SIGNERS OF THE COMPACT

The “Compact” was succeeded, in law, if not in the respect of the colonists, by a regular patent taken out in the name of one of the Adventurers (the English investors) in 1621. This is now in Pilgrim Hall. It was superseded by another, also to the Adventurers; and finally, in 1629, after the colonists had bought out the English investors, by one to “Wm. Bradford and associates,”—that is, the freemen of the colony. By thus transferring the “home office” of the company from London to America, the colony became an all but independent government. Consciously or unconsciously, it had from the beginning exercised most of the functions of a sovereign state, and continued to do so, except during the “tyranny” of Sir Edmund Andros, until it merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691.

From Plymouth, England

to

Plymouth, Massachusetts

In England: