The Pilgrims carried with them the patent John Peirce, an adventurer we shall meet again, had taken out from the Virginia Company in February 1620. Realizing that it did not apply as far north as New England, the chief colonists drafted the “Mayflower Compact” to avoid disputes over the colony’s powers of government. The leaders probably knew before they sailed that the old North Virginia Company had been revived under Sir Ferdinando Gorges as the Council for New England. His grant had been authorized in July 1620 but was not sealed until the _Mayflower_ was at sea. If before its departure there was any discussion of heading north, Weston and his associates may have pointed out that later they could solicit a grant from the Council in the Pilgrims’ behalf. When the letters with the news of planting at Plymouth reached England the next spring, they promptly secured such a grant. John Peirce was again named as grantee in the indenture, dated June 1, 1621. Its terms permitted Peirce and his associates to lay out 100 acres of land for every person shipped over, and 1500 for public purposes. Besides giving freedom to fish and trade along the coast, it underwrote the colony’s authority to make laws. No boundaries were mentioned; a formal patent was expected to specify them at a later date.[9] New Plymouth struggles with hardship and debt A successful relationship with the partners in England now lay at the heart of the welfare of the infant colony. Even though some of the London businessmen sympathized with the religious aims of the Pilgrims, they expected the investment of their capital to yield a return, and that rather quickly. Promotion of colonial ventures was new and risky. Weston and the later leaders of the merchant adventurers had not learned from the bitter experience of the large, incorporated Virginia Company that a long time must elapse before any profit could be expected from a colonial undertaking. They failed to calculate that even if the colonists engaged promptly in trading furs or catching fish, their initial task must be to build permanent dwellings and to feed themselves and a fair number of women and children. They knew that ships set forth annually by merchants had fished along the New England coast for several years. These usually erected fishing stages and sometimes traded for furs. They required only a modest outlay by the investors in them and wound up their accounts at the end of each voyage. It was much more costly, on the other hand, to uphold a permanent settlement until it was self-sustaining. When even the wealthy backers of Virginia and Bermuda complained about delayed profits, the small group of capitalists supporting the Pilgrims certainly could not afford to sink large funds for supplies year after year without receiving goods in return. At the beginning they apparently underestimated the extent of their task and seem to have neglected consistently the necessary provision for the Plymouth colony.