As the Pilgrims landed north of the limits of the Company from which they received their patent, and under which they expected to become a "body politic," it became to them "void and useless." This being known, some of the emigrants on board the _Mayflower_ began to make "mutinous speeches," saying that "when they came ashore they would use their own liberty, for none had power to command them." Under these circumstances it was thought necessary to "begin with a combination, which might be as firm as any patent, and in some respects more so." Accordingly, an agreement was drawn up and signed in the cabin of the _Mayflower_ by forty-one male passengers, who with their families constituted the whole colony of one hundred and one.[7] Having thus provided against disorder and faction, the Pilgrims proceeded to land, when, as Bradford says, they "fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element."[8] Of the manner of their settlement, their exposures, sufferings, labours, successes, I leave the many ordinary histories to narrate, though they nearly all revel in the marvellous.[9]
I will therefore proceed to give a brief account of the Plymouth government in relation to religious liberty within its limits and loyalty to the Mother Country.
[Footnote 1: From the nature of the facts and questions discussed, the following history is largely _documentary_ rather than popular; and the work being an _historical argument_ rather than a popular narrative, will account for repetitions in some chapters, that the vital facts of the whole argument may be kept as constantly as possible before the mind of the reader.]
[Footnote 2: Burke's (the celebrated Edmund) Account of European Settlements in America. Second Edition, London, 1758, Vol. II., p. 143.]
[Footnote 3: Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, pp. 22-24. Massachusetts Historical Collection, 4th Series, Vol. III.]
[Footnote 4: History of Massachusetts, Vol. I., pp. 11, 12.]
[Footnote 5: History of the United States, Vol. I., p. 304.]
[Footnote 6: Many American writers and orators represent the Pilgrims as first finding themselves on an unknown as well as inhospitable coast, amidst shoals and breakers, in danger of shipwreck and death. But this is all fancy; there is no foundation for it in the statement of Governor Bradford, who was one of the passengers, and who says that they were "not a little joyful" when they found certainly that the land was Cape Cod; and afterwards, speaking of their coasting in the neighbourhood, Bradford says, "They hasted to a place that their pilot (one Willm. Coppin, _who had been there before_) did assure them was a good harbour, which he had been in." (History of Plymouth Plantation, p. 86.) They did not even go ashore on their first entrance into Cape Cod harbour; but, as Bradford says, "after some deliberation among themselves and with the master of the ship, they _tacked about_ and resolved to stand for the _southward, to find some place about Hudson river for their habitation_." (_Ib._, p. 117.) "After sailing southward half a day, they found themselves suddenly among shoals and breakers" (a ledge of rocks and shoals which are a terror to navigators to this day); and the wind shifting against them, they scud back to Cape Cod, and, as Bradford says, "thought themselves happy to get out of those dangers before night overtook them, and the next day they got into the Cape harbour, where they rode in safety. Being thus arrived in a good harbour, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven," &c.