return the principal....” John Beauchamp, unlike the more generous Andrews, continued to insist on collecting his debt even though it could never be proved. To settle this claim, Bradford and his partners in 1645 turned over to his attorney houses and lands in Plymouth, Rehoboth, and Marshfield worth £291.[48] It is to Plymouth’s credit that all these obligations were met in the 1640s, because the colony was no longer as prosperous as in the preceding decade. Its wealth had come to consist increasingly of cattle, so that the price collapse which took place when the influx of new settlers into the Bay ceased, came suddenly and with severe effect. Cattle came to be worth perhaps 25% of its former value. Even the wealthier colony of Massachusetts discovered that it could no longer secure credit in England. The Pilgrims nevertheless continued to develop their modest resources in animal stock and land. A new land arrangement reflected the ending of the old debts. Governor Bradford, who had held title to the patent since 1630, along with the “old comers” or “purchasers,” turned over the grant to the whole body of freemen of Plymouth, retaining for himself only three reserved tracts as his reward for carrying the responsibility for repayment. As to Plymouth’s fur trade, the complaint John Winthrop had once voiced that the colony had “engrossed all the chief places of trade” in New England was no longer true. The “Old Colony” had been edged out of the Connecticut River and Narragansett trade, some of its Maine posts had been attacked by the French, and rival settlers and competitors had made the rest less profitable. At Aptucxet commerce with the Dutch kept on for a time, and on the Kennebec there remained an echo of the busy activity of the 1630s. A small group farmed the Indian trade there so that at his death in 1657 Bradford’s stock of trading goods and debts due from it was worth £256. Within a few years, however, all trading goods were brought home and the Kennebec tract sold.[49]