After a single vain attempt to establish a colony at Sagadahoc, the Plymouth Company confined its activities to trade and exploration within the region to which John Smith in 1614 gave the name of New England. Sir Fernando Gorges was one of the patentees actively interested in these ventures; and in 1620 he procured, for himself and associates to the number of forty, a charter which transformed the old company into a close corporation under the title of the New England Council or Corporation for New England. Upon the patentees the charter conferred the sole right to trade, to grant title to land, and to establish and govern colonies within the region between 40 deg. and 48 deg., north latitude, in America. The New England Council possessed neither the capital nor the popular support necessary for engaging in colonizing ventures; and during the fifteen years of its existence it did little but sublet to others the rights which it possessed. Of the council's land grants, of which there were many both to individuals and to corporations, and which, often conflicting, furnished the grounds for innumerable future disputes, four only are important as the basis of permanent colonies in New England. The territory at Plymouth was granted to the Pilgrims in 1621; in 1628 the territory between the Merrimac and the Charles Rivers was conveyed to the Company of Massachusetts Bay; and two grants made in 1629, of territory between the Merrimac and the Piscataqua to John Mason, of territory between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec to Fernando Gorges, mark the beginnings of the colonies of New Hampshire and Maine. All its ventures profited the New England Council nothing. February 3, 1635, the territory within its jurisdiction was parceled out among the patentees, and on June 7, its charter of fruitless privileges was surrendered.