Eleutheran Adventurers
The Eleutheran Adventurers were a group of English Puritans and religious Independents who left Bermuda to settle on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas in the late 1640s.The small group of Puritan settlers, led by William Sayle, were expelled from Bermuda for their failure to swear allegiance to the Crown and left in search of a place in which they could freely practice their faith.The first part of the conflict was fought between King Charles I and the Parliament of England and led ultimately to the Protectorship of the Puritan General Oliver Cromwell.The struggle eventually led to the expulsion of the colony's Puritans and independents to the Bahamas, which the English had laid claim to in 1629 but had not permanently settled.The Eleutheran people showed their thankfulness by sending the ship back to Boston filled with Braziletto wood, with instructions to sell it and donate the proceeds to Harvard University.This episode is thought to be the historical source of Andrew Marvell's poem "Bermudas," written in praise of the Puritan settlers of the New World, and one of the earliest statements of the so-called "American Dream".