Some of the late comers had sailed not under articles of agreement with the company of Merchant-adventurers, but on their individual account; so they landed free from those conditions which shackled the elder settlers. Under these circumstances it was thought fit, ere these outsiders were received and permitted to settle and build in Plymouth, to exact of them certain specified conditions precedent. So reasonable a requisition won ready assent, and an agreement was signed to this effect: The colony on its part, the outsiders on theirs, covenanted to show each the other all reasonable courtesies; all were to be alike subject to such laws and orders as were already made, or might thereafter be made, for the public good; the outsiders were freed and exempted from the general employments which the communal condition required of its participants, except for purposes of defence and such work as tended to the lasting welfare of the colony; they were taxed for the maintenance of the government, and debarred from traffic with the Indians for their individual profit, until the expiration of the seven years which tied the colonists to the communality.[466] Towards the middle of September, while the Pilgrims were in the midst of their harvest labors, Robert Gorges, a son of Sir Ferdinand Gorges, famous as a _voyageur_ and discoverer, sailed into Plymouth bay.[467] He had recently returned from the Venetian wars, and now came armed with a commission from the New England council as governor-general of the territory from Acadia to Narragansett Bay.[468] With him were families of emigrants equipped to commence a settlement, and a learned and worthy clergyman of the English church, William Morrel, an important item of whose mission was to “exercise superintendence over the New England churches.”[469] Gorges tarried at Plymouth about a fortnight, receiving friendly and cordial entertainment.[470] He had been advised to select Admiral West, Christopher Levett, and the existing governor of Plymouth, as his advisers. This he did; and in this body was vested the full authority to administer justice in all cases, “capital, criminal, and civil,” throughout the province of New England.[471] This arranged, Gorges sailed for Wessagusset, the site of Weston’s discomfiture, and, landing his colonists, essayed to plant on that inauspicious coast a permanent settlement.[472] This colony, like its predecessor, was fated. Hardly surviving its birth, it lingered through a twelvemonth, and then dissolved. Sir Ferdinand Gorges and his company, discouraged by the opposition of the Parliament to their New England schemes, would adventure nothing.[473] In the spring of 1624 he summoned his son home; and a little later Morrel, who had made no effort to exercise his superintendency, followed him, and this gave the second settlement at Wessagusset its _coup de grâce_.[474]