But, before relating the adventures of the chair, Grandfather found it necessary to speak of the circumstances that caused the first settlement of New England.

For it will soon be perceived that the story of this remarkable chair cannot be told without telling a great deal of the history of the country.
So, Grandfather talked about the Puritans, as those persons were called who thought it sinful to practise the religious forms and ceremonies which the Church of England had borrowed from the Roman Catholics.

These Puritans suffered so much persecution in England that, in 1607, many of them went over to Holland, and lived ten or twelve years at Amsterdam and Leyden.

But they feared that, if they continued there much longer, they should cease to be English, and should adopt all the manners and ideas and feelings of the Dutch.

For this and other reasons, in the year 1620, they embarked on board of the ship Mayflower, and crossed the ocean to the shores of Cape Cod.