The importance of the Merchant Adventurers from the City of London is often overlooked. They supplied the finance and the organisation for the expedition, chose the Mayflower ship and its crew, and recruited the strangers. Without the finance from the City the Mayflower could not have sailed to America, and we would have no Mayflower story to celebrate. Charles Edward Banks the world renowned Mayflower specialist claims that one of the sites in the City of London is more

Southwark in the early seventeenth century was a very significant place with numerous churches, taverns, several courts of justice, a royal mint for coinage, four prisons and eight inns for travellers. Southwark was described in 1603 by John Stow in his meticulous and celebrated, Survey of London, as a town with ‘diverse streets, ways and winding lanes’. He also documented the important finding that, owing to its prosperity, Southwark paid £800 a year in taxes to the Crown,