A very long time ago, in the year 1620, in a land far away, a daring group of worshippers decided that they were better off risking their lives, along with the lives of their entire families, to sail over 3000 miles away from their home. Their destination was a land that in all likelihood would kill them in the first year, even if they managed to survive the journey across the sea. The question is…Why?

The theory presented here is the opinion of the author, but is based on many inconsistencies and logical extrapolations of known information about the Pilgrims and the events surrounding their voyage to America. It remains yet to be determined if this attempt to read between the lines of history is accurate or not, but the possibility that the story could be true on some level begins to fill in some of the missing information about the Holy Grail and how it might have found its way to the current resting place.

In very short order, it will be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that King James I of England was in possession of an unbelievable secret. It will be shown that he encoded the secrets of The Holy Grail into the 1611 Bible that bears his name. For now, imagine that you are King James and you have either grown up knowing about the Grail, or the secret was given to you at some point in your life for safekeeping by some unknown individual or organization. You know that the treasure is hidden somewhere in North America and you also know that the colonists in the new world are getting closer and closer to the resting place of this sacred treasure. You must protect it at all costs, but as King, you cannot undertake the voyage yourself. You have very few options available to you that will ensure the safety of The Holy Grail. What do you do?

The biggest problem you have is answering one simple question. Who do you trust? Shortly after publishing the 1611 King James Bible, which contains information about the future location of the treasure, you realize that you need to entrust the secret to someone so that they can go and protect the treasure, but who do you trust? You could not trust such an immense wealth of gold, artifacts, and knowledge to businessmen, explorers, the military, the church, or even your own inner court. You could not be certain that any of these groups would protect the treasure and not take it for themselves. To protect the secrets of God, you would need a God fearing group of people who do not want or need earthly wealth. You need someone who could appear to be undertaking the voyage of his or her own desires. To maintain the secrecy, you would have to work with a group of people who were supposed to hate and fear you so that there would be no suspicion about the true nature of the voyage. The only people you could trust to do the work of God and protect the most important treasures of Christianity were the Separatist Puritans. This group of people had already demonstrated their intense dedication to God by leaving England to get away from you. So, as King, who do you trust? A friend or business associate that could stab you in the back and take the treasure for themselves, or do you trust an enemy, who despises earthly trappings and wants only to worship God?

Ultimately the Pilgrims, as they would come to be known, embarked on a voyage with the blessing of King James, the very same person who had imprisoned many of their congregation on more than one occasion. Why would King James not only support the objectives of this group, but also grant them title to land in the new world?

Their objective, we are taught, was to worship God the way they wanted, free from the power and control of the Church of England and King James. In school, history classes teach that they left England to come to the new world in search of religious freedom. There is one big problem with this oversimplified version of the story. The Pilgrims, who were essentially Separatist Puritans, had already left England in 1607 and were living in Leiden, Holland. They were already free, to a certain extent, to worship their own way, so why did they need to leave? There are many valid reasons for wanting to leave, but were any of these reasons sufficient to explain why they would so freely risk their lives? Some accounts say that they had a difficult time finding work in Holland and that the work they did find was too hard. Others say that they did not like the influence of the Holland culture on their children. As compelling as these reasons may be, were any of them worth risking their lives and the lives of their families?

The Pilgrims were not the first colonists in the new world. Sir Walter Raleigh started the first English colony on Roanoke Island in 1585. By the year 1587, this colony had vanished. Jamestown, founded in 1607, was the first successful English colony in North America. There were over 500 colonists, but only about 61 were still alive in 1610.

The Pilgrims were fully aware of the harsh conditions they would encounter and the very high death rates of previous colonists in North America. They were free to worship in Holland, but they had to work long hours in the crowded city of Leiden. The Pilgrims did not like the city life and did not like the influence it had on their children. Even so, was this enough to motivate them to take their families half way around the world, in the middle of winter, to a land that meant almost certain death? If they did not like working hard in the city, how could they possibly have thought that life would be any easier in a colony that had no basic services and no ready source of food and supplies, other than what they could take with them or grow? There has to be some other reason that motivated the Pilgrims to come to America than simply the traditional explanation of wanting to have the freedom to worship God in their own way.

Three of the women who eventually made the journey to America, were pregnant at the time the journey began. One even gave birth during the voyage at sea. Taking a pregnant wife on a journey across an ocean in the early 1600’s would not have been an easy decision to make. Even on land with access to doctors, giving birth was a life-threatening situation. Why would families risk the life of the mother and unborn child to undertake such a perilous journey? Was it really just a search for the freedom to worship God? They could already worship God the way they wanted to in Holland, so why the urgency? Why could they not wait until the women had given birth or simply not taken those families and let them come at a later time?

Then, there are the Adventurers and the Strangers, two groups that joined the Pilgrims on the journey to America. The Pilgrims lacked the funding to make the trip to America on their own, so they turned to a group in England known as the Merchants or Adventurers. This group shared many of the religious beliefs of the Puritans, but was not as radical as the Separatists were. The Adventurers were looking to make a profit and spread religion to the new world and the Pilgrims agreed to take the voyage with them. In exchange for funding the journey, the Pilgrims agreed to work for the Adventurers and their company for seven years.

Shortly before the voyage was to begin, the Adventurers insisted that the Pilgrims also accept another group that became known as the ‘Strangers’. This group did not share the beliefs of the Pilgrims and most were completely unknown to them. One Stranger in particular, Christopher Martin, was appointed as the governor of the Mayflower by the Adventurers. Mr. Martin was the warden of the St. Mary Magdalene church in Essex, England and was greatly disliked by the Pilgrims. So, why did they agree to let a hated stranger act as the leader of the expedition?

Who were these two groups, especially the Strangers who were mysteriously placed in charge of the voyage, and why did the Pilgrims agree to allow the Strangers to not only go along, but to also be in control? What was the mission and what was the objective? Many things about this historic voyage just do not make any sense. Having been joined by the other two groups, the voyage was no longer simply about worshipping the way the Pilgrims wanted to because the others did not share that vision.

The Adventurers played an instrumental role in ensuring the success of the voyage. They were more than just a group of merchants that the Pilgrims agreed to work for, many of them had personal relationships with the Pilgrims. The Adventurers worked very hard to secure the ship and ready it for the voyage. The Pilgrims were almost like passengers, with the Adventurers running the show. The following excerpt about the Adventurers from a book by Azel Ames, titled “The Mayflower & Her Log”, casts a new light on this group.

“Captain John Smith tells us that the Merchant Adventurers (presumably one of the contracting parties) “were about seventy, … not a Corporation, but knit together by a voluntary combination in a Society without constraint or penalty. They have a President and Treasurer every year newly chosen by the most voices, who ordereth the affairs of their Courts and meetings; and with the assent of most of them, undertaketh all the ordinary business, but in more weighty affairs, the assent of the whole Company is required.”

According to this source, the Adventurers were not a normal business entity, but were a loose knit “Society” that had come together for some purpose other than this voyage. As this society holds officer elections each year, the group obviously has a purpose that is greater than simply supporting the mission of the Pilgrims. Since this group was not a corporation, they were involved in this venture for more than just the profit to be earned in the new world. This “Society” might well have been the very group whose descendants would one day become known as the Freemasons. Why would a bunch of merchants and businessmen come together, investing their own money, and form a “Society”, not a corporation, and promote the voyage of a few dozen Puritan Separatists halfway around the world who only cared about worshipping God? This had to be one of the worst investments a businessman could make at the time. There was little hope of earning a profit from the labors of these Pilgrims who would rather spend time worshipping God than working to make money for some group of investors in England. It is possible that the Adventurers were the ones who first approached King James about protecting the treasure and together they decided to use the Pilgrims as a cover story.

In July of 1620, the Pilgrims left Holland in a ship they had purchased named the Speedwell with a hired crew that agreed to stay with them in America for one year. The plan was to meet the Adventurers at Southampton and proceed together with the Mayflower, that the Adventurers were to procure in London, but the plan was doomed from the beginning. While the Speedwell had just been refitted in Holland, the problems surfaced almost immediately. The ship leaked like a sieve and the mast was too large for the ship. The problems with the Speedwell were likely due to sabotage. After repeated attempts to leave England with the Speedwell and Mayflower, they were forced to abandon the Speedwell and cram everyone and all of their supplies into the Mayflower. The Pilgrims were now down to a single vessel. A solitary ship on the open ocean would be doomed if anything went wrong. There would be no help for a lone sailing ship on the vastness of the open ocean. Any number of small problems could easily develop into major calamities, yet they continued the preparations with only one ship. Would it not have been more prudent to wait until a second vessel could be readied or until the Speedwell was repaired? What was so urgent?

The delays had now forced the Mayflower’s departure dangerously close to winter. The Mayflower eventually set sail from Plymouth, England on September 6, 1620. They knew that the voyage would take nearly two months at best and longer if they encountered difficulties with the weather or their ship. This meant that they would be arriving in a harsh and unforgiving land in November or later, just in time for the long winter months of New England. The pilgrims had to know that survival was unlikely under those conditions, even if they were successful in crossing the ocean. Their supplies had diminished greatly during the delays, further reducing their chances of survival. Without sufficient food and shelter, the first winter in America would prove deadly. Knowing all of this, why did they not just wait until the next summer to leave? Surely, the necessity to worship their own way was not so important that it was worth putting their entire families in an almost unwinnable situation from the very beginning. Under these circumstances, the Pilgrims had almost no chance of surviving the first year, and if they did not survive, what would happen to their form of worship? If they died, it would have all been for nothing, unless there was something else they had to do and time was not on their side, something more important than their own lives.

Did the Pilgrims and/or Adventurers know of a long protected treasure hidden somewhere in North America? Were they following the secret orders of King James?