Sidenote: Religious aspirations. Although the company was chartered as a trading corporation, its principal object was not gain, but to found a religious commonwealth. It was composed of men of rare ability and tact, as well as of consummate courage. Among them were members of parliament, diplomats, state officials, and some of the brightest and most liberal-minded clergymen in England. The church which they set up in Salem was not at first avowedly Separatist, like that of Plymouth; it was simply a purified English church, with a system of faith and discipline such as they had long insisted upon in the ranks of the mother-church. But under the circumstances this purified church was as independent in its character as the professedly Separatist congregations of Plymouth; and it was not long, as one step led to another, and persecution hurried them on, before the Massachusetts Puritans were, like their brethren in England, full-fledged Independents. Sidenotes: The company moves to America. Character of the founders. Soon there was taken the most important step of all. The Massachusetts company, in the desire for still greater independence, removed its seat of government to the colony, thus boldly transforming itself, without legal sanction, from an English trading company into an American colonial government. In April, 1630, eleven vessels went out to Massachusetts Bay, with a large company of English reformers; and during the year there crossed over to America not less than a thousand English men and women who had found the arbitrary rule of Charles quite unbearable. John Winthrop, a wealthy Suffolk gentleman forty-two years of age, and one of the strongest and most lovable characters in American history, was the first governor under the new arrangement. Thomas Dudley, the deputy, was a stern and uncompromising Puritan, cold and narrow-minded. Francis Higginson, the first teacher, who had come over with Endicott, but died in 1630, was a Cambridge alumnus who had lost his church in Leicestershire because of nonconformity. Skelton, the pastor, was also a Cambridge man. 52. Government of Massachusetts (1630-1634). Sidenote: Salem divides. There were now too many people assembled at the port of Salem for the supply of food, and sickness and hunger prevailed to such an alarming degree that many died in consequence. It became necessary to divide, and independent congregations were established, on the Salem model, at Charlestown, Cambridge, Watertown, Roxbury, and later at Boston, which soon became the capital of the colony (September, 1630). Morton, who had returned to Merrymount, was again driven from the country; Sir Christopher Gardiner, a disturbing element among the settlers, was obliged to withdraw to the Piscataqua: the Puritans now held Massachusetts Bay, and brooked no rival claimants. In establishing this commonwealth in America, the Puritan founders were determined to have things their own way.