[Footnote 1: From the model in the National Museum, Washington.]
[Illustration: THE MASSACHUSETTS COAST (map)]
%33. The Mayflower Compact%.—Since it was then the 11th of November, the Pilgrims, as they are now called, decided to get permission from the Plymouth Company to remain permanently. But certain members of the party, when they heard this, became unruly, and declared that as they were not to land in Virginia, they were no longer bound by the contracts they had made in England regarding their emigration to Virginia. To put an end to this, a meeting was held, November 21, 1620, in the cabin of the Mayflower, and a compact was drawn up and signed.[1] It declared
1. That they were loyal subjects of the King.
2. That they had undertaken to found a colony in the northern parts of Virginia, and now bound themselves to form a "civil body politic."
3. That they would frame such just and equal laws, from time to time, as might be for the general good.
4. And to these laws they promised "all due submission and obedience."
[Footnote 1: The compact is in Poore's Charters and Constitutions, p. 931, and in Preston's Documents Illustrative of American History, pp. 29-31. Read, by all means, Webster's Plymouth Oration.]
[Illustration: Plymouth Rock]
%34. The Founding of Plymouth%.—The selection of a site for their home was now necessary, and five weeks were passed in exploring the coast before Captain Standish with a boatload of men entered the harbor which John Smith had noted on his map and named Plymouth. On the sandy shore of that harbor, close to the water's edge, was a little granite bowlder, and on this, according to tradition, the Pilgrims stepped as they came ashore, December 21, 1620. To this harbor the Mayflower was brought, and the work of founding Plymouth was begun. The winter was a dreadful one, and before spring fifty-one of the colonists had died.[1] But the Pilgrims stood fast, and in 1621 obtained a grant of land[2] from the Council for New England, which had just succeeded the Plymouth Company, under a charter giving it control between latitudes 40° and 48°, from sea to sea.[3] It was from the same Council that for fifteen years to come all other settlers in New England obtained their rights to the soil.