Francis Cooke

Francis Cooke (c.1583 – April 7, 1663, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay Colony). He was a Leiden Separatist who came to America in 1620 on the Pilgrim ship Mayflower and a signer of the Mayflower Compact.

His ancestry is unknown and there are no records of the time found regarding his birth. Per author Charles Edward Banks, a clue to his identity may exist in the following: a Francis, son of Thomas Cooke, was baptized 6 April 1572, at Biddenden, Kent. There was a considerable foreign French and Walloon colony in Canterbury (Kent). Banks also states that he may have been born in England of foreign parents and returned to Holland in 1603, six years before the arrival of the Robinson Pilgrims.

Banks and author Eugene Aubrey Stratton had differing views of the time of his birth. Per Stratton, he was probably born no earlier than 1583, and may have been under age sixty when his name appeared on the 1643 Able to Bear Arms List for Plymouth.

He is first noted in historical records on April 25, 1603 in Leiden, Holland as a witness at Raphael Roelandt's betrothal. For purposes unknown, Cooke resided in Leiden for about six years before the arrival of the congregation of English Separatist Pastor John Robinson in 1609.

Cooke was betrothed to Hester Mahieu at the French Walloon Church (Vrouwekerk) in Leiden on June 30, 1603, with she joining the church one month prior to her betrothal. Her family were Protestant (Walloon) refugees from Lille, France to England. She was probably born in the late 1580s with her family coming to Leiden about 1590. Mary Mahieu, a possible sister of Hester, married Jan de Lannoy in Leiden and their child Philip de Lannoy had Cooke as a witness to his baptism in the Vrouwekerk on November 6, 1603. Cooke's nephew Philip "Delanoy" would later join the Separatist Church in England and arrived in Plymouth in November 1621 on the ship Fortune.

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