Norfolk and the Pilgrim Fathers (May, 1919 and September, 1920)

Norwich’s celebrations were talked of at least a year in advance of the tercentenary. The previous May, the Norfolk Protestant Dissenters’ Benevolent Society met for its 120^th annual meeting, during which the various members discussed the desirability of holding a tercentenary celebration in 1920. The ubiquitous James Rendel Harris (1852-1941), energetic advocate of the Mayflower in Britain, along with Rev. Melbourn Evans Aubrey (1885-1957), Baptist minister and honorary secretary of the Mayflower Council, pushed the local attendees to organise something special in Norwich. Aubrey argued that while the Midlands area was the home of many of the most well-known Pilgrims, John Robinson, the highly influential pastor to the Separatists who died in Leiden before he could follow his brethren to America, had done much of his best work in Norfolk. James Rendel Harris also spoke and suggested that the Norwich celebration should indeed bring together the religious and the political parts of the community. On the civic side of matters, the Lord Mayor of Norwich had expressed a desire to found a branch of the Anglo-American Society, and was in principle very keen to be involved in tercentenary proceedings.

The accompanying photo is of a press cutting (sadly without its original attribution) from the archive of James Rendel Harris at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre. It shows members and attendees of the Norfolk Protestant Dissenters’ Benevolent Society, with the headline drawing attention to the tercentenary discussions. James Rendel Harris is the impressively bearded figure pictured second from left in the front row. M.E. Aubrey is third from right.

So in September 1920, the Mayor of Norwich presided over a public luncheon held to celebrate the Mayflower Tercentenary. The focus was both civic and ecclesiastical, and the celebration was meant to in recognition of the city and the surrounding county, both of which were represented. Dr Newton Marshall Hall of Springfield, Massachusetts was also in attendance. Lord Charnwood (1864-1945), Liberal politician and biographer of Abraham Lincoln, proposed a toast to the Mayflower, but used the opportunity to pay homage to England, which possessed “a tradition of liberty and simple manly and womanly piety”. This tradition, he claimed, had developed out of that long-standing rivalry between two broad “types”: the Puritan and the Cavalier. But in their own time, they could acknowledge that neither side was wholly in the right or in the wrong.  Instead the two led to the same “high view”, a bend of piety and patriotism. This high view of life was shared by America, which had, Charnwood suggested, developed in parallel and from the same root.

Daily Telegraph, “Celebrations at Norwich”, 18 September 1920.

James Rendel Harris Archive, Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, Selly Oak.

E.A. Payne, rev., "Aubrey, Melbourn Evans (1885-1957)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

H. Sumner, rev. M. Brodie, "Benson, Godfrey Rathbone, first Baron Charnwood (1864-1945)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.