~ From The Writer's Almanac ~

It was on this day in 1620 that the Mayflower set sail from England. There were 102 passengers on board. Although we usually think of the Mayflower as being filled with a persecuted religious group called the Pilgrims, in fact they made up less than half of the passengers, and they called themselves "Saints" — it wasn't until later that they were called Pilgrims.
The "Saints" were religious separatists who had broken away from the Church of England. In 1607, many of them left for Leiden in Holland, which was much more tolerant of their religious ideas, but they were still excluded from jobs and land ownership, and they struggled to make a living.
Only 35 passengers on the Mayflower were the Leiden Separatists, or "Saints." The rest of the 102 passengers were recruits from England. They were mostly families who were going as entrepreneurs, to be planters. The "Saints" referred to these people as "Strangers."
They had 65 miserable days at sea, most of it below deck because the weather was so awful. And the Mayflower didn't make it to Virginia, but instead was blown off course and ended up on Cape Cod. The passengers decided to settle there, but they were forced to remain on board for more than a month just off the coast of Massachusetts, while leaders went ashore to explore, trying to find a good spot for a settlement. In the meantime, the "Saints" and the "Strangers," despite a lot of friction, agreed to jointly sign the Mayflower Compact, a governing document that was more or less a social contract, in which everyone agreed to follow certain rules and laws so that they could all coexist.
It was only many years later, in 1840, that someone dug up a description that William Bradford had written about the original "Saints," who had left Leiden, a place that he called "that goodly & pleasante citie which had been their resting place for near 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes, & looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to ye heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits." And so the Leiden separatists came to be called Pilgrims in retrospect, and that term came to be applied to everyone who was on board the Mayflower, both "Saints" and "Strangers."