James exhibited his resentment by favoring the interests of a rival company of which Gorges, and Sheffield, and Hamilton, were the leaders. To them a new incorporation was granted, and assuming the title of the “Plymouth Company,” they were empowered “to order and govern New England in America.”[278] Upon the domain of the new corporation the Pilgrims had settled without leave; they were therefore liable to a summary ejectment.[279] The company of Merchant-adventurers, under whose auspices they had sailed, informed of their position by the return of the “Mayflower,” immediately applied to the Plymouth company for a patent which should cover the soil now colonized.[280] It was granted “to John Pierce and his associates,” and was in trust for the benefit of the colony.[281] Thomas Weston, the agent of the Merchant-adventurers, sent a copy of this charter to the Plymouth colonists, accompanying it with a letter in which, after complaining of the long detention of the “Mayflower” in America, and of her return without a cargo, he said that “the future life of the business depended on the lading of the ‘Fortune,’” which being done, he promised never to desert the Pilgrims, even if all the other merchants should do so;[282] adding, “I pray you write instantly for Mr. Robinson to come to you; and send us a fair engrossment of the contract betwixt yourselves and us, subscribed with the names of the principal planters.”[283] While the “Fortune” lay moored in Plymouth harbor, Bradford penned a weighty and dignified reply to Weston’s animadversions. After reciting the incidents which had checkered the twelvemonth of their settlement, including the death of Carver, to whom the agent of the Merchant-adventurers had directed his missive, he said, with an unconscious touch of pathos, “If the company has suffered, on the side of the settlers there have been disappointments far more serious. The loss of many honest and industrious men’s lives cannot be valued at any price. It pleased God to visit us with death daily, and with so general a disease that the living were scarce able to bury the dead, and the well not in any measure sufficient to tend the sick. And now to be so greatly blamed for not freighting the ship, doth indeed go near us, and much discourage us.”[284] Preëminently conscientious, and earnestly desirous to give the Merchant-adventurers no just cause of complaint, the Pilgrim colonists made every effort to secure a speedy and profitable cargo for the “Fortune’s” homeward voyage. The ship was a small one of but fifty-five tons burden;[285] but she was at once “laden with good clapboards, as full as she could stow, two hogsheads of beaver and other skins, with a few other trifling commodities,” in all to the value of five hundred pounds.[286] Barely fourteen days elapsed between her arrival and her readiness to depart.[287]