Zachary Bicknell, was born in 1589, the year after England's glorious defeat of the Spanish Armada. As a young boy, growing in a rural village in Somerset, he is the younger son of a carpenter and nephew and cousin to more prosperous yeomen. Active puritan and separatist movements sweep the region of his birth, perhaps causing some friction between family members and/or within his community.

    Entering adolescence, Queen Elizabeth I, the living icon dies and the undercurrents of religious conflict begin to gain momentum. Great expectations for religious change are held by puritan and separatist reformers in the new monarch James I, but those hopes are dashed by the new king's denial of the Millenary Petition at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604. As a teenager and young man, Zachary is witness to religious repression and strife.

    He is given, at least, a basic education. Sometime during his young adulthood, he obtains a Calvinist bible which includes a question and answer section focusing upon the concept of predestination. As a maturing man, he undoubtedly attends secret conventicles, ponders previously obscure spiritual concepts, and undoubtedly develops an active sense of self-reflective idealism. For puritans and separatists alike the world becomes increasingly seen in terms of 'us' (i.e., True Believers, God's Elect) and 'them' (i.e., idolaters, papists, heathens, and other agents of evil).

    The agricultural economy in England was prospering. Land speculation had become a troubling, destabilizing factor to some, while others found new wealth and opportunity in enclosure and intensive land management. The local manor at Barrington continuously turned over 'noble' occupants due to death and debt. Village authority became more focused towards prospering yeomen like Nicholas Bicknell, who amassed new wealth, sending their children into the expanding professional and skilled labor classes.

    Zachary probably worked as a carpenter, as would his son John. As a carpenter, he probably traveled from Barrington village to the parish woodlands in the Neroche Forest near Bickenhall (perhaps his ancestral home) and Broadway (where a curate five years his younger, Joseph Hull, may have engaged his interest at least by 1632, when Zachary was 43 years old). Zachary's probable source of work and income, the Neroche Forest, was rapidly being depleted by the expanding demands of the preceding 200 years. When Zachary was a young man, Charles I began to move towards enclosing the forest, thereby threatening Zachary's traditional source of livelihood. By early 1635, the legal battle over traditional tenant's rights in the Neroche Forest was well underway as Zachary Bicknell and his family sailed west for opportunity and freedom.

    He married in 1623. His bride came from outside the parish and was possibly between 13 to 15 years of age. He probably met her through his religious affiliations. Within a few years (i.e. 1624), their only child of record, a son, John (probably named after Zachary's father) was born. Perhaps the age difference between Agnis and Zachary, religious destain or disinterest, or his incapacity prevented the couple from having further children. His young widow later bore another son in 1640 with her second husband, Richard Rockwell.

    Zachary lived most of his life amidst religious controversy and oppression. Around the time of his marriage, he had probably heard of the Plymouth Colony in New England. William Laud, the cleric who dedicated his life to saving the Church of England from heretic puritans, became Bishop of Bath & Wells when Zachary was 37 years old (1626). Three years later, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded and the Great Migration to the promise of the New World began. Five years later (1634), William Pierce became bishop of the diocese during the contentious 'personal rule' of Charles I. Soon England would be swept by violent revolution.

    Sometime during this spiritual and economic crisis, Zachary decided to join the Reverend Joseph Hull and seek a new life in the wilderness. He was prosperous enough to bring along an indentured servant, Joseph Kitchen. His wife Agnis' relative or brother, Robert Lovell, and his family also made the perilous voyage.

    Perhaps Zachary was recruited as a carpenter for the company, which probably required and sought a full spectrum of skilled persons to build their vision of a new world. At one point in his life, Zachary must have professed to have had a personal experience of divine grace, thereby becoming an 'elect of God' (a fundamental requirement for admission to his congregation). Given his personal bible and what we know about many puritans and separatists, he probably considered himself to be a predestined member of God's elect, with a sense of personal destiny at the center of history.

    In March of 1635, the Bicknells left their familiar world and spent forty-six days on a small ship with one hundred-three other passengers and perhaps a dozen crewmen. On May 6 of that year they arrived in the Massachusetts Colony and within a few months were given a grant to buy land from the Massachusetts Bay Company at a place south of Boston they eventually named after their port of departure, Weymouth. Later that year, Zachary built a one room cabin on twenty acres of land he had purchased. He only lived for perhaps eighteen more months. He died at the age of forty-seven, leaving behind a thirty year old widow, who quickly remarried, and a thirteen year old son whose interest in his father's estate was protected by the community until he could come of age.

    Within a year after Zachary's death, the Reverend Joseph Hull was expelled from Weymouth by his congregation. Certainly by the time of Zachary's death Hull's sermons and professed beliefs must have begun to generate friction within the Weymouth community as well as between the Weymouth congregation and the authorities at Boston. We do not know the nature of the personal or spiritual relationship between Zachary Bicknell and Joseph Hull. A man described as having "exceptional ability" by some, while labeled "contentious" by others. A man who apparently sought a middle ground between the Church of England and its' Puritan Reformers.

    We can only speculate as to what role Zachary played, and might further have played, in the emerging puritan society of New England. As a relatively minor historical figure, very little of his personality is left for us to contemplate. However, his many descendants are much indebted to his presence, vision and efforts.