ENGLISH HISTORICAL COMMENTARY The Mayflower Compact, November 21, 1620 IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN. 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, &c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour 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 Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience. IN WITNESS whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini; 1620. Mr. John Carver, Mr. William Mullins, Mr. William Bradford, Mr. William White, Mr Edward Winslow, Mr. Richard Warren, Mr. William Brewster. John Howland, Isaac Allerton, Mr. Steven Hopkins, Myles Standish, Digery Priest, John Alden, Thomas Williams, John Turner, Gilbert Winslow, Francis Eaton, Edmund Margesson, James Chilton, Peter Brown, John Craxton Richard Britteridge John Billington, George Soule, Moses Fletcher, Edward Tilly, John Goodman, John Tilly, Mr. Samuel Fuller, Francis Cooke, Mr. Christopher Martin, Thomas Rogers, Thomas Tinker, Mr. John Allerton, John Ridgdale Thomas English, Edward Fuller, Edward Doten, Richard Clark, Edward Liester Richard Gardiner, The Mayflower's compact historical commentary Kind of text: From my point of view, I consider it, as a Legal, Political and a Testimonial text, because it's a witness of all the settlers, due to different causes, such as: a) there were Religious Puritans who had escaped to Dutchland, and wanted to prosper, b) there were adventurers, looking for a new way of life. c) there were people who only wanted to make money out of the patent. I consider it legal, because it sets a set of a new Law system for them, free men “Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony” Temporal frame WHAT HAPPENED IN ENGLAND IN 1600s There is a change in the Dynasty, from the Tudor Era of Mary Tudor, who wanted to restore the Catholicism, and thus she is called Bloody Mary, due to her brutally actions against Protestants. Now, there is a new Era, the Era of the Stuarts (House of Stuarts) and it unificated the thrones of England and Scotland, and their banishment and restoration would mark a time of tremendous social upheaval. The first Stuart, James I, boasted that he was an old and experienced king, but he and his son found that their subjects meant to instruct them. These kings believed in their “Divine Right” to rule as they chose, but the villagers had another path, that of king had to consult their people in Parliament. The refusal of the Stuarts to understand this tradition of parliamentary liberty ended up with a civil war, in which British people emerged victorious. Charles I was executed in 1649 and since then they couldn`t find no satisfactory alternative to take the place fo a monarch, so in 1660 they came back. Looking outwards, it was a time of great expansions, so the explorations of the world, begun by Elisabethan reign, was impulsed under the Stuarts and Richard Cromwell. With new discoveries, Britain's first empire began to take shape. In 1609, Hudson explored the river and bay in Canada; some fifty years later, the Hudson Bay Company, chartered by Charles II, would have a monopoly in the region. In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers sailed to America and founded Plymouth Colony in New England. A year later, there were attempts to colonize Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Three years after that, Virginia became a crown colony, and a decade later, the first settlers went to Maryland. In 1646, the Bahamas were colonized and New York was seized from the Ducth. It was also a period where many of the things that are now part of our everyday life appeared for the first time in Britain. Tobacco, coffee and chocolate becaeme part of a fashinable life. Potatoes were part of everyone's diet by 1670. Forks for eating were introduced from Italy. The first newspapers, the first insurance companies for property, logarithms, the slide-rule, the first papent laws and copyright laws, postal services, calculating machines and the barometer, the first coke furnaces for smelting iron ore, were all introduced during this time. When James I (1603-1625) came from Scotland to claim his new throne, he started a new age in Britain. He was supremely self-confident of his ability to rule England as he has ruled Scotland. The king was an intellectual in an age which had little time for subtlety, but he had little undestanding of English history. His proposals for the toleration of Catholics were tactlessly presented to an unwilling Parliament, and swept away by the anti-Catholic feelings which followed the discovery of the gunpodwer plot to blow up the king in 1605 At the time, when the monarchy became monolithic, divisions in Britain were growing. Religion was the main cause of division. Fears of King James' liberal attitudes to religion and his Presbyterian background were amongst the causes of the celebrated Gunpodwer Plot of November 1605, in which the plotters, led by Robert Catesby, aimed to blow up Parliament. The plot was betrayed and Guy Fawkes, a former soldier in the Spanish army in the Netherlands, was discovered with the gunpodwer beneath the Houses of Parliament. He was tried by the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Thomas Fleming, and was hung, drawn and quartered. King James I lacked common sense, the supreme virtue of Elizabeth's counsellor, Robert Cecil, who also served James as chief minister. After Cecil's death in 1612, James abandoned all his policies. Cecil had negociated Jame's succession and acted as a treasurer until his death. The one legacy Cecil left behind was Hatfield House, the incomparable work of wealth, taste and dynastic pride, which he had buitl in the Hertfordshire. Thereafter, James relied on men whose contemporaries deemed unsatisfactory as chief advisers: Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, and George Villiers, Ducke of Buckingham, both of whom had been rapidly elevated to the peerage by the king. One of the James first quarrels with his subjetcs concerned foreign policy. His over-riding concern was to avoid the expense of foreign wars and so he made peace with Spain, reversing a policy which Englishmen had come to regard as a way of life. Another problem was that the Puritans of England were prospering, and they wished to prosper further by destroying the Spanish monopoly of trade with the Americas. At the same time, James I was convinced that he could settle the bitter religious strife that was dividing his kingdom by imposing a compromise. In 1617, James published a Book of Sports, which allowed certain games to be played on Sundeays. For the Puritans, this was the final proof that James had turned his face against true religion. Three years later, the Mayflower set sail with its first cargo of Puritan exiles. The Pilgrim Fathers were bound for a new world, where they could practice their religious beliefs freely. In Britain, the king and the people were set on a collision course. The firs of the confrontations which were to lead England to civil war came when the House of Commons asserted its strength by impeaching the Lord Chancellor, Francis Bacon, in 1621. Bacon was the most original thinker who ever served a Stuart Monarch. He combined a long and distinguished career in the government service with a leading place in the world of science and letters. His works, together with those of his contemporary, the biologist William Harvey, constitute the most enduring contribution of the age to the progress of scientific thought and discovery. WHAT HAPPENED TO AMERICA IN 1600s The process of colonization of North America was an invasion of territory that had been controlled and settled for centuries by the indigenous population. The arrival of the Europeans constituted an intrusion, which, in the long term, the American Indians were unable to resist. The indigenous tribes had come to North America during the last ice age from the Asian continent from Siberia to Alaska, when the sea levels dropped and a land bridge was uncovered in the Bering Strait. Over time they spread all over the American continent. Christopher Columbus has discovered America in 1492. A few years later, the most powerful European nations began to claim areas of the American continent and establish colonies there. There was a contest among European powers to exploit these new lands, which they were determined to take control of. It did not even occur to them that the lands were the shared property of the indigenous population. Some of the indigenous Americans traded with the Europeans and became dependent on European goods. The Europeans brought new germs with them to which the American Indians had no natural resistance.