The advantage of their “quiet settlement of government” had been a double benefit: for it seems to have been a fact that liberal Plymouth was free of any interference from England, while the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, on the contrary, were in continual hot water with the Home Government. England probably did not love the Separatists better than she had ever done, but she had no notion of quarrelling with sober, reasonable men who, in consideration of a personal latitude that cost her no inconvenience, were willing that other men, provided they were “civil,” should live according to their individual right; and thereby saved her the trouble of playing arbiter in colonial disputes. England, moreover, was deriving considerable profit from the lusty young colony that, by its enterprise, was tipping the scales in her favor in the trader’s game she was playing with Holland and France. III The Pilgrims had been no visionaries seeking Utopia. They were members of a well-constructed joint-stock company which, as occasion offered, they adapted to the changing needs of the colony; and they were prepared to earn not only a home for themselves, but a return on the money invested in their enterprise by their financial backers, and, if they prospered, a sum sufficient to buy out such interests. It is true that they were, first, religious men seeking religious freedom for themselves, and, if God willed, they would be the bearers of good news to others. Beyond all other reasons pushing them to their adventure, wrote Bradford, was “a great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagation and advancing of the gospel of Christ in those remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping stones unto others for the performing of so great a work.” Yet money as well as zeal was necessary for such an undertaking as theirs, and the Holland exiles were poor. But arrangements were concluded with a company of promoters in London, “Merchant Adventurers” was their more romantic title then, to supply the larger part of the necessary capital, while the Pilgrims as “Planters” should furnish the man power. Their agreement set forth that: “The Adventurers and Planters do agree that every person that goeth, being aged sixteen years and upward, be rated at ten pounds, and ten pounds be accounted a single share”; that “he that goeth in person and furnishes himself out with ten pounds either in money or other provisions be accounted as having twenty pounds in stock, and in the division shall receive a double share”; and “that all such persons as are of this Colony are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all other provisions out of the common stock of said Company.”