What group constituted the majority of passengers on the Mayflower?

Answer 1

The passengers of the Mayflower were Pilgrims, religious seperatists from England looking for a new home in America. The crew of the Mayflower were professional sailors. The ship was hired to deliver the Pilgrims to their new home.

Answer 2

There were more "strangers" (non-separatists) than "saints" (separatists) on the Mayflower.

The passengers on board the Mayflower included a group of Protestants called the Separatists aka Pilgrims, they were similar to the Puritans in that they both split off from the Church of England and both thought that the Church of England was still to much like the Catholic Church. But the two groups to ideas to solve this problem were different, the Puritans wanted to "purify" the church from the inside while the Separatists as you probably guessed from the name wanted nothing to do with the Church of England and they broke away from it.

Most of the passengers can be described as "strangers" as opposed to the "saints" who were the true Separatists. Later, both groups were collectively referred to as "pilgrims."

Answer 3

Contrary to popular belief, the biggest group on the Mayflower were common merchants, craftsmen, skilled workers and indentured servants. Of the 102 passengers, only 41 were religious separatists. The collective group would be called the Pilgrims.

Answer 4

All of the passengers on the Mayflower were pilgrims, if you use the dictionary definition of: A person who embarks on a quest for something considered sacred; a person who makes a journey for religious purpose.

However, not all of the Mayflower passengers who settled in Plymouth were Puritans. The Puritans settled farther up the coast in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Although the two terms are often used interchangeably, they don't really mean the same thing. The pilgrims of Plymouth consisted of people from varying philosophies, who were seeking a place where they could worship freely. Among them were people who wanted to reform the Anglican Church (Church of England) from within to make it more Protestant, those who wanted to retain the Church, but wanted to make it more democratic, and, finally, those who wanted a clean and complete break with the Anglican Church, known as Puritans.

The Puritans who settled in Massachusetts had no such divisions. To a person, they were what was called Separatists; those who wanted to follow the teachings of John Calvin. They subscribed to a "Pure" religion, based entirely on what they considered a literal interpretation of The Bible.

Incidentally, one of the biggest reasons why both the Pilgrims and Puritans were so keen on education was that Protestantism held that Everyone had the duty to read the Bible. Therefore, everyone had to be able to read.