The government of the Pilgrims respected the principles of religious liberty (which they had learned and imbibed in Holland), did not persecute those who differed from it in religious opinions,[11] and gave protection to many who fled from the persecutions of neighbouring Puritans' government, which was more intolerant and persecuting to those who differed from it in religious opinions than that of James, and Charles, and Laud had ever been to them.

The government of the Pilgrims was frank and loyal to the Sovereign and people of England; the government of the Puritans was deceptive and disloyal to the Throne and Mother Country from the first, and sedulously sowed and cultivated the seeds of disaffection and hostility to the Royal government, until they grew and ripened into the harvest of the American revolution.
These statements will be confirmed and illustrated by the facts of the present and following chapters.
The compact into which the Pilgrims entered before landing from the _Mayflower_, was the substitute for the body politic which would have been organized by charter had they settled, as first intended, within the limits of the Northern Virginia Company.

The compact specified no constitution of government beyond that of authority on the one hand, and submission on the other; but under it the Governors were elected annually, and the local laws were enacted during eighteen years _by the general meetings of the settlers_, after which a body of elected representatives was constituted.
The first _official record_ of the election of any Governor was in 1633, thirteen years after their settlement at Plymouth; but, according to the early history of the Pilgrims, the Governors were elected annually from 1620.

The Governors of the colony were as follows:-- 1.

John Carver, in 1620, who died a few months afterwards; 2.