Royal Mail The Millennium Collection - Settlers' Tale

ROYAL MAIL issued on 6 April 1999 The Millennium Collection Settlers' Tale comprised four stamps: Migration to Scotland designed by John Byrne, 20p; Pilgrim Fathers designed by Wilson McLean, 26p; Destination Australia designed by Jeff Fisher, 43p; Migration to UK designed by Gary Powell, 63p. Benham released their version with a special  Plymouth Special Postmark and cachet. The four  stamps celebrate the migration, immigration and emigration of people to and from the United Kingdom, and the profound effect it had on the British Isles. It was the Royal Mail's fourth issue in the millennium series.

As for the pilgrims, some 100 people, many of them seeking religious freedom in the New World, set sail from England on the Mayflower in September 1620. That November, the ship landed on the shores of Cape Cod, in present-day Massachusetts. A scouting party was sent out, and in late December the group landed at Plymouth Harbor, where they would form the first permanent settlement of Europeans in New England. These original settlers of Plymouth Colony were known as the Pilgrim Fathers, or simply as the Pilgrims.

The group that set out from Plymouth, in southwestern England, in September 1620 included 35 members of a radical Puritan faction known as the English Separatist Church. In 1607, after illegally breaking from the Church of England, the Separatists settled in the Netherlands, first in Amsterdam and later in the town of Leiden, where they remained for the next decade under the relatively lenient Dutch laws. Due to economic difficulties, as well as fears that they would lose their English language and heritage, they began to make plans to settle in the New World. Their intended destination was a region near the Hudson River, which at the time was thought to be part of the already established colony of Virginia. In 1620, the would-be settlers joined a London stock company that would finance their trip aboard the Mayflower, a three-masted merchant ship, in 1620. A smaller vessel, the Speedwell, had initially accompanied the Mayflower and carried some of the travelers, but it proved unseaworthy and was forced to return to port by September.

More than half of these English settlers died during that first winter, as a result of poor nutrition and housing that proved inadequate in the harsh weather. Leaders such as William Bradford, Miles Standish, John Carver, William Brewster and Edward Winslow played important roles in keeping the remaining settlers together. In April 1621, after the death of the settlement’s first governor, John Carver, Bradford was unanimously chosen to hold that position; he would be reelected 30 times and served as governor of Plymouth for all but five years until 1656.

Source: History Channel