Who would have known that Religion would become so confusing after England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church and created a new church called the Church of England?  I joined a group of travelers and we were on a journey to find a holy place where we could experience solace in our lives.  We felt that something needed to change, King James I needed to come down off his throne and leave us all alone.  We called ourselves pilgrims because we are the true Christians, and we are determined to purify the Christian church and return to a scripture-based service.  We immigrated to Holland to escape persecution but we feared the loss of our English heritage while living in this foreign country, so we purchased a charter to establish a colony in the New World that would enable us to set up our own society where we could be free to worship as we pleased.

Our intent was to establish a farming village in the northern part of the Virginia Colony at the mouth of the Hudson River near the Big Apple.  We would live under the English government, but we would worship in our own, separate church.  Our group originally started out on two different ships, the Mayflower and the Speedwell, but the Speedwell began to leak almost immediately after we left port, so both ships headed back to where we started.  We managed to squeeze everyone and all of our belongings onto the Mayflower and then we set sail once again.

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