Mayflower Celebration, Abbey Hill Church, Kenilworth (October 1920)

Kenilworth was one of the great many towns that celebrated the Mayflower tercentenary in 1920 by holding a lecture. A lecture hardly seems like a celebratory event, but in fact a lecture on the story of the Pilgrim Fathers and their journey on the Mayflower to the shores of the New World was a real draw for audiences, particularly religious ones. Moreover, the audience could look forward to the skilful singing of local performers, who usually took part in proceedings. Thus the lecture at the Abbey Hill Congregational Church in Kenilworth was well-attended. Rev. J.B. Harsum Taylor gave the lecture, which took in the usual highlights of the Mayflower story, with special attention given to the strong connection between the village of Scrooby and the pilgrims. The lecturer described Scrooby as being in Yorkshire, though it is in fact in North Nottinghamshire – and less than one hundred miles from Kenilworth. Taylor’s appellation likely arose from the fact that, in the early seventeenth century, Scrooby Manor House still belonged to the Archbishop of York, and it sat on the border between Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Yorkshire.

Otherwise the lecture was highly learned and illuminating. It touched on the social and political context of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, while also giving an unusually nuanced portrayal of religion in the period. Taylor distinguished between Puritans, who did not envision splitting from the Church of England, and the Separatists, whose piety demanded that they found a new church. But even the Separatists could be patriots: the lecturer suggested that the Pilgrim Fathers wished to avoid being absorbed as Dutchmen and so, because returning to England was also not an option, they sought to found a new church in America, where they could remain English, yet practice their religion freely. This notion of the pilgrims as English patriots fit neatly into the increasingly prominent notion that the American republic was the fruition of English traditions of liberty.