Before sailing to the New World to establish their colony at Plymouth, the Pilgrims left England to find religious freedom in

The Separatists settled in the Netherlands, first in Amsterdam and later in the town of Leiden, where they remained for the next decade under the relatively lenient Dutch laws. Some 100 people, many of them seeking religious freedom in the New World, set sail from England on the Mayflower in September 1620.

The group that set out from Plymouth, in southwestern England, in September 1620 included 35 members of a radical Puritan faction known as the English Separatist Church.