<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> The Pilgrims or Pilgrim Fathers were early European settlers of the Plymouth Colony in present - day Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States . The Pilgrims' leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownist separatist Puritans who had fled the volatile political environment in England for the relative calm and tolerance of 17th - century Holland in the Netherlands . They held Puritan Calvinist religious beliefs but, unlike other Puritans, they maintained that their congregations needed to be separated from the English state church . They were also concerned that they might lose their English cultural identity if they remained in the Netherlands, so they arranged with English investors to establish a new colony in North America . The colony was established in 1621 and became the second successful English settlement in North America (after the founding of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607). The Pilgrims' story became a central theme of the history and culture of the United States . </P> <P> The core of the group that came to be known as the Pilgrims were brought together between 1586 and 1605 by shared theological beliefs, as expressed by Richard Clyfton, a Brownist parson at All Saints' Parish Church in Babworth, near East Retford, Nottinghamshire . This congregation held Puritan beliefs comparable to other non-conforming movements (i.e., groups not in communion with the Church of England) led by Robert Browne, John Greenwood, and Henry Barrowe . As Separatists, they also held that their differences with the Church of England were irreconcilable and that their worship should be independent of the trappings, traditions, and organization of a central church--unlike those Puritans who maintained their membership in and allegiance to the Church of England . </P>

The colony settled by the pilgrims in the americas was