Without a single surviving letter of Allerton’s, stating his point of view about the Pilgrims, it is difficult to judge his career. We know that as a busy merchant and projector he continued to shuttle back and forth across the Atlantic and up and down the American coast from northern Maine to New Amsterdam. His own ventures in the _White Angel_, which he hired and later bought from Sherley, turned out badly, but the fault of placing part of its debts on Plymouth’s account seems to have been Sherley’s. Allerton set up a rival post at Machias, Maine, “to run into every hole and into the river of the Kennebec to glean away the trade ... there”; after its capture by the French, his pinnace traded in the Penobscot region. During a season of fishing at Marblehead for Matthew Cradock, a London promoter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, Allerton nevertheless continued to be named an assistant of the Plymouth colony and was a freeman there as late as 1637. In 1633 he was the richest man in Plymouth; he lent large sums of money to other settlers, including his sister’s husband. Merchants of Massachusetts and New Netherland did not distrust him, even though Winslow wrote from England in 1637 to warn Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts that Allerton was too friendly with “our common adversaries,” those who were thinking of securing a royal commission to govern all of New England. He wrote: “... the truth is he loveth neither you nor us.” The former agent was, in fact, primarily a businessman, without strong religious or sentimental ties. He certainly “abused” the trust of his old comrades by saddling them with such heavy debts, but his acts seem unscrupulous rather than calculated dishonesty. He took risks which, if they turned out badly, hurt other people. In short, this maker of “fair propositions and large promises” was led into temptation by dreams of wealth; in this he was like many another promoter. Ultimately, his bad judgment and ill luck brought him losses, and he died insolvent in New Haven in 1659.[44] The colony and its London partners dispute over their accounts