The passengers of the Mayflower, English Separatists and others who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620
About The Mayflower Pilgrims
The Mayflower Compact was drawn up and signed by the adult male passengers of the ship Mayflower while it lay off Cape Cod in November 1620. The company combined English Separatists from the congregation that had lived in exile at Leiden in the Netherlands, led in the church by elder William Brewster, with other emigrants recruited in England by the venture's London investors. Its drafter is not recorded; William Bradford, later governor, preserved the text in his history, and John Carver was chosen governor the same day. The original signed paper has not survived.
“solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation”
1620 · Renaissance Early Modern · Political Theory
The Mayflower Compact is a single paragraph of about two hundred words, signed on 11 November 1620 (Old Style; 21 November by the modern calendar) aboard the ship Mayflower as it lay at anchor in the hook of Cape Cod, in what is now Provincetown Harbor. The ship had left Plymouth, England, in September with about a hundred passengers.