e 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[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