The Pilgrims, also known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were the English settlers who traveled to North America on the Mayflower and established the Plymouth Colony in what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts, named after the final departure port of Plymouth, Devon. Their leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownists, or Separatist Puritans, who had fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands. They held many of the same Puritan Calvinist religious beliefs but, unlike most other Puritans, they maintained that their congregations should separate from the English state church, which led to them being labeled Separatists (the word "Pilgrims" was not used to refer to them until several centuries later). After several years living in exile in Holland, they eventually determined to establish a new settlement in the New World and arranged with investors to fund them. They established Plymouth Colony in 1620, where they erected Congregationalist churches. The Pilgrims' story became a central theme in the history and culture of the United States. History The core of the group who later were to be referred to as "Pilgrims" was brought together around 1605 when they quit the Church of England to form Separatist congregations in Nottinghamshire, England, led by John Robinson, Richard Clyfton, and John Smyth. Their congregations held Brownist beliefs—that true churches were voluntary democratic congregations, not whole Christian nations—as taught by Robert Browne, John Greenwood, and Henry Barrow. As Separatists, they 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. The Separatist movement was controversial. Under the Act of Uniformity 1559, it was illegal not to attend official Church of England services, with a fine of one shilling (£0.05; about £ today) for each missed Sunday and holy day. The penalties included imprisonment and larger fines for conducting unofficial services. The Seditious Sectaries Act of 1593 was specifically aimed at outlawing the Brownists. Under this policy, the London Underground Church from 1566, and then Robert Browne and his followers in Norfolk during the 1580s, were repeatedly imprisoned. Henry Barrow, John Greenwood, and John Penry were executed for sedition in 1593. Browne had taken his followers into exile in Middelburg, and Penry urged the London Separatists to emigrate in order to escape persecution, so after his death they went to Amsterdam. During much