Meanwhile Mr. Weston had organized his larger expedition, and it was already on the sea, having sailed from London about the 1st of April. Thus Thomas Weston played a very prominent part in the early settlement of Weymouth, as he had already done in that of Plymouth. He was always called a merchant, but in fact he was a pure sixteenth century adventurer of the Smith and Raleigh stamp,--a man whose brain teemed with schemes for the deriving of sudden gain from the settlement of the new continent. We first get sight of him in Leyden in connection with the Pilgrim fathers,--the treasurer, the representative, the active, moving spirit of the company of Merchant Adventurers of London, who then were looking for the material with which to effect a settlement within the Virginia patent. Mr. Treasurer Weston had some acquaintance with the Leyden exiles, and, knowing how dissatisfied they were with their experience in Holland, he had pitched on them as the best material for the work in hand. They were then negotiating with the Dutch government for a grant of lands in what is now New York. Weston persuaded them to abandon this scheme, promising them, on the part of his associates, aid, both in money and in shipping. When the Speedwell arrived at Southampton from Delfthaven, bearing the fortunes of the little colony between its decks, it was Weston who came down from London to arrange the last details of the adventure. But the meeting was not a propitious one. The parties fell out as to certain alterations proposed to the original agreement between them, and Weston returned to London, telling the emigrants as a parting word that they must expect no further aid from him. Out of this disagreement grew the scheme of another and independent settlement. Weston apparently concluded that he had made a mistake in his choice of agents. A mere adventurer, he looked only to pecuniary results. The return of the Mayflower in the spring of 1621 without a cargo was a great disappointment to him, and he did not delay writing to the struggling settlers that a good return cargo by the next ship was absolutely essential to the life of the enterprise. They did make an effort, therefore, to load the Fortune with such articles as the country afforded, but before the venture reached England Weston had abandoned the Plymouth colony in disgust, sold out his interest in the Merchant Adventurers’ company and was already meditating his new and rival enterprise. He cared more for beaver-skins in hand than for empires hereafter, and the Plymouth people appeared to him to discourse and argue and consult when they should have been trading.[4] His confidence in the success of a trading post on Massachusetts Bay was not shaken, but he shared in the general belief of the day that families were an incumbrance in a well organized plantation, and that a settlement made up of able-bodied men only could do more in New England in seven years