The 102 founders of the Plymouth plantation in America, who had travelled from Plymouth in England in the Mayflower in 1620. Some of them had been persecuted as separatists from the Church of England, and the nucleus of them had fled from Scrooby in Nottinghamshire in 1608 to Holland. In 1618 they obtained backing from a syndicate of London merchants and permission to settle in Virginia. On the voyage, having no charter, they subscribed to a covenant for self-government, the Mayflower Compact. They landed at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in December, where they decided to settle. Only half the party survived the first winter.