In 1623, an association of merchants in Dorchester, England, sent out a party to form a colony near the mouth of the Kennebec, where they had fishing interests. The master, however, landed his men at Cape Ann, in Massachusetts Bay, the site of the present Gloucester. Roger Conant, who, withdrawing from Plymouth "out of dislike of their principles of rigid separation," had made an independent settlement at Cape Ann, was appointed local manager for the Dorchester merchants. In 1626 the merchants abandoned their colony as unprofitable, most of the settlers returning to England; and Conant led those remaining to Salem, then called Naumkeag. Sidenote: White's scheme. John White, a conforming Puritan rector at Dorchester, determined to make this settlement of Dorchester men a success. To the settlers at Naumkeag he sent urgent advice to stay, while at home he set on foot a movement which resulted in a definite scheme of colonization. The arbitrary policy of Charles I. towards dissenters had greatly alarmed the Puritans, and White's plan of "raising a bulwark against the kingdom of Antichrist" in America had the support of many wealthy and influential men. Sidenote: The Massachusetts land grant. In 1628, six persons, heading the movement, obtained from the Plymouth Company a patent for a strip about sixty miles wide along the coast,--from three miles south of Charles River to three miles north of the Merrimack, and westward to the Pacific Ocean, which in those days was thought to be not much farther away than the river discovered by Hendrik Hudson in 1609. This patent conflicted with grants already issued (1622 and 1623) to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, his son Robert, and John Mason, of whom we shall hear later on. Sidenote: The first charter (1628). In September, 1628, John Endicott, gentleman, one of the patentees, arrived at Salem with sixty persons, to reinforce the colony already there, and supersede Conant. The following spring, the patentees being organized as a trading company, the king granted them a charter styling the corporation the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England; their only relationship to the Plymouth Company was now that of purchasers of a tract of the latter's land. Sidenote: Form of government. Under this trading charter the whole body of freemen, or members of the company, was to elect annually a governor, a deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants, who were to meet monthly to perform such public duties as might be imposed upon them by the quarterly meeting of the company, or "Quarter Court." There was also to be an annual meeting, known as "General Court," or "Court of Elections." Laws were to be adopted by the general assembly of "freemen,"--that is, of stockholders,--not contrary to the established laws of England. Endicott was continued as governor of the colony, which was at once recruited by three hundred and eighty men and women of the better grade of colonizing material.