Up to now Weston had been the Pilgrims’ chief supporter in all the business dealings with the London group. He had promised never to fail them if only they signed the onerous terms required by the latter. Before the plundered _Fortune_ returned to port, this giver of plausible assurances was the first to desert them. One reason probably was the dispute with his former factor in the Low Countries, Edward Pickering. Near the end of 1621 Pickering left Amsterdam and broke off dealings with Weston. In the suit about accounts connected with their Dutch business, he asserted that Weston owed him hundreds of pounds. A protracted legal wrangle, continued even after Pickering’s death and after Weston had departed for New England, revealed the latter’s word to be far from reliable. One witness claimed that he heard Weston’s brother promise to give some kind of an accounting, not necessarily a true account. Arbitrators investigating the contradictory claims of both parties finally concluded that a matter of some £200 prevented a settlement, but Weston, stubborn and contentious, filed a countersuit against Pickering for a bond of £1500. It seems clear that other adventurers for Plymouth agreed with Pickering in this contest, since John Fowler, James Sherley, and Richard Andrews, as his executors, continued the case after his death. Weston meanwhile had written Bradford that he disagreed with the rest of the adventurers over their course of action, reproaching them for their “parsimony” in waiting for favorable receipts before they sent provisions. Then he and another stockholder, John Beauchamp, sent out a group of settlers on their own account as a private venture, entirely distinct from the general stock. Weston’s men not only brought no victuals for the colony, but relied on the Pilgrims to furnish them necessary shelter and obliged them to dip into their own precious stores of seed corn and salt.