hmen
but not to one unknown or poorly esteemed. The miseries that confronted
the Pilgrims during their first year in Plymouth colony were not due to
the inhospitality of the region, but to the time of year when they
landed upon it; and insufficiently provisioned as they were before they
left England, it is little wonder that suffering and death should have
accompanied their first experience with a New England winter.

This little group of men and women landed on territory that had been
granted to the New England Council and they themselves had neither
patent for their land nor royal authority to set up a government. But
some form of government was absolutely necessary. Before starting from
Southampton, they had followed Robinson's instructions to choose a
governor and assistants for each ship "to order the people by the way";
and now that they were at the end of their long voyage, the men of the
company met in the cabin of the _Mayflower_, and drew up a covenant in
accordance with which they combined themselves together into a body
politic for their better ordering and preservation. This compact, signed
by forty-one members, of whom eleven bore the title of "Mister," was a
plantation covenant, the political counterpart of the church covenant
which bound together every Separatist community. It provided that the
people should live together in a peaceable and orderly manner under
civil authorities of their own choosing, and was the first of many such
covenants entered into by New England towns, not defining a government
but binding the settlers to unite politically as they had already done
for religious worship. John Carver, who had been chosen governor on the
_Mayflower_, was confirmed as governor of the settlement and given one
assistant. After their goods had been set on shore and a few cottages
built, the whole body "mette and consulted of lawes and orders, both for
their civil and military governmente, still adding therunto as urgent
occasion in severall times, and as cases did require."

Of this courageous but sorely stricken community more than half died
before the first winter was over. But gradually the people became
acclimated, new colonists came out, some from the community at Leyden,
in the _Fortune_, the _Anne_, the _Charity_, and the _Handmaid_, and the
numbers steadily increased. The settlers were in the main a homogeneous
body, both as to social class and to religious views and purpose. Among
them were und