“...then Cromwell had to run them [the Puritans] out of England; and then they went over to Holland, and the Dutch let them alone, but would not let them persecute anybody else; and then they got on that ill-fated ship called the Mayflower and landed on Plymouth Rock.”
That is the most ignorant thing I have seen in quite a while. And that son of a bitch was a Senator?
First off, King James was on the throne when the Puritans landed-the Mayflower compact came into being under him.
Second, Oliver Cromwell wasnt even a thought at that time. Matter of fact, Cromwell, during the reign of Charles the First, had made plans to come to America to escape persecution. Oliver Cromwell was a Puritan.
Third, the Puritan persecutions against other religions did not happen till long after the establishment of the colony and into the 1640s, most likely the early 1650s.
Why they did that is..my guess, is they feared history repeating again. But never the less, they did that and the rest his history-not the history some dumb ass ignorant Senator from that state claimed back then.
Of course it is twisted, colorful version of history. Wigfall was great with stories. He was no “dumb ass ignorant Senator.” He was an aide-de-camp to General Beauregard at the battle of Fort Sumter. Wigfall, at his own initiative, took a boat over to Fort Sumter while the battle was going on in April 1861 and got Major Anderson to surrender the fort before anyone in the fort got seriously hurt.
I know about Oliver Cromwell too. He was sort of a relative of mine by marriage. He was the father-in-law of one of my gr-gr-gr-etc. uncles, a Claypool or Claypoole. I have seen the stone of Cromwell’s daughter’s (my gr-gr-gr-etc. aunt) in the floor of Westminster Cathedral. Oliver Cromwell was buried in Westminster Abbey, but was later dug up on orders from a later Parliament.
My Claypoole ancestor, James, the brother-in law to Cromwell’s daughter, moved to Pennsylvania. I once went looking for his grave in Philadelphia. I thought he might have a substantial tombstone because he was on the council that governed Pennsylvania, but he was a Quaker, like his friend William Penn. All the Quaker tombstones I found were essentially identical except for the deceased’s name. I never found his grave. I think the actual graveyard where he was buried was near the old graveyard I found, but the one where he was buried no longer existed.
James Claypoole had the unusual history of participating in a witch trial. He served as a translator for the witch in Pennsylvania’s lone witch trial. William Penn had asked my ancestor to participate in the trial. I think Penn wanted the accused witch to be found not guilty, which was what the jury found.
I have a modern copy of “James Claypoole’s Letter Book, 1681-1684” from which some of this information comes.