Mayflower Compact

MAYFLOWER COMPACT

MAYFLOWER COMPACT, signed aboard the May-flower on 11 November 1620 by the ship's forty-one free adult men, served as the basis for Plymouth Colony's government throughout its history. As the Mayflower 's passengers had settled in New England, their patent for establishing a colony in Virginia was useless. The Pilgrim colony thus had no legal foundation, and some non-Pilgrim passengers talked of striking out on their own, ignoring Governor John Carver's now ambiguous authority. If the Pilgrims were to have a colony at all, they needed to establish a government based on some sort of consensus, and they turned to the model of their own congregational churches for guidance. The colonists would form a "body politic," which would select and wholly submit to leaders chosen by the majority, just as members of Pilgrim congregations each elected their own ministers and governed themselves. Thus, in the name of King James I, did the settlers "Covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation." The compact was put into practice when John Carver was confirmed as the colony's first governor.

The Mayflower Compact provided Plymouth with a simple constitution. The "General Court" of all freemen (nearly all adult men, excluding servants) met several times a year, elected the governor and his assistants, and passed laws for the colony. Voting directly in assembly or through representatives, asserted as fundamental right of Englishmen in the colony's 1636 legal code, also carried responsibilities. Freemen were expected to attend all General Court sessions, and those who did not faced heavy fines. Since the General Court was an assembly of citizens that was not in regular session, the governor dominated Plymouth's politics until the General Court was transformed into a representative assembly. Because the colony's expansion into several settlements made meetings of all freemen impractical, the 1638 General Court voted to allow freemen to assemble in individual towns and select deputies to attend General Court sessions in Plymouth town. All freemen were still expected to meet in Plymouth town for the June session, at which the governor and his assistants were chosen, but the General Court voted to allow colony wide proxy voting in 1652, finally doing away with colony wide meetings of all freemen. A now formal representative assembly holding regular sessions, the General Court stole the initiative from the governors. While the governor remained a powerful figure, charged with executing laws and having powers of arrest, the General Court claimed the sole right to tax, declare war, and frame legislation.

Voting rights became more restrictive as the colony grew and diversified. By 1670 property requirements excluded about 25 percent of adult men from voting, but the franchise still remained relatively open. Plymouth's governmental system was modified as the colony grew and the population changed, but the basic foundation established by the Mayflower Compact—that Plymouth would have self-government based on majority rule—remained intact. The colony never did receive legal recognition or a royal charter from England, apart from two patents issued by the Council for New England in 1621 and 1630. Failure to obtain a charter eventually led to Plymouth's annexation by much larger and more populous Massachusetts in 1691.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bradford, William. History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647. Edited by Samuel Eliot Morrison. 2 vols. New York: Russell and Russell, 1968.

Cushing, John D., ed. The Laws of the Pilgrims: A Facsimile Edition of The Book of the General Laws of the Inhabitants of the Jurisdiction of New Plymouth, 1672 and 1685. Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazer, 1977.

Langdon, George D. "The Franchise and Political Democracy in Plymouth Colony." William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 20 (October 1963): 513–526.

———. Pilgrim Colony: A History of New Plymouth, 1620–1691. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966.

Shurtleff, Nathaniel B., and David Pulsifer, eds. Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England. 12 vols. 1855. Re-print, New York: AMS Press, 1968.

Aaron J. Palmer

See also Assemblies, Colonial ; Plymouth Colony ; and vol. 9: The Mayflower Compact .