Strangers and Pilgrims, Travellers and Sojourners

Bangs is the dean of Pilgrim history. Strangers and Pilgrims is a hard-to-find book these days, but if you want to go far deeper than most portraits of the Pilgrims do, it’s worth the search. Bangs focuses on the experience of the separatist Pilgrims in the Dutch city of Leiden (many of the Pilgrims went there around 1608, before traveling on the Mayflower in 1620) and shows how those years in the Dutch Republic shaped what followed. This is a richly illustrated, carefully researched, and cogent analysis of English separatists who made new lives for themselves in a strange land… show more.

This is good, straight historical 'coffee' without the sugar of romance or the milk of hero worship. It tells the unvarnished story of the various groups who migrated to the Netherlands in the first years of the 17th century, their relations with each other, and with their Dutch hosts. It is based on excellent historical research and locates the settlers firmly within the troubled political and religious context of their time. Through Bangs' analysis and his meticulous use of contemporary documents the reader will gain a clearer impression of these restless separatists 'warts an' all'. It must be the starting… show more.