Winslow also brought some “clothing and other necessaries; a carpenter, who died soon, but not until he had rendered himself very useful;” a “salt-man,” who proved “an ignorant, foolish, self-willed fellow,” and only made trouble and waste; and “a preacher, though none of the most eminent and rare”—to whose transportation Cushman wrote that he and Winslow had consented only “to give content to some in London.”[486] Winslow informed his coadjutors of a sad “report that there was among the Merchant-adventurers a strong faction hostile to Plymouth, and especially set against the coming of the rest from Leyden”[487]—which explains the long tarry of Robinson and his flock in Holland. “It will be remembered,” remarks Palfrey, “that the London adventurers were engaged in a commercial speculation. Several of them sympathized more or less in religious sentiment with the Pilgrims; but even with most of these considerations of pecuniary interest were paramount, and they were, besides, a minority when opposed to the aggregate of those adventurers who had no mind to interest themselves in religious dissensions to the damage of their prospect of gain. Under such circumstances, the policy of the English partners would naturally be to keep in favor with the court and with the council for New England, of which Sir Ferdinand Gorges and other churchmen were leaders. This it was that occasioned the thwarting embarrassments which were persistently interposed to frustrate Robinson’s wish to collect his scattered flock in America. Neither the Virginia Company, nor the Merchant-adventurers as a body, would have preferred to employ Separatists in founding American colonies, and giving value to their land. But the option was not theirs. At the moment, no others were disposed to confront the anticipated hardships, and none could be relied upon like these to carry the business through. This was well understood on both sides to be the motive for the engagement that was made.