America not such a dream for all British pilgrims

LONDON - The American Dream was fading almost before it began, says a study which shows a quarter of all pilgrims gave up on the New World to return to Britain.

The harsh realities of life in 17th-century Massachusetts, where disease was rife, the climate unforgiving and the economy stagnant for long periods, forced thousands to make the treacherous three-month voyage back within a few years of arriving.

Susan Hardman Moore, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Divinity, has researched the immigration records of people who fled religious persecution before the English Civil War, as well as their wills, diaries and letters.

Her book, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, estimates that up to 20,000 people set sail across the Atlantic during the 1630s and 1640s as the country was torn apart by political and religious differences under Charles I.

Those who remained in America set about building a powerful national story which fuelled notions of manifest destiny, but the vast numbers who quit have long been underplayed by historians.

Among those to sail back to Britain were significant sections of the colony's elite, including a third of religious ministers and half of the graduates from the newly established Harvard University.

It was not just conditions in their adopted home that fuelled the return exodus, says Hardman Moore. The execution of the fiercely anti-Puritan Archbishop Laud signalled a sea change in religious attitudes in the home country, and Oliver Cromwell's new regime offered openings for adventurers, particularly those ideologically committed to the Puritan cause.

Their presence helped reinforce garrisons of Cromwell's forces from Cornwall to Scotland at a time when English Presbyterians were less than keen to engage in the brutal business of suppression.

- INDEPENDENT