The "Mayflower" sailed on the 16th September, 1620, with 66 men, 26 women and 12 children aboard. After a stormy voyage, lasting 67 days, she arrived at Cape Cod harbour, where, on the 11th December of that year, the Colony of New Plymouth was founded.
Amongst the names of laymen which appear most prominently when action and leadership were needful to the Pilgrim Fathers, none was of greater repute than that of Edward Winslow (Wynslow) of Droitwich.
Droitwich, or Wych, as it was then named, is located in the centre of the lovely English county of Worcestershire, 110 miles from the capital, London. Droitwich has been famous for its salt industry since the year 1215, and it was at this period (1197) that there was born one of its most famous sons ; Richard of Wych, Bishop of Chichester (1245), and Saint Richard of Chichester within 10 years of his death (1253). Saint Richard owned brine rights in the great salt pit which bore his name in his natal town and over which a statute to his memory now stands.
We must now pass over 342 years of history to the year A.D. 1595.
Edward Winslow was the eldest of 8 sons of Edward and Magdalene Winslow, and he was born on the 18th October, 1595, in Droitwich. His baptismal certificate, still to be seen in the register of St. Peters Church, Droitwich, reads as follows :- "Anno 1595, October 20. Edward Wynslow, sonne of Edward Wynslow, was baptized -- borne ye XVIIIth of October, being Saturdaye."
Young Winslow was a salt manufacturer by trade, for it is recorded that in 1617 he "left his salt-boiling" in Droitwich and travelled to Leyden, in Holland. Having been a King's Scholar at King's School, Worcester, for 5 years, he was attracted to Leyden by its University. He became a prominent member of the English Church during this period, and on the 16th March, 1618, he was married to a lady by name Elizabeth Barker, of Chetsum.
In 1620 Winslow decided to cast his lot with the Pilgrims in the New World, so, accompanied by his wife and two servants, he set sail from Delft Haven. Their ship, the "Speedwell," was stated to be unseaworthy on arrival at Southampton, so the Company transferred to the "Mayflower" which duly set sail on the 16th September, 1620.
Three years later Winslow sailed back to England as Agent "for the newly-founded Colony of New Plymouth, and on his return in the "Charity" he took with him to the Colony 3 heifers and a bull -- "the firste beginning of any cattle of this kinde in ye land."
In 1635 Winslow again undertook an Agency to England for the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colony, in order to get support against intrusions by the French and Dutch. It was during this visit that he was charged by Archbishop Laud that, as a layman he had taught in church and solemnised marriage in the new colony. For these offences he was committed to Fleet prison and only released after a petition to the Privy Council of His Majesty King Charles I. The Colonists sense of injustice -- as a Magistrate Winslow had powers to marry people -- was evidenced by the fact they elected him Governor. Thus Edward Winslow was first Governor of the Colony in 1633 and was re-elected in 1636 and 1644.
In 1646, to the regret of his Plymouth brethren, he sailed once more for England, where his integrity and ability brought him to the notice of the then Lord Protector Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell. Winslow continued in high favour, and when Cromwell dispatched a naval force under Admiral Penn to the West Indies in 1655, he appointed his friend Chief Commissioner at a salary of l,000 a year.
This proved to be Winslow's last voyage. He was laid low with a fever, and to this and to the extreme heat he succumbed. He was buried at sea on the 8th May,1655, and over the spot the Fleet fired a salute of 42 guns.
His portrait, the only one contemporary portrait of a Mayflower Pilgrim, hangs in the Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, Massachusetts.
A bronze memorial tablet, emblazoned with the coat of, arms of the family and of the Town, can be seen at St. Peters Church, in his home town of Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire.