United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
The relations between the colony and the London merchant adventurers,
never very pleasant, became more unsatisfactory as time went on. The
colonists naturally wanted to bring over their friends at Leyden, but
the partners regarded Robinson as the great leader of the
Independents, and London was already rife with rumors of the heretical
character of the rulers at Plymouth. It seemed to the partners
evidently for their interest to introduce settlers of a different
religious opinion from Bradford and Brewster, and to this was largely
due the fact that the emigrants who came over after the Mayflower's
return in 1621 had little in common with the original band of
Pilgrims.
In January, 1624, arrived another miscellaneous cargo, including a
minister named John Lyford. Upon his arrival he professed intense
sympathy with the settlers, and when they received him as a member of
their church he renounced, pursuant to the extreme tenets of
Separatism, "all universall, nationall, and diocessan churches."[11]
Nevertheless, he joined with John Oldham, who came the year before, in
a conspiracy to overturn the government; but was detected and finally
banished from the colony. In March, 1625, Lyford and Oldham went to
Wessagusset, from which they moved with Roger Conant and other friends
to Nantasket, where, in the mean time, a new settlement had sprung up.
In the division of 1623, the region around Cape Ann fell to Lord
Sheffield, and the same year he conveyed the country to Robert Cushman
and Edward Winslow in behalf of the colonists at Plymouth.[12] The
next year the new owners sent a party to establish a fishing stage at
Cape Ann, but they found other persons on the spot, for in 1623 some
merchants of Dorchester, England, who regularly sent vessels to catch
fish in the waters of New England, had conceived the idea of planting
a colony on the coast, and in the summer of that year landed fourteen
men at Cape Ann, soon increased to thirty-four.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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