Early in July two trading ships from London, the Charity and the Swan, entered Plymouth harbor. These ships brought fifty or sixty emigrants, who intended to settle in the country as the agents of a company in England. It was their object to establish a colony to trade with the Indians. The expedition was fitted out by Mr. Thomas Weston, a wealthy merchant in London, and hence the new-comers were generally called Weston’s men. Many of them were utterly devoid of principle, profane and profligate. Mr. Cushman wrote in reference to them: “They are no men for us, and I fear that they will hardly deal so well with the savages as they should. I pray you, therefore, to signify to Squantum that they are a distinct body from us, and we have nothing to do with them, nor must be blamed for their faults, much less can warrant their fidelity.” Mr. John Pierce wrote respecting them: “As for Mr. Weston’s company, they are so base in condition for the most part, as in all appearance not fit for an honest man’s company. I wish they might prove otherwise.” At the time of the arrival of these rude and hungry adventurers, the Pilgrims had their gardens filled with growing vegetables, and they had sixty acres planted with corn, just then in the green ear. At that time, when boiled or roasted, it made very palateable food. But it was wasteful to use it in that state unless there were great abundance. When ripened it contained much more nutriment, and would go much farther in feeding the hungry. But these wretched men, though received hospitably by the Pilgrims, and treated with the utmost kindness, requited them by robbing their gardens and their cornfield. Their little growing harvest was thus most cruelly wasted. Indeed these godless wretches seemed wantonly to destroy the growing crop. Having no religion of their own, and only a God to swear by, they insulted, with oaths and ribald jests, those devout men, who daily looked in prayer to God for guidance, and whose voices were often blended in Christian hymns. The Pilgrims seem to have been more grieved in view of the influence the conduct of these men would exert upon the savages, than by the outrages to which they themselves were exposed. Mr. Winslow wrote: “Nevertheless, for their master’s sake, who formerly had deserved well from us,[28] we continued to do them whatever good or furtherance we could, attributing these things to the want of confidence and discretion, expecting each day when God, in his providence, would disburden us of them, sorrowing that their overseers were not of more ability and fitness for their places, and much fearing what would be the issue of such raw and unconscionable beginnings.”[29]