ABSTRACT
On November 11, sheltered within Cape Cod Bay and prior to going ashore, the settlers drafted and signed the Mayflower Compact, an agreement that established lines of political authority and allegiance, and in time was interpreted as the seed of American constitutionalism, in both its form and its content. The origins of the Mayflower Compact are traceable to the Virginia Company's charter. The continuities between the Mayflower Compact and the constitutionalism of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution are complex. The contractual form of the agreement, as well as the Pilgrims' embryonic concern for religious liberty and civil rights, mark the Compact as an obvious precursor to America's later process of developing a constitution. According to William Bradford, the Compact's first signatory and the colony's future governor, the Separatists wanted the "churches of God revert to their ancient purity and recover their primitive order, liberty and beauty." .
