covenant and combine our?elves togeather into a civil body politick for our better ordering and preÅ¿ervation and furtherance of ye end aforeÅ¿aid ... So begins the Mayflower Compact, written in 1620 shortly before the Mayflower Pilgrims stepped ashore. The passage, I need hardly point out, contains some differences from modern English. We no longer use S interchangeably with s, or ye for the*5 A few spellings – Britaine, togeather, Northerne – clearly vary from modern practice, but generally only slightly and not enough to confuse us, whereas only a generation before we would find far greater irregularities (for example, gelousie, conseil, audacite, wiche, loware for jealousy, council, audacity, which and lower). We would not nowadays refer to a ‘dread sovereign’, and if we did we would not mean by it one to be held in awe. But allowing for these few anachronisms, the passage is clear, recognizable, wholly accessible English. Were we, however, somehow to be transported to the Plymouth colony of 1620 and allowed to eavesdrop on the conversations of those who drew up and signed the Mayflower Compact, we would almost certainly be astonished at how different – how frequently incomprehensible – much of their spoken language would be to us.
