American dream ended early for Britons who emigrated

A quarter of all pilgrims who travelled to the New World returned to Britain after just a few years, a new report shows.

Disease, an unforgiving climate and a stagnant economy in Massachusetts, forced thousands to make the dangerous three-month boat journey back to the UK, their dreams of a new life unfulfilled.

Dr Susan Hardman Moore, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Divinity, has researched the immigration records of ordinary people who fled religious persecution before the English Civil War, along with their wills, diaries and letters.

Her book, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, estimates that up to 20,000 people set sail across the Atlantic during the 1630s and 1640s, the Independent reports.