A single sentence of Governor John Winthrop's has been taken often as sufficient proof that the grantees so intended. Indeed (except for the groundless assumptions of 1 and 2 above, and for the equally worthless consideration discussed in 4 below) there is _no other evidence_.[34] Winthrop states that, in drawing up the charter, there was at first a clause which would have fixed the Company in England, "and, with much difficulty, _we_ got it abscinded." Winthrop is high authority. But this sentence was written =fifteen years after the event=, and it is interjected hastily, _as a parenthesis_, in a bitter controversy (_Life and Letters_, II, p. 443). It could have been only "hearsay" at the best; since Winthrop did not belong to the Company until some months after the charter was secured (though he seems to have forgotten that for the moment when he says "we"). Such evidence would prove little in a law court, even if there were no evidence on the other side. But there is evidence on the other side,--abundant, conclusive, unimpeachable. (1) The abstract of the charter (docket) presented to the king by his legal advisors shows with absolute certainty that they and the grantor expected the charter powers to be exercised "here in England" (No. 54 below). (2) The official records of the Company, _made at the time_, declare explicitly that Governor Cradock's proposal to transfer the charter to America (five months after it was granted) was "conceived by himself." Further, _the general tenor_ of those records for those five intervening months agree wholly with the idea that the Company then had no thought of leaving England (see some extracts, No. 57 below), and they contain, in their fifty odd pages, no single suggestion of the other sort. Most conclusive of all, the _Records_ show that even after the surprised Company had come to look with approval upon Cradock's proposal, they could not easily adjust their plans and financial interests to the new movement. (Advanced students will find the proof in the _Records_. It is impossible to represent them here in the necessary complete detail to show this. It may be added, however, that Cradock's proposal of July 28 was first debated, then deferred a month for _secret_ consideration; then debated, in two meetings, by assigned sets of debaters for the two sides of the argument; then legal advice was sought, with what result, we don't know; and afterwards many plans were discussed as to how the transfer _could_ be made without "prejudicing" the interests of the majority of the Company[35]. See Nos. 57, 58, for some of the evidence.)