First, if we should sink under this burden, your opportunity of seasonable help would be lost in three respects; you could then only reinforce us or secure yourselves there at three times the risk and expense of the present undertaking; the suffering we should have borne, if through your neglect, would much reduce the acceptableness of your help afterwards; those amongst you who are now full of courage and zeal, would be dispirited and less able to support so great a burden. Secondly, it is very important to hasten the conclusion of this war before the end of this summer, otherwise the news of it will discourage both your and our friends from coming over to us next year, besides the further risk and loss it would expose us to, as yourselves may judge. Thirdly, if the Lord please to bless our endeavours, so that we end the war, or succeed in it without you, it may breed such ill thoughts in our people towards yours, that it will be thereafter difficult to entertain such opinion of your good-will towards us as is fitting in neighbours and brethren. What ill consequences might result on both sides, wise men may well fear, and would rather prevent than hope to redress. With hearty salutations to yourself and all your council and our other good friends with you I rest, Yours most assured in the Lord, JOHN WINTHROP. _Boston, the 20th of the third month, 1637._ In the meantime the Pequots, especially the winter before, had sought to make peace with the Narragansetts, and used very pernicious arguments to persuade them: the English were strangers, and were beginning to overspread their country, and would deprive them of it in time if they were allowed thus to increase; if the Narragansetts were to assist the English to subdue them, the Pequots, they would only make way for their own overthrow, for then the English would soon subjugate them; but if they would listen to their advice, they need not fear the strength of the English, for they would not make open war upon them, but fire their houses, kill their cattle, and lie in ambush for them as they went about the country—all of which they could do with but little danger to themselves. By these means they easily saw the English could not long hold out, but would either be starved or forced to leave the country. They urged these and similar arguments so strongly, that the Narragansetts were wavering, and half-minded to make peace with them and join them against the English. But when they reconsidered what wrongs they had suffered from the Pequots, and what an opportunity they now had, with the help of the English, to repay them, revenge was so sweet to them that it prevailed over everything else. So they resolved to join the English against them; and they did so.