Embarrassing grotty wooden floor?
TRUSTED BY THESE WELL KNOWN BRANDS AND HUNDREDS MORE.
The town has had its fair share of history, being swept up in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1481. A party of Jack Straw’s followers was massacred in a nearby wood on their way home.
As a county, a number of Essex citizens were subject to the religious persecution raging during the reign of ‘Bloody Mary’. Three young unmarried Billericay women were brought to London to appear before Edward Bonner, the Bishop of London. One told this fearsome man to his face that she would continue in the Protestant faith she learned at eleven. Two of the three - one had died in prison - were burned at Smithfield.
These experiences were still fresh in the early 17th century when the New World offered people hope for a better life with freedom of worship. Four members of the Mayflower expedition came from Billericay, including Christopher Martin, treasurer to the party.
As a boy, Christopher had heard old Widow Watts relate the story of her husband, who had died at Chelmsford rather than deny his faith.
After living with his wife in Holland, fear of a Dutch war led Martin and his friends to arrange the voyage across the Atlantic. The Pilgrim Fathers assembled in the town in summer 1620 before embarkation.
They set off in high spirits to escape their poverty and spread the gospel. All these were dashed during that first terrible winner. Moored off the coast where the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts now stands, they were destined to die for their faith. All four of the Billericay group perished of the sickness that took the lives of a third on board.