The Pilgrims’ narrative has been shrouded in myth. Who were the people who constituted this multifarious band of English Protestants whom we call “the Pilgrims”? Why did their religious beliefs make the old world so intolerable to them? How did they plant the seeds of American democracy? The Pilgrims chronicles the deep history, origins and critical first decade of the first permanent English colony in New England. A primetime two-hour documentary film by award-winning director Ric Burns, The Pilgrims embraces an extraordinary 70-year arc in the history of Renaissance England and colonial New England, from 1560 to 1630.