Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home - Softcover

"'Susan Hardman Moore's account of the migration from Old to New England avoids the mistake of reading backwards a narrative of American exceptionalism, setting these events firmly in the circumstances - above all religious circumstanes - of England in the 1630s.' Patrick Collinson, Trinity College Cambridge, author of The Reformation 'Hardman Moore has written a thrilling book: thrilling in its sweep, in its detail, in its story of those who for whatever reason were unable to settle in a New World. Why they went, why they came back, what they took, and what they returned with, are all illuminated as never before.' Jon Morrill, University of Cambridge 'A thrilling study... superb, highly original, written with great clarity and humanity, concerned with often obscure lives.' Paul Lay, History Today"

This book uncovers what might seem to be a dark side of the American dream: the New World from the viewpoint of those who decided not to stay. At the core of the volume are the life histories of people who left New England during the British Civil Wars and Interregnum, 1640-1660. More than a third of the ministers who had stirred up emigration from England deserted their flocks to return home. The colonists' stories challenge our perceptions of early settlement and the religious ideal of New England as a "City on a Hill." America was a stage in their journey, not an end in itself. Susan Hardman Moore first explores the motives for migration to New England in the 1630s and the rhetoric that surrounded it. Then, drawing on extensive original research into the lives of hundreds of migrants, she outlines the complex reasons that spurred many to brave the Atlantic again, homeward bound. Her book ends with the fortunes of colonists back home and looks at the impact of their American experience. Of exceptional value to studies of the connections between the Old and New Worlds, Pilgrims contributes to debates about the nature of the New England experiment and its significance for the tumults of revolutionary England.