There can be no doubt, however, that the matter was well known to Winthrop and others of those who were contemplating emigration in the summer of 1629. Not only was Gawsell a neighbor and friend of Winthrop, but all steps taken by the Massachusetts group seem to have been talked over with Warwick and Rich.[310] John Winthrop, now in his forty-third year, who was living the life of a country squire at Groton, in Suffolk, and was a small office-holder under government, had been anxiously watching the course of affairs. Of a sensitive and deeply religious nature, strongly attached to the Puritan cause, he could not but regard the future with the greatest anxiety. “The Lord hath admonished, threatened, corrected and astonished us,” he wrote to his wife in May, 1629, “yet we growe worse and worse, so as his spirit will not allwayes strive with us, he must needs give waye to his fury at last.... We sawe this, and humbled not ourselves, to turne from our evill wayes, but have provoked him more than all the nations rounde about us: therefore he is turninge the cuppe toward us also, and because we are the last, our portion must be, to drinke the verye dreggs which remaine. My dear wife, I am veryly persuaded, God will bringe some heavye Affliction upon this lande, and that speedylye.”[311] In addition to his fear that all hope of civil, as well as of even a moderate degree of religious, liberty was rapidly fading, Winthrop was also much troubled by the prospects for his personal social and financial position. A few months earlier, he had written to his son Henry, at that time a settler in Barbadoes, that he then owed more than he was able to pay without selling his land; and throughout all his letters and papers of the period runs the same strain of anxiety over money matters.[312] Although possessed of a modest estate, which, when subsequently sold, realized £4200,[313] the demands of a large family, and the increased cost of living, were more than he could meet. In June, he was, in addition, deprived of his office under the Master of the Wards, and wrote to his wife that “where we shall spende the rest of or short tyme I knowe not: the Lorde, I trust, will direct us in mercye.”[314] Footnote 310: _Ibid._, p. 47. Footnote 311: R. C. Winthrop, _Life and Letters of John Winthrop_ (Boston, 1869), vol I, p. 296. Footnote 312: _Ibid._ vol. I, p. 286. Footnote 313: Letter from J. Winthrop, Jr.; _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series V, vol. VIII, p. 28. Winthrop had appraised it at £5760. R. C. Winthrop, _J. Winthrop_, vol. II, p. 78. Footnote 314: _Ibid._, vol. I, pp. 214 _ff._, 301 _f._