In 1629 a number of leading Puritans in England bought of the Plymouth Company a large tract of land, bounded by the Charles and Merrimac Rivers and stretching inland indefinitely. They got a charter from Charles I and incorporated as the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay. Under John Winthrop, a wise and able man, they came over to Salem, bringing 1000 persons, with horses and cattle, and during that year Charlestown, Chelsea, and a small hilly peninsular, called by the Indians Shawmut and by the English Trimountain, or Tremont, and soon changed to Boston, from which the leading settlers had come, were settled. By 1634 nearly 4000 settlers had arrived from England, coming usually in congregations, led by their minister and settled together in parishes or townships until there were about twenty. In 1636 it was voted to establish a college three miles from Boston at a place called New Town, now Cambridge. A young clergyman, John Harvard, bequeathed his books and half his estate and the new college was called by his name. The colonization of New England was a complicated affair. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was the largest. South of it was the Plymouth Colony, the oldest. Then there was Rhode Island and Providence Plantation and the Connecticut Colony. In 1643 these four Colonies formed a confederation for defense called the United Colonies of New England. In 1692 King William arranged things to his liking; he annexed the Plymouth Colony to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but let Connecticut and Rhode Island keep their beloved charters, and so the Plymouth Colony forever after remained a part of Massachusetts. The establishment of the New England Confederacy, the division of the ancient church, the annexation to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the loss of wealth and population, marked the end of Plymouth as an independent Colony, but not of the great influence which the Plymouth Colony and the Pilgrims have exerted, and, we hope, will continue to exert with increasing force, in perpetuating, as it originally established, our democratic form of government. [Illustration: (decorative icon)] [Illustration: The signing of the Mayflower Compact in the cabin of the Mayflower] THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT _Signed in the Cabin of the “Mayflower,” Nov. 11th, Old Style, Nov. 21st, New Style, 1620_