George Bancroft, History of the Colonization of the United States, Vol. 1, 17th edition.

The career of maritime discovery had, meantime, been pursued with intrepidity, and rewarded with success. The voyages of Gosnold, Smith, and Hudson: the enterprise of Raleigh, Delaware, and Gorges; the compilations of Eden, Willes, and Hakluyt,—had filled the commercial world with wonder; Calvinists of the French Church had sought, though vainly, to plant themselves in Brazil, in Carolina, and with De Monts, in Acadia; while weighty reasons, often and seriously discussed, inclined the Pilgrims to change their abode. They had been bred to the pursuits of husbandry, and in Holland they were compelled to learn mechanical trades; Brewster became a printer; Bradford, who had been educated as a farmer, learned the art of dyeing silk. The language of the Dutch never became pleasantly familiar, and their manners still less so. They lived but as men in exile. Many of their English friends would no t come to them, or departed from them weeping. ‘Their continual labors, with other crosses and sorrows, left them in danger to scatter or sink.’ ‘Their children, sharing their arent burdens, bowed under the weight, and were becoming decrepit in early youth.’ Conscious of ability to act a higher part in the great drama of humanity, they were moved by ‘a hope and inward zeal of advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in the remote parts of the New World; yea, though they should be but as stepping-stones unto others for performing so great a work.’

‘Upon their talk of removing, sundry of the Dutch would have them go under them, and made them large offers;’ but the Pilgrims were attached