BORN: Around 1580/likely in the vicinity of Spalding or Cowbit, Lincolnshire, England
DIED: September 1630/Plymouth Colony

John Billington was not a member of the Separatist community in Leiden. Instead, he and his wife Elinor, with their children Francis and John Jr., traveled aboard the Mayflower likely in search of greater economic or social mobility than they had in England.

John Billington had a fraught relationship with the leaders of the colony. In March 1621, Billington was charged with “contempt of the Captain’s lawful command with opprobrious speeches” and was sentenced to be bound neck to ankles until he apologized and was released. He was also implicated in a 1624 scandal by supporting a coup against the religious leadership of the Colony, although he does not appear to have been punished for it. William Bradford, in a letter to Robert Cushman in 1625, noted that John Billington “still rails against you […] he is a knave and so will live and die.”

In 1630, Billington shot and killed a young man, John Newcomen, was tried by jury, and sentenced to death for murder. He was hanged in September of that year.

The Billington family was left with a troubled legacy. John Jr. had predeceased his father, but the widowed Elinor and son Francis continued to live in the colony after the execution. Elinor remarried in 1638 to Gregory Armstrong.