Mayflower Compact

The Mayflower Compact was a 1620 agreement by male passengers aboard the Mayflower to form a civil government and obey laws made for the colony’s general good.

Mayflower: The English ship that carried the Pilgrims to New England in 1620. Its passengers signed the Compact after their voyage brought them outside their intended settlement jurisdiction.
Civil government: The institutions and authority through which a community makes and enforces public rules. The Compact’s central purpose was to establish civil government among the settlers.
Plymouth Colony records: Documents produced by the government and inhabitants of Plymouth Colony. Colonial records preserve the Compact’s text and place it within the settlement’s early governance.
Mayflower Oath: An informal name sometimes applied to the Mayflower Compact as an oath of allegiance and mutual agreement. The label highlights the Compact’s binding promises rather than treating it as a full constitution.
Plymouth Colony: An English settlement established in present-day Massachusetts in 1620 by passengers from the Mayflower. The agreement supplied a civil framework for the colony founded after the ship’s landing.
Social contract: A political idea that legitimate authority arises from an agreement among people. The Compact’s mutual promises resemble a social contract, though it was not a modern democratic constitution.
William Bradford: An English Separatist leader who served as governor of Plymouth Colony and chronicled its history. Bradford’s history recounts the Compact’s signing and explains the circumstances surrounding it.
Fundamental Orders of Connecticut: A 1639 written framework of government for the Connecticut River towns. Unlike the Compact’s brief pledge, the Orders set out a more detailed structure of government.
Separatists: English Protestants who broke from the Church of England to form independent congregations. Many signers were Separatists seeking a community governed by their religious commitments.
Common good: The welfare or shared benefit of a political community as a whole. The signers justified lawmaking by its contribution to the colony’s general good.

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