Emigration on a more comprehensive scale than had before been thought of was decided upon. Men of influence and fortune embarked in it, determining, however, to form “a peculiar government, and to colonise only with the best.” To carry out their views fully, it was necessary to obtain a transfer of the charter from the council in England to the freemen now emigrating, and others inhabiting the colony. Bold as this scheme was, it was accomplished. The patent and the government were legally transferred to the emigrants themselves, and the excellent John Winthrop was chosen governor before leaving England. The calm firmness of Winthrop sustained many timid spirits who were alarmed at the unexampled boldness of their undertaking; others again shrank back at the last moment; there was a winnowing out among them, and literally “the best” only went. Years afterwards it was said of this great and good governor, that he was as a mother to the infant colony, “parent-like, distributing his goods and gladly bearing the infirmities of the weak, yet ever maintaining the figure and honour of his place with the spirit of a true gentleman.” Of him Bancroft says, “his character marks the transition of the Reformation into avowed republicanism; when the sentiment of loyalty, still sacredly cherished, was gradually yielding to the irresistible spirit of civil freedom.” Eight hundred persons, all Puritans, inclining to the Calvinistic doctrines, accompanied Winthrop. In the course of the year, seventeen vessels brought over 1,500 persons. It was, however, no garden of Eden, no land of Canaan to which they had come. “Arriving here in June and July,” says Dudley, in his letter to the Countess of Lincoln, who, with her family, was deeply concerned in this emigration, “we found the colony in a sad and unexpected condition, above eighty of them being dead the winter before, and many of those alive, sick and weak; all the bread and corn among them hardly sufficient to feed them a fortnight, insomuch that nearly 200 servants whom we had sent over at great cost, received their liberty, we being wholly unable to feed them.” Salem, at which they had arrived, not wholly pleasing the new-comers, some time was spent in searching the coast for localities more to their mind, and finally some of them settled at Charlestown, others at a short distance where was an excellent spring, and to which they gave the name of BOSTON; some on the Mistic at Medford; others at Watertown and Rocksbury; “others again upon the Saugus at Lynn, between Salem and Charlestown, and the western men four miles south of Boston, at a place they called Dorchester; several of these settlements being now suburbs of Boston.”