Still, they were forbidden to start their own churches. The Church of England, they believed, was corrupt. For years they had been seeking a place to worship in freedom and in peace. Of the 102 passengers, a third were Puritan Separatists. In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the 11 th of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, 1620. Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith, and the honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid and by virtue thereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be though most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King defender of the Faith, etc.: Before heading ashore, 41 male passengers signed a now-famous document - the Mayflower Compact. It dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod on November 11, 1620. This fall marks the 400 th anniversary of the Mayflower’slanding at Plymouth Rock.

“But it is a narrative that resonates with America.” Plymouth wasn’t where America formally began, Philbrick told me. It is a magnificent retelling of one of America’s origin stories. His book Mayflower: Voyage, Community, and Warwas a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. “In the beginning, there was Plymouth,” Nathaniel Philbrick told me.

Mayflower voyage community war