Weston had come to discern in the colonizing scheme commercial prospects attractive enough to induce several other London businessmen to join in an unincorporated company to send the Leyden congregation overseas. Besides evidence to be presented later that to a certain extent Puritan religious inclination prompted this support, it is likely that the slump in the trade in woolen cloth, the traditional mainstay of English commerce abroad, was also a factor influencing their decision. The disturbance in the course of that trade due partly to its reorganization by the Crown in 1614 helped favor an interest in various new money-making projects. In the rapid growth and dislocation characteristic of early seventeenth-century London relatively few merchants had heard of New England, but Virginia’s financial difficulties were well known. Captain John Smith had appealed in 1616 to investors in London and the ports of southwestern England to support colonies to produce profits from the fish and furs of New England. Fishermen, some sent by Londoners, already were sailing off the coast, but Smith recommended settling there so that permanent posts could lengthen the fishing season and permit cargos to be prepared for the arrival of the fleets in the spring. Weston and his partners may have regarded the Pilgrims as the human material to carry out such a plan. Perhaps he suggested planting further north than Jamestown. Be that as it may, this promoter was welcomed with enthusiasm when he came to confer with Pastor Robinson and to reassure the discouraged that there was no want of shipping or money. The next step was to persuade his Leyden friends to draw up an agreement with his “merchant adventurers,” and set forth in black and white the terms under which they would receive aid and he could persuade his fellow-investors to contribute. 1620--Pilgrims and merchants form a joint stock company