Not really. That war (or something like it) would have probably occurred even if no Europeans had hit New England for another century, as the Pequot, pushed East by the Mohegans, invaded Narragansett lands. Firearms and armor gave the whites an advantage in controlling the war, (which the Bay Colonists embraced, heartily), but it was not really a matter of simply wandering out to exterminate Indians (which is more closely exemplified by the King Phillip’s War that followed). Further, while folks from Plymouth joined in the war once it was open, the official position of the Plymouth Colony was originally that the Bay Colony had started the mess single-handedly and it could very well finish it the same way. At the end of the war, Bradford opposed extermination and favored sending the defeated but uncaptured Pequots to live among other indians. (Those captured were enslaved, following the customs of the times.) ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-on-the-mayflower-ca-1620/486265/6 "2009-02-17T23:35:04Z")
I don’t know that I entirely agree with your conclusion. That’s probably a matter for another thread. I do agree that the war was less on the part of Plymouth, and more on the part of the Bay Colony (and even more on the part of Connecticut…the massacre of the Pequot at Mystic was pretty much entirely by the Connecticut millitia and the Narragansett. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-on-the-mayflower-ca-1620/486265/7 "2009-02-17T23:47:11Z")
Never mind ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-on-the-mayflower-ca-1620/486265/8 "2009-02-18T01:28:07Z")
I think that the great Puritan migration and the Mayflower are less related than most think. The Mayflower held pilgrims and others. The Puritans started coming here in force in about 1631. The ship Arbella is generally credited with delivering the first load (and others too, I think). IIRC it was the start of the English Civil War that made life for Protestant groups less appealing in England, and when it ended, the Puritans slowed down, and others (often the “second sons” of southwestern England) started pouring in to Virginia instead. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2009, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-on-the-mayflower-ca-1620/486265/9 "2009-02-20T11:24:49Z")
It has been suggested that Myles Standish was a Catholic! Consider [this website](http://mylesstandish.info/ALEXANDER%20STANDISH%20Esquire%20Lord%20of%20the%20Manor%20of%20Duxbury%201587%20-%201620.htm#a12), which tries to argue that Standish was related to the Lancashire Standishes, a family which did have some interesting Catholic connections in that period. Not that I’m suggesting that any of this should be taken seriously - the heady mix of the Pilgrim Fathers and Shakespeare-in-Lancashire has all the obvious signs of bonkers, over-researched amateur history. But it does contain this tantalising detail. > [@](#): > > \*Two other more recent names that kept cropping up during reading about the Pilgrim Fathers were Alexander B. Gros(s)art, Vicar in Blackburn, and W. A. Abram, another eminent citizen and historian in Blackburn, who together published so many articles and books about Blackburn, Preston, the Pilgrim Fathers and many other places and people. They were both living in Blackburn in the mid-late 19th century, seeing the results of the Industrial Revolution all around them, and both realised that historical details were in desperate need to be recorded before any more relevant documents disappeared. Grosart dedicated his research efforts to publishing many texts of poets and others in the Renaissance period, which is why he appears in so many references in the DNB . We can probably thank him as the first person in England who realised that Myles Standish was somehow involved in many important stories. He started to collect all books recently published in New England about the Pilgrim Fathers, and these were placed at the disposal of Abram. Abram subsequently went on to transcribe and publish all documents relating to Lancashire history that he found. Some appeared as articles in the local press, but his main research relevant to A.S. was published in two volumes, The History of Blackburn and The Preston Guild Rolls . > > While reading through the Pilgrim Fathers Collection in Chorley Library, **I was extremely surprised to read the suggestion that Captain Myles Standish might have been a Catholic**. This, of course, had later resonances in all the suggestions that William Shakespeare might have been a Catholic. It seemed rather amazing (to me and not a few others) that anyone interested in Myles Standish might have even dreamt that he might have been a Catholic, given his documented history in New England . On the other hand, the history of Lancashire at this time was one of Catholicism, recusancy, Catholic plots in rural areas on the one hand, and the rise of Puritanism in some towns on the other hand, which were all mixed up together in the English Civil Wars (1642-51) with cousins fighting on opposing sides. > \* > [emphasis added] (The standard view, incidentally, is that Standish’s family probably did originally come from Lancashire, but that by the seventeenth century any kinship ties he may have had with that county would have been rather distant.)