In 1607 the Pilgrams had fled England under religious persectution. Or rather, they had been antagonizing the Church of England, which was treason - take your pick of viewpoint. At any rate their departure was as fugitives from the law. They "smuggled" themselves from England but were betrayed at the final moment and had nearly all their possessions and money seized in a last second raid, but they had made it out. They went to Holland, first to Amsterdam but ultimately making a home in Leiden. They grew several hundred strong. They werent happy about raising their children as Dutch and, in 1620, war was about to break out and they would be unable to travel or to bring anyone else over from England. Worse yet, soon all the Leiden born Pilgrams might be denied English citizenship and inheritance rights. The decision was made to try the new world as the "savage natives" were certainly a better option to deal with than the "brutal Spaniards". There was one problem, they had only modestly recovered (mainly through textile work) from the loss of their money in England and cost of relocation to Holland.

The poor pilgrams procured funds mainly by selling investors on the idea, creating "shares" to be repayed in goods from the colony. The pilgrams found investors in The Merchant Adventurers, who raised an estimated 7,000 pounds for the planned establishment of a settlement within Virginia by the Pilgrams. According to surviving letters, some original investors included: Robert Cushman, Joseph Pocock, William Thomas, Mr. Gibbs, Chistopher Coulson, William Greene, John Pierce, Edward Pickering, and William Pierce. The Merchant Adventurers also sold passes to private individuals seeking profit in the colony of Virginia, who Pilgram William Bradford would label the "strangers." With a massive lack of venture capital availability less than a decade after the disaster that was The Virginia Company's financial investment in Jamestown, they could only establish this contract with specific constraints. John Carver, a Pilgram leader and the first governor of Plymouth Plantation, was sent to London to negotiate with instructions not to give away the goose. Unfortunately for Carver, The Merchant Adventurers refused any deals unless all property and production was communally held, giving investors what they felt was their best chance at recovering the investment. The Pilgrams had no choice but to accept; they were out of time, money, and options. They made the deal and launched for the New World in September of 1620.

By the spring of 1623 things were not going very well in terms of growth and production. The colonists were frustrated and the investors were growing impatient, the Mayflower not only returning empty nearly a year after departing but then learning of the "Great Sickness" that killed half the settlers and occupied the other half with nighttime burials to conceal the extent of their situation to watching natives while also struggling to survive themselves. Their communal system of ownership, largely placed on them by their investors, began to be seen more as a corporate servitude in which your contributions did not equal your benefits. Bradford wrote:

All this while no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.

The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labours and victuals, clothes, etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men's wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it. Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have been worse if they had been men of another condition. Let none object this is men's corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.

The "common cause" was the communal gardening, hunting, trapping, skinning, sewing, fishing, cleaning type chores each family needed to survive. They stopped that and went to common defense, holding militia and similar functions in the communal trust but holding land, labor, and result in private (individual) trust. You hunt a deer, it's your deer. Previously it was "our" deer.

Bradford, William. Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620--1647. Edited by Samuel Eliot Morison. New York: Modern Library, 1967.