Plymouth Colony

Origins

English Separatists who had left the Church of England, many of them after years of exile in Leiden, sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 and landed at Plymouth on Cape Cod Bay. Before landing, 41 men signed the Mayflower Compact, agreeing to form a civil body politic. Half the settlers died in the first winter.

Rule and society

The Pilgrims survived with help from the Wampanoag Confederacy, whose sachem Massasoit made an alliance with them in 1621. William Bradford, governor for most years until 1657, wrote the history Of Plymouth Plantation. The colony had no royal charter, governing itself through an annual General Court of freemen, and lived by farming, fishing and the fur trade. It remained small, with perhaps 7,000 people by 1690.

Decline and legacy

King Philip's War in 1675 to 1676 devastated the colony. It was absorbed into the Dominion of New England in 1686, and after that collapsed, the charter of 1691 merged Plymouth into the Province of Massachusetts Bay.