London and Edinburgh

The Mayflower Pilgrims came from central England, from rural villages in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and Lincolnshire. But it was events in London and Edinburgh that forced them to leave their country. In 1604, the first full year of his reign, King James I called a conference at Hampton Court Palace to discuss the state of the church. Non-conformists had hoped to win the King's favor. But King James I of Enland, who was also King James VI of Scotland, had developed a distaste for reformers, because of John Knox, who presided at the High Kirk of St. Giles in Edinburgh. Previously, Knox had openly criticized James' mother, Mary, for marrying her cousin (her cousin!) Henry Stuart, Earl of Darnley. James had had enough of reformers. At the end of the conference he announced, "I will make them conform themselves, or else I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse.” (Quoted in OED, p. 105, “harry” definition 3.b. To drive forth stripped of house or goods.) So he said, and so he did.