WHEREAS it hath pleased the Lord to move the Heart of our dread Sovereign Charles by the Grace of God King etc. to grant Licence and Libertye to sundry of his subjects to plant themselves in the Westerne parts of America. We his loyal Subjects, Brethren of the Church in Exeter, situate and lying upon the River Pascataqua, with other Inhabitants there, considering with ourselves the holy Will of God and our own Necessity that we should not live without wholesom Lawes and Civil Government among us, of which we are altogether destitute; do in the name of Christ and in the Sight of God combine ourselves together to erect and set up among us such Government as shall be to our best discerning agreeable to the Will of God, professing ourselves Subjects to our Sovereign Lord King Charles according to the Libertyes of our English Colony of Massachusetts, and binding ourselves solemnly by the Grace and help of Christ, and in his Name and fear, to submit ourselves to such Godly and Christian Lawes as are established in the realm of England to our best Knowledge, and to all other such Lawes which shall upon good grounds be made and enacted among us according to God, that we may live quietly and peaceably together in all godliness and honesty. Mo. 8. D. 4. 1639, as attests our Hands. John Wheelwright [and thirty-four other names]. 47. The Peirce Charter, June, 1621 _Massachusetts Historical Society Collections_, Fourth Series, II, 158 ff. Finding themselves within the jurisdiction of the newly reorganized Plymouth Council (or New England Council), the Pilgrims secured from that body the following grant through their London partners. Peirce was intended to act as trustee while the partnership lasted. Cf. _American History and Government_, # 55, and (for the documents regarding Peirce's later attempt to steal the colony) Arber's _Story of the Pilgrim Fathers_, 259, 260.