The company, so organized, proceeded to arrange for a local government in Massachusetts, confirming Endicott as governor, and associating with him a council of thirteen. This was to include the three clergymen then there, the two Brownes, and two of the old planters, if the latter group should desire such representation. Efforts were made to conserve as equitably as possible the rights of those former settlers, and other instructions for the conduct of the company's affairs were forwarded to Endicott a few weeks after the grant of the charter.[292] Writing home, at the end of the first summer, Higginson stated that, on their arrival, they had found “aboute a half score houses, and a fair house newly built for the Governor,” and that, including the newcomers and old settlers, about three hundred people were planted in the colony, of whom two thirds were at Salem and the remainder at Charlestown.[293] “But that which is our greatest comfort and means of defence above all others,” he continued, “is that we have here the true religion and holy ordinances of Almighty God taught amongst us. Thanks be to God, we have here plenty of preaching, and diligent catechising, with strict and careful exercise.” Footnote 292: Young, _Chron. Mass._, pp. 141-71. Footnote 293: F. Higginson, _New England's Plantation_; Young, _Chron. Mass._, pp. 258 _f._ [Illustration: Original Share in Massachusetts Bay Company Massachusetts Historical Society ] As we noted in an earlier chapter, many writers have insisted greatly upon the rigid distinction between the Pilgrims, as Separatists, and the Puritans, as mere Nonconformists. Not only, however, were the members of the several communities by no means agreed as to what constituted Separatism and Nonconformity, but, in the American wilderness, such distinctions rapidly ceased to have any but a disputatious value, with, at intervals, political reverberations in England. The Pilgrims, at the time of their emigration from Holland, may have been strict Separatists or on the way to becoming mere non-Separatist Independent Puritans;[294] and the leaders of the churches of Massachusetts for many years denied any Separatism on their own part or that of the Pilgrims. John Cotton wrote categorically, in 1647, that “for New England there is no such church of the Separation at al that I know of.”[295] On the other hand, many, of all shades of religious belief, refused to acknowledge this view of the matter. They found it impossible to answer Roger Williams's query as to “what is that which Mr. Cotton and so many hundreths fearing God in New England walk in, but a way of separation?”[296] Indeed, in view of the open and patent facts, the only possible answer was the casuistical one of Cotton and the other leaders, that they had separated, “not from the Churches in Old England, as no Churches, but from some corruptions found in them.”[297] As these corruptions were