But only "the minor part [of Robinson's congregation], with Mr.Brewster, their elder, resolved to enter upon this great work." They embarked at Delft Haven, a seaport town on the River Maeser, eight miles from Delft, fourteen miles from Leyden, and thirty-six miles from Amsterdam.

The last port from which they sailed in England was Southampton; and after a tempestuous passage of 65 days, in the _Mayflower_, of 181 tons, with 101 passengers, they spied land, which proved to be Cape Cod--about 150 miles north of their intended place of destination.

The pilot of the vessel had been there before and recognised the land as Cape Cod; "the which," says Bradford, "being made and certainly known to be it, they were not a little joyful."[6] But though the Pilgrims were "not a little joyful" at safely reaching the American coast, and at a place so well known as Cape Cod; yet as that was not their intended place of settlement, they, without landing, put again to sea for Hudson river (New York), but were driven back by stress of weather, and, on account of the lateness of the season, determined not to venture out to sea again, but to seek a place of settlement within the harbour.
As the Pilgrims landed north of the limits of the Company from which they received their patent, and under which they expected to become a "body politic," it became to them "void and useless." This being known, some of the emigrants on board the _Mayflower_ began to make "mutinous speeches," saying that "when they came ashore they would use their own liberty, for none had power to command them." Under these circumstances it was thought necessary to "begin with a combination, which might be as firm as any patent, and in some respects more so." Accordingly, an agreement was drawn up and signed in the cabin of the _Mayflower_ by forty-one male passengers, who with their families constituted the whole colony of one hundred and one.[7] Having thus provided against disorder and faction, the Pilgrims proceeded to land, when, as Bradford says, they "fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element."[8] Of the manner of their settlement, their exposures, sufferings, labours, successes, I leave the many ordinary histories to narrate, though they nearly all revel in the marvellous.[9] I will therefore proceed to give a brief account of the Plymouth government in relation to religious liberty within its limits and loyalty to the Mother Country.
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: From the nature of the facts and questions discussed, the following history is largely _documentary_ rather than popular; and the work being an _historical argument_ rather than a popular narrative, will account for repetitions in some chapters, that the vital facts of the whole argument may be kept as constantly as possible before the mind of the reader.] [Footnote 2: Burke's (the celebrated Edmund) Account of European Settlements in America.

Second Edition, London, 1758, Vol.II., p.

143.] [Footnote 3: Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, pp.