Their mother was of the nobility, and she was forced into a marriage with her cousin to forge a monetary advantage between the two branches of the family. She and her cousin rarely lived together and generally kept separate residences.
Yet, she somehow became pregnant four times during her marriage. The likely father of her children was her gardener, who was warned away from her by her husband several times.
Eventually, her husband could take the shame no longer and divorced her. As the legal father of the children, he had the right to do whatever he wanted with them.
He took them from their mother and sent them away on the Mayflower, finding Pilgrim passengers willing to take on each child as an indentured servant. While their mother tried for years to get them back, even attempting to go to the New World herself once to retrieve them, she was never able to do so.
Ellen, Jasper, and Mary were all among the large group of Mayflower passengers who died the first winter. Only Richard survived. He became a mariner who went back to England many times, had contact with his family there, and even had a wife and children both in Plymouth Colony and in England at the same time. He is the only Mayflower passenger with a known headstone that can be visited today. Conditions there were less than optimal, and he blamed this on the leadership.
He instigated mutiny, and was put on the next ship back to England, where he was almost hanged for the attempted insurrection. Having been blown by severe storms some miles off course to the North, the Mayflower landed at what is now Plymouth Massachusetts on the New England coast at the Cape Cod hook. Samuel de Champlain 's map of Plymouth Harbor. The star marks the approximate location of the settlement. Together they founded, on November 21, , the second successful English settlement in the New World and the first to be self-governed under a document, the Mayflower Compact , written and consented to by the majority of them for their common good.
In , theirs was the third marriage in the colony. They had 10 children. Today the Alden descendants, one of whom is the webmaster of this site, is the largest group of Mayflower descendants in the country. Their beliefs and objections to the Church of England were similar to those of the Puritans.
Only the congregation could decide matters for the local church By , they had concluded that their differences with the Church were irreconcilable but they could not separate from the Church. To do so was unlawful and a punishable offense under the Act of Uniformity.
Therefor, in , they emigrated to Leiden , Holland where they found religious tolerance, for a time, but also severe culture shock. Model of a typical ton 17th century English merchantman showing the cramped conditions that had to be endured. There they met the ton merchantman Mayflower and the additional colonists.
On August 15th, the two ships set sail. But Speedwell began seriously leaking and the two ships docked at Dartmouth. After repairs, they set out again but again, more than miles at sea, Speedwell leaked severely and the two ships returned and docked at Plymouth.
Speedwell was abandoned; the master, crew, and some of the passengers embarked on the already crowded Mayflower. Finally, on September 15th, the Mayflower sailed alone. It was the height of the North Atlantic storm season making the journey more than miserable for the colonists.
Huge waves constantly crashed against the top side deck. One Stranger was swept overboard but managed to grab a trailing halyard and was pulled back on board. The colonists were so sea sick that they could not get up. There were two deaths and one birth at sea. On November 19th, having been blown some miles off course to the North, they sighted land which was present day Cape Cod. The tried to sail south to their intended destination in the Virginia Colony but strong seas forced them back.
On November 21st, , they set anchor in the harbor at Cape Cod hook and determined to found their colony there. That same day some of the Strangers disputed what provisions of law governed them. Because of delays in London they had sailed without a completed Charter. Some of the Strangers thought that the colony thus had no legal basis and they were free to do as they would. The troublemakers threatened to do as they pleased "for none had power to command them," wrote William Bradford.
Three thousand miles from home, a real crisis faced the colonists even before they stepped ashore. Imagine the situation: over people, cut off from any government, with a rebellion brewing. Only staunch determination would help the Pilgrims land and establish their colony. If they didn't work as a group, they could all die in the wilderness. The Pilgrim leaders realized that they needed a temporary government authority.
Back home, such authority came from the king. Isolated as they were in America, it could only come from the people themselves. Aboard the Mayflower, by necessity, the Pilgrims and "Strangers" made a written agreement or compact among themselves. The Mayflower Compact was probably composed by William Brewster, who had a university education, and was signed by nearly all the adult male colonists, including two of the indentured servants.
The format of the Mayflower Compact is very similar to the written agreements used by the Pilgrims to establish their Separatist churches in England and Holland. Under these agreements the male adult members of each church decided how to worship God.
They also elected their own ministers and other church officers. This pattern of church self-government served as a model for political self-government in the Mayflower Compact. The colonists had no intention of declaring their independence from England when they signed the Mayflower Compact.
In the opening line of the Compact, both Pilgrims and "Strangers" refer to themselves as "loyal subjects" of King James.
The rest of the Mayflower Compact is very short. It simply bound the signers into a "Civil Body Politic" for the purpose of passing "just and equal Laws.
Immediately after agreeing to the Mayflower Compact, the signers elected John Carver one of the Pilgrim leaders as governor of their colony. They called it Plymouth Plantation. When Governor Carver died in less than a year, William Bradford, age 31, replaced him. Each year thereafter the "Civil Body Politic," consisting of all adult males except indentured servants, assembled to elect the governor and a small number of assistants.
Bradford was re-elected 30 times between and In the early years Governor Bradford pretty much decided how the colony should be run. Few objected to his one-man rule. As the colony's population grew due to immigration, several new towns came into existence. The roving and increasingly scattered population found it difficult to attend the General Court, as the governing meetings at Plymouth came to be called.
By , deputies were sent to represent each town at the other General Court sessions. Not only self-rule, but representative government had taken root on American soil. The English Magna Carta, written more than years before the Mayflower Compact, established the principle of the rule of law. In England this still mostly meant the king's law. The Mayflower Compact continued the idea of law made by the people.
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