No doubt the influential company of friends who were debating a removal to New England were informed of Cradock's proposition before it was mooted in the company on the 28th of July. The plan was probably thought of in consequence of their objection to emigration under the Virginia system. Cradock's proposition was at least the turning point of their decision. Nearly a month later, on the 26th of August, the leaders of Winthrop's party assembled to the number of twelve, at Cambridge, and solemnly pledged themselves, "in the presence of God who is the searcher of all hearts," "to pass the Seas (under God's protection) to inhabit and continue in New England." The preamble states the object of this migration. It was not civil liberty, the end that political Puritans had most in view, and certainly there is no hint of a desire for religious liberty. Even the conversion of the Indian is not uppermost in this solemn resolve. "God's glory and the church's good" are the words used. This has the true ring of the Puritan churchman. The whole pledge is couched in language befitting men who feel themselves engaged in a religious enterprise of the highest importance. This pledge contained a notable proviso. The signers agreed to emigrate only on condition that "the whole government together with the patent for said plantation" should be transferred and legally established in the colony by order of the General Court of the Company, and that this should be done before the last of the ensuing month. There was opposition to the removal of the government, and this peremptory condition was necessary. Three days later, after a debate, the company voted that its government should be transferred to Massachusetts Bay. [Sidenote: Removal of the charter.] [Sidenote: 1629.] [Sidenote: Note 8.] [Sidenote: Compare Palfrey, i, 371, and Deane's note in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. 1869, p. 185.] [Sidenote: Hutchinson's Hist. Mass., p. 31.]