Founding document · 1620

The Mayflower Compact

Before going ashore at Cape Cod, 41 male passengers of the Mayflower signed a brief covenant binding themselves together into a “civil Body Politick” and promising obedience to the “just and equal Laws” they would frame for the general good of the colony. It is dated November 11, 1620, under the Old Style calendar then used in England. The original document is lost; its text survives through Mourt’s Relation (1622) and William Bradford’s manuscript history Of Plymouth Plantation.

“…covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony…”

Forty-one male passengers of the Mayflower, November 11, 1620

Why it matters

It served as the founding framework of Plymouth Colony’s government and has long been cited as an early American expression of self-government by mutual consent.

Read the full text at avalon.law.yale.edu

Primary Source

The original record, reproduced or linked from the institution that holds it. Primary sources show what people said and did in their own words.

Subjects

founding self-government consent of the governed colonial america

From the library

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