name Plymouth. Before landing they had formed themselves into a
political body, a government of the people with "just and equal laws."

[Illustration: The Life of the Colony at Cape Cod.]

They based their civil authority upon this Mayflower compact,
practically ignoring England. Carver was the first governor, Bradford
the second. The colony was named Plymouth in memory of hospitalities
which its members had received at Plymouth, England, the name having no
connection with the "Plymouth" of the Plymouth Company. The members of
the Plymouth Company had none but a mercantile interest in the
adventure, merely fitting out the colonists and bearing the expense of
the passage for all but the first. On the other hand, the stock was not
all retained in England. Shares were allotted to the Pilgrims as well,
one to each emigrant with or without means, and one for every 10 pounds
invested.

Plymouth early made a treaty with Massasoit, the chief of the
neighboring Wampanoags, the peace lasting with benign effects to both
parties for fifty years, or till the outbreak of Philip's War, discussed
in a later chapter. The first winter in Plymouth was one of dreadful
hardships, of famine, disease and death, which spring relieved but in
part. Yet Plymouth grew, surely if slowly. It acquired rights on the
Kennebec, on the Connecticut, at Cape Ann. It was at first a pure
democracy, its laws all made in mass-meetings of the entire body of
male inhabitants; nor was it till 1639 that increase of numbers forced
resort to the principle of representation. In 1643 the population was
about three thousand.

[Illustration: Signatures to Plymouth Patent.
/In witnes whereof the said President & Counsell haue to the one pt of
this pute Indenture sett their seales* And to th'other pt hereof the
said John Peirce in the name of himself and his said Associate haue sett
to his seale geven the day and yeeres first aboue written/]

[1626-1630]

Between 1620 and 1630 there were isolated settlers along the whole New
England coast. White, a minister from Dorchester, England, founded a
colony near Cape Ann, which removed to Salem in 1626. The Plymouth
Company granted them a patent, which Endicott, in charge of more
emigrants, brought over in 1628. It gave title to all land between the
Merrimac and Charles Rivers, also to all within three miles beyond each.
These men formed the nucleus of the colony to which in 1629 Charles I.
granted a royal charter, styling