Sherley insisted that he had sold no furs for his own profit, but had informed Beauchamp and Andrews when he disposed of any. In a final balance of all records he was sure that Plymouth would still owe him money, not he owe his copartners, for the latter had adventured absolutely nothing since 1631. He, not they, had carried the burden in London in the “sickly” years of 1635 and 1636. With this defense, Bradford says, Beauchamp and Andrews failed to win the suit,[46] and indeed, Sherley’s letters confirm that his credit was sorely taxed in the 1630s. Through arbiters, Plymouth and London reach a financial settlement While this dispute was in progress, however, the Pilgrims were so perplexed about its rights that they were persuaded to send 1,325 pounds of beaver directly to the other two partners, hoping to satisfy their claims that Sherley had paid them nothing. After selling it, Beauchamp chalked off £400 of their debt, but Andrews, through mismanagement, sold his at a loss and in 1642 still claimed between £500 and £600. He finally agreed to accept payment in cattle to Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay and designated the “godly poor men” and “poor ministers” of that colony as the beneficiaries of Plymouth’s debt. In addition, Andrews and Beauchamp received land in Scituate, one of several flourishing daughter towns now settled in Plymouth.[47] Meanwhile the business with Sherley was wound up at last. Trade with him had already broken off because of distrust of his repeated delays in accounting to his London partners. For fear of legal reprisals from any of these, it was decided not to risk sending another agent to London but to have some “gentlemen and merchants in the Bay” hear the dispute. Even “though it should cost them all they had in the world,” the “Undertakers” promised to accept their award. This decision was prompted by two considerations. First, they feared that the price of cattle, by now a greater source of income than furs, might drop and change their circumstances. Also, the colony’s founders, surviving into old age, wished to clear up their affairs before death overtook them. Sherley himself believed that lawyers would be “the most gainers” from legal action, and therefore selected John Atwood and William Collier, recent merchant arrivals in Plymouth from London, to draw up a composition. Another participant in the settlement was Edmund Freeman, Beauchamp’s brother-in-law, and now the leading citizen of Sandwich. After laborious days of investigation of accounts, they estimated everything left in Plymouth of the old stock, housing, boats, the bark and goods for the Indian trade, and “all debts, as well those that were desperate, as others more hopeful,” at £1400.