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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Pilgrim Fathers
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The name first given in the 19C to the first shipload of English settlers in Massachusetts, known until then as the Old Comers or Forefathers, and nowadays often called in the USA simply the Pilgrims. Of the 102 in the party, 35 were Puritans who had sailed from *Boston in Lincolnshire in 1608 to establish their own church at Leiden, in the more tolerant Protestant Netherlands. In 1620 they decided to move to the New World and hired an English vessel, the Mayflower. They and the other settlers sailed from Plymouth on September 16 and landed on December 26 at a place to which they gave the same name, Plymouth.
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