ABSTRACT
A brief account of the events given in A Relation or Journal of …. the English Plantation at Plimouth, are known as Mourt’s Relation. Mourt’s Relation gives a very different idea of the early American Puritans from the personal traits with which they are commonly invested. It is a childlike account — or what one feels children would write if only they could write well — innocent and full of respectful, yet unfeigned delight in the unfamiliar. Robert Cushman’s ‘Reasons and Considerations’ advances the subtlest reason for emigration to America of all the arguments in the various exploration narratives — and for Puritans surely the most powerful — that truly serious, mature people have no need of a metropolitan centre. The message was a hard one: to leave friends, perhaps the family, land, occupation or profession, and all the architectural and institutional props of a settled community.
