The accession of two men so important as Winthrop and Dudley served to bring matters speedily to a crisis. Their embarkation in April, 1630, was the signal for a general movement on the part of the English Puritans. Before Christmas of that year seventeen ships had come to New England, bringing more than 1000 passengers. This huge wave of immigration quite overwhelmed and bore away the few links of possession by which Gorges had thus far kept his hold upon the country. In January, 1629, John Gorges had tried to assert the validity of his late brother's claim by executing conveyances covering portions of it. One of these was to John Oldham, a man who had been harshly treated at Plymouth, and might be supposed very ready to defend his rights against settlers of the Puritan company. Gorges further maintained that he retained possession of the country through the presence of his brother's tenants, Blackstone, Maverick, Walford, and others on the shores of the bay. In June, 1629, Endicott had responded by sending forward some fifty persons from Salem to begin the settlement of Charlestown. Shortly before Winthrop's departure from England, Gorges had sent that singular personage Sir Christopher Gardiner to look after his interests in the New World, and there he was presently found established near the mouth of the Neponset river, in company with "a comly yonge woman whom he caled his cousin." But these few claimants were now at once lost in the human tide which poured over Charlestown, Boston, Newtown, Watertown, Roxbury, and Dorchester. The settlement at Merrymount was again dispersed, and Morton sent back to London; Gardiner fled to the coast of Maine and thence sailed for England in 1632. The Puritans had indeed occupied the country in force.