prow was turned back toward Cape Cod Harbor, and it became apparent that the effort to locate “near Hudson’s River” was to be abandoned, and a location found north of 41 degrees north latitude, which would leave them without charter rights or authority of any kind.  It is undoubtedly history that Master Stephen Hopkins,—­then “a lay-reader” for Chaplain Buck,—­on Sir Thomas Gates’s expedition to Virginia, had, when some of them were cast away on the Bermudas, advocated just such sentiments—­on the same basis—­as were now bruited upon the may-Flower, and it could hardly have been coincidence only that the same were repeated here.  That Hopkins fomented the discord is well-nigh certain.  It caused him, as elsewhere noted, to receive sentence of death for insubordination, at the hands of Sir Thomas Gates, in the first instance, from which his pardon was with much difficulty procured by his friends.  In the present case, it led to the drafting and execution of the Pilgrim Compact, a framework of civil self-government whose fame will never die; though the author is in full accord with Dr. Young (Chronicles, p. 120) in thinking that “a great deal more has been discovered in this document than the signers contemplated,”—­wonderfully comprehensive as it is.  Professor Herbert B. Adams, of Johns Hopkins University, says in his admirable article in the Magazine of American History, November, 1882 (pp—­798 799):  “The fundamental idea of this famous document was that of a contract based upon the common law of England,”—­certainly a stable and ancient basis of procedure.  Their Dutch training (as Griffis points out) had also led naturally to such ideas of government as the Pilgrims adopted.  It is to be feared that Griffis’s inference (The Pilgrims in their Three Homes, p. 184), that all who signed the Compact could write, is unwarranted.  It is more than probable that if the venerated paper should ever be found, it would show that several of those whose names are believed to have been affixed to it “made their ‘mark.’” There is good reason, also, to believe that neither “sickness” (except unto death) nor “indifference” would have prevented the ultimate obtaining of the signatures (by “mark,” if need be) of every one of the nine male servants who did not subscribe, if they were considered eligible.  Severe illness was, we know, answerable for the absence of a few, some of whom died a few days later.

The fact seems rather to be, as noted, that age—­not social status was the determining factor as to all otherwise eligible.  It is evident too, that the fact was recognized by all parties (by none so clearly as by Master Jones) that they were about to plant themselves on territory not within the jurisdiction of their steadfast friends, the London Virginia Company, but under control of those formerly of the Second (Plymouth) Virginia Company, who (by the intelligence they received while at Southampton) they knew would be erected