Degory Priest

Degory Priest was a member of the Leiden contingent on the historic 1620 voyage of the ship Mayflower. He was a hat maker from London who married Sarah, sister of Pilgrim Isaac Allerton in Leiden. He was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact in November 1620 and died less than two months later.

In some documents of the time, his name was also written as Digory Priest.

English origins According to Banks, the name Digory Priest or Prust is common in Devon and Cornwall. A family with those names was found residing in Lezant, co. Cornwall.

At the time of the Pilgrim emigration, families of this name were living in the London parishes of All Hallows the Great, All Hallows on the Wall, St. Augustine, St. Dunstan-in-the-West and St. Margaret Patten.

Per Banks, "Digory" Priest was credited as one of the "Leyden" contingent and was again identified as a hat-maker from London in Leyden records.

On April 9, 1619, Degory Priest and Samuel Lee, both hatters, signed a good behavior document on behalf of Nicholas Claverly, a tobacco-pipe maker, who had arrived in Leiden about 1615 and resided in a house owned by Degory Priest. In the document, Priest stated an age of forty years, which indicated he was born about 1579.

On November 9/19, 1620, after about three months at sea, including a month of delays in England, they spotted land, which was the Cape Cod Hook, now called Provincetown Harbor. After several days of trying to get south to their planned destination of the Colony of Virginia, strong winter seas forced them to return to the harbor at Cape Cod hook, where they anchored on November 11/21. The Mayflower Compact was signed that day. Degory Priest was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact on November 11, 1620.

From William Bradford’s later recollection of seven men from the Mayflower who died soon after arrival, "Digerie Preist" among them, with this comment: "All these dyed sone after their arrival in the general sickness that befell." And with this about Priest’s family: "But Digerie Preist had his wife and children sent hither afterwards, she being Mr. Allertons sister." Bradford closed his comments in this section with the note: "But the rest left no posteritie here."

Marriage and family Degory Priest married Sarah (Allerton) Vincent on November 4, 1611. She was the widow of John Vincent and sister of Mayflower passenger Isaac Allerton. They had two daughters, Mary and Sarah.

Sarah Priest married 2nd in Leiden on or shortly after November 13, 1621, Godbert Godbertson, whose name, per Banks, was also written as Cuthbert Cuthbertson. He was a hat-maker from Leiden, as was Priest, and had been in communion with the Pilgrims before their emigration. He had previously been married to Elizabeth Kendall in 1617, who presumably was deceased by the time of his second marriage. They came to Plymouth on the ship Anne in 1623 with their son and her two daughters. Both Sarah and her second husband Godbert Godbertson died in 1633 in the epidemic that was rampant at that time. Their burial places are unknown.

Children of Degory Priest and his wife Sarah (Allerton) Priest Mary Priest was born about 1612 and died in Charlestown in 1689. She married Phineas Pratt by 1633 and had eight children. The family moved to Charlestown about 1646. Pratt was a person of note in Plymouth history, coming on the ship Sparrow in 1622, being one of Thomas Weston's settlers at the failed Weymouth settlement, and coming to Plymouth in 1623. Sarah Priest was born about 1614, went to England by October 1646, and may have died there, date and place unknown. She married John Coombs about 1632 and had two sons. For reasons that are not known, possibly the demise of her husband, Sarah traveled to England about 1645 and left her two sons, John and Francis Coombs, in the care of William Spooner, who had agreed to their maintenance. It is believed that Sarah never returned to Massachusetts Colony, either having died on the voyage, or in England.

Sarah Allerton was the sister of a Mayflower passenger, Isaac Allerton.