He appears as lead character in the 1858 poem The Courtship of Miles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a highly fictionalized account which presents him as a timid romantic.

Some historians have concluded that he was therefore born in Lancashire – possibly in the vicinity of Chorley, where a family named Standish owned a manor called Duxbury Hall.

In his younger time he went over into the low countries, and was a soldier there, and came acquainted with the church at Leyden, and came over into New England, with such of them as at the first set out for the planting of the plantation of New Plymouth, and bare a deep share of their first difficulties, and was always very faithful to their interest.

Queen Elizabeth I of England supported the Protestant Dutch Republic and sent troops to fight the Spanish in the Netherlands, as part of the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604).

Nathaniel Philbrick refers to him as a "mercenary", suggesting that he was a hired soldier of fortune seeking employment in the war,[16] but Justin Winsor claims that Standish received a commission as a lieutenant in the English army and was later promoted to captain while in Holland.

[13] Historian Jeremy Bangs argued that Standish likely served under Sir Horatio Vere, the general who led the English troops in the Netherlands at this time.

The subsequent Treaty of London (1604) ended English involvement in the war; if Standish was a mercenary he might have continued to serve with the Dutch until the Twelve Years' Truce brought fighting in the region to a halt in 1609.

[18] The Puritans had previously hoped the position would be taken by Captain John Smith, who had been one of the founders of the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, and had experience exploring and mapping the American coast.

[12] On July 22, 1620 (Old Style date), the initial group of English Dissenters living in Leiden boarded the Speedwell, which was meant to accompany another ship to be hired in England.

[20] The Mayflower passengers, meanwhile, sold some valuable supplies such as butter to pay the mounting port fees, and finally departed Plymouth, England, on September 6, 1620, bound for the northern part of the Virginia Colony.

On November 9, 1620, lookouts spotted land, but they discovered that they were near Cape Cod and about 200 miles (320 km) east-northeast of their planned destination of northern Virginia.

They anchored at the hook on November 11,[20] and the leaders of the colony wrote the Mayflower Compact to ensure a degree of law and order in this place where they had not been granted a patent to settle.

[22] The Mayflower was anchored off Cape Cod when Standish urged the colony's leaders to allow him to take a party ashore to find a suitable place for settlement.

[24] On December 11, he led a group of 18 and made an extended exploration of the shore of Cape Cod by boat,[25] spending their nights ashore surrounded by makeshift barricades of tree branches.

[33] Contact with the Indians came in March 1621 through Samoset, an English-speaking Abenaki who arranged for the Pilgrims to meet with Massasoit, the sachem of the nearby Pokanoket tribe.

On March 22, Plymouth Colony's governor John Carver signed a treaty with Massasoit, declaring an alliance between the Pokanokets and the Colonists and requiring the two parties to defend one another in times of need.

Corbitant worked to turn the people against Massasoit in the Pokanoket village of Nemasket, now the site of Middleborough, Massachusetts, about 14 miles (23 km) west of Plymouth.

The men chose a site on the shore of the Fore River in Weymouth, Massachusetts, about 25 miles (40 km) north of Plymouth, and they called their colony Wessagusset.

He managed to escape to Plymouth and reported that the colonists in Wessagusset had been repeatedly threatened by the Massachusetts, that the settlement was in a state of constant watchfulness, and that men were dying at their posts from starvation.

[45] Bradford called a public meeting at which the Pilgrims decided to send Standish and a small group of eight, including Hobbamock, to Wessagusset to kill the leaders of the plot.

[53] Bradford, too, was uncomfortable with his methods, but he defended him in a letter: "As for Capten Standish, we leave him to answer for him selfe, but this we must say, he is as helpfull an instrument as any we have, and as carefull of the generall good.

"[54] In 1625, another group of English settlers established an outpost not far from the site of Wessagusset, located in Quincy, Massachusetts, about 27 miles (43 km) north of Plymouth.

Later, Morton wrote the book New English Canaan in which he referred to Standish as "Captain Shrimp" and added, "I have found the Massachusetts Indians more full of humanity than the Christians.

This was a significantly larger proposition than the small expeditions which Standish had previously led and, to accomplish the task, he chartered the ship Good Hope captained by a man named Girling.

[60] Another effort was successful later in 1626, this time negotiated by Isaac Allerton, and several leading men of Plymouth, including Standish, ultimately paid off the colony's debt to the Adventurers.

[65] The families living in Duxbury (sometimes "Duxborough") asked to be set off from Plymouth as a separate town with their own church and minister; this request was granted in 1637.

Historian Tudor Jenks wrote that Longfellow's book had "no claim to be considered other than a pleasant little fairystory, and as an entirely misleading sketch of men and matters in old Plymouth.

In late 19th century Duxbury, the book generated a movement to build monuments in Standish's honor, a beneficial byproduct of which was increased tourism to the town.

[76] The site of Standish's house reveals only a slight depression in the ground where the cellar hole was, but it is now a small park owned and maintained by the town of Duxbury.

[80] Myles Standish State Forest is located in the towns of Plymouth and Carver in southeastern Massachusetts, approximately 45 miles (70 km) south of Boston.