The Mayflower Compact -1620

In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland king, defender of the faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by venture hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. I witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the 11 of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James, of England, France, and Ireland the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domine 1620

John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, William Brewster, Isaac Allerton, Miles Standish, John Alden, Samuel Fuller, Christopher Martin, William Mullins, William White, Richard Warren, John Howland, Stephen Hopkins, Edward Tilly, John Tilly, Francis Cooke, Thomas Rogers, Thomas Tinker, John Ridgdale, Edward Fuller, John Turner, Francis Eaton, James Chilton, John Craxton, John Billington, Joses Fletcher, John Goodman, Digery Priest, Thomas Williams, Gilbert Winslow, Edmund Margeson, Peter Brown, Richard Bitteridge, George Soule, Richard Clark, Richard Gardiner, John Allerton, Thomas English, Edward Doten, Edward Leister.

Nathaniel Morton, William Bradford’s nephew, supplied the list of 41 male passengers in his 1669 New England’s Memorial.

The mouth of the Hudson River was the original destination of the Mayflower. The land was granted in a patent from the Crown to the London Virginia Company. The “strangers” were colonists which were not members of the congregation of religious dissenters. They held the position that since the settlement was not in the Virginia territory which was agreed upon they “would use their own liberty; for none had power to command them.”

Consequently, the congregation of religious dissenters chose to establish a government.

Even though the signers of the compact were not the majority; the settler’s chose to establish a social contract in which the settler’s consented to follow the rules and principles established by the compact.