11 January 2009
The Puritans who came to America on the Mayflower were members of a Separatist congregation that was formed in 1606 in the hamlet of Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, England. (An interesting side note: one of my online printmaker friends from Baren Forum, Harry French, lives very near this place and has exhibited his work in Gainsborough Hall where the Mayflower Pilgrims sometimes worshiped.) The Separatists were Puritans, who believed that the Church of England needed to be reformed, but they were extreme Puritans who chose to remove themselves completely from the the Church of England and form their own congregations. The Separatists were a very tightly knit group, both because of the intensity of their beliefs and their ideal of Christian fellowship and because of the fact that their worship was illegal and had to be done in secret. When they moved to Holland in 1608 to escape persecution by James I, they became even more tightly bonded in their exile. I wonder, if the Separatists existed in this day and age might we label them "cultish"?
At any rate, they were a tight community, and this next print I'm working on features a tight little clump of Puritans. Pictured above is a closeup of a portion of the first impression, a wash of burnt umber.