place to build our homes and prepare against the winter that will be down upon us long before we kin get to Virginia. [mob agrees heartily]

CARVER

Men—men—quiet—hark to me! We've no right under our charter to settle here!

PETER

Then tear up the charter. [mob agrees]

CARVER

Tear up the charter? Have no government? Nay, we can't do that!

PETER

We be freemen, Master Carver; we have a right to a voice in what we'll do, and what we won't do—and we all want to land here, don't we, men? [all agree]

CARVER

But if we make our home here, we are outside the King's rule.

PETER

We'll rule ourselves—we be free-born Englishmen! [all agree]

CARVER

Mayhap—if that is your wish—

ALL

It is!

Aye, aye! [etc.]

CARVER

It may be for the best interest of the company and for the glory of Jehovah. I consent to your wishes. [cheers] But it behooves us to enter into a compact, one with the other—that no man may say, once we have landed in New England, that we have no law and cannot punish the disobedient.

PETER

May it please ye, sir, we be more than willing for the masters to write a compact that all can sign to be governed like any free-born Englishmen by the will o' the majority—[all agree]

CARVER

So be it—let the masters of the company join me in my cabin, and we shall make a compact joining all the company of freemen into a body politic. [cheers]

ANNOUNCER

And so in the cabin of the Mayflower the masters of the company, twelve in number, met in the first American legislative assembly and drew up one of the most famous documents in American history—the Mayflower Compact—which organized the first self-governing community in the New World.