And so the council went on, debating the question warmly, and yet with a brotherly love and harmony covering all differences, until in the end it was resolved that Winslow the diplomatist should be sent as envoy to Boston to declare in the first place the willingness of Plymouth to help her younger but more powerful sister against the common foe, yet at the same time bringing forward various causes of complaint as yet unredressed, and demanding more consideration in the future. These complaints were, first, the refusal of the Bay government to help Plymouth against the French who had seized her trading-post at Kennebec; second, their allowing their people to fraternize and trade with the usurpers; third, the insult and injury done to the Pilgrims at Windsor in Connecticut, where a great body of people from Watertown and Cambridge had swooped down upon the land bought by Plymouth from the Indians, and occupied by them as a trading-post, retaining forcible possession of it, and encouraged by the Bay to do so. To these three unredressed complaints Winslow was to add a reminder of the fact, seldom forgotten by the Bay Colony, that they were much more numerous and much more wealthy than Plymouth, and apparently quite able to conduct their own quarrel through their own resources. For, as the envoy was especially directed to say, the Colony of Plymouth had hitherto lived at peace with the aborigines, and had no complaint to make of either the Pequots or any other tribe. And now, this matter arranged for the moment, although much further trouble was to come of it, the Court turned its attention to a subject so much more personal, and near to their hearts as old friends and associates, that its presence in their minds had added austerity to Brewster’s mien, and thoughtfulness to that of Bradford, while it acted as a spur to the captain’s fiery temper. Upon the table lay a formal petition, drawn by Edward Winslow, and signed by Myles Standish, John Alden, Elder Brewster and his two sons Jonathan and Love, Eaton, Soule, Samson, Bassett, Collier, Cudworth, De la Noye, and half a dozen more substantial men, who in decorous and respectful language represented that they and their families already composed a community equaling that of Plymouth, and begged to be incorporated as a town under the name of Duxbury, and to have the approval of the mother-church in their choice of the Rev. Ralph Partridge as their minister. The petition had first been presented some four years before this time, but so deep and heartfelt was Bradford’s opposition to this distinct separation of the original colony, and so varied his expedients to prevent it, that the motion had never fairly been carried until now, when an opportunity offered to secure the eloquent and devout Cambridge scholar as pastor, and it was essential that the town should have an assured being and resources.