Hello and welcome to a history of the United States. Episode 19, The Pilgrim Fathers.

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could please complete that. Special thanks to our newest pioneer, listener Gabriel. Thank you. I

couldn't do the show without you. Last time out, we followed the Reformation as it swept across

Europe into Lancashire and how a small group of separatist

Puritans were forced to flee abroad to the Netherlands, where they settled in Leiden, about 25 miles south

of Amsterdam. They would spend the next decade there. It would not be particularly happy, though.

The Dutch were Calvinists like them,

but it must be remembered that so was the king back in England, who had forced them to flee.

While I stressed last time out that most Puritans were not as cold as they are portrayed in pop culture,

these separatists were the extreme. They found the Dutch too happy.

They didn't keep the same gloomy Sunday of self-reflection as they did. They were also worried

about spending too much time there. In case the children became too batavianised. Plus,

Leyden was an urban centre and the separatists had come from small villages in eastern England.

There was also the threat of war. There was an uneasy truce in the Netherlands between the

Dutch and the Spanish, and there was no idea when the conflict would flare up again.

It could be any year.

When telling this chapter of the American story, we are very lucky to have William Bradford's of Plymouth Plantation,

a history of the early years of the colony written by one of its governors.

Bradford stresses the rationality of their unhappiness. It was, and I quote,

...