a certain artificial diversity to an otherwise plain social order.
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The tiny religious brotherhood of Plymouth was only ten years old when settlements began to appear in the region to the north under the auspices of a great mercantile corporation chartered in 1629 as the Massachusetts Bay Company. What a strange contrast the two enterprises presented! The humble farmers, laborers, and artisans who, with their families, composed the bulk of the settlers on Cape Cod belonged to an outlawed religious band. In the eyes of the bishop of London, such sectaries were contemptible trouble-makers, "instructed by guides fit for them, cobblers, tailors, feltmakers, and such-like trash."
On the other hand, the emigrants who founded the Bay Colony belonged to the middle strata of English society. They were not radicals in religion; they wanted moderate reforms in the Church of England but no revolution. They were not dependent for capital upon the good graces of London investors; they were people of substance themselves. A few of them possessed large landed estates in England; some were wealthy merchants; others came from the professional classes; many were scholars of light and learning from the universities; the majority were at first drawn from the yeomanry and renters of farms in the eastern counties of England. On the roll of this Company were the names of Sir Henry Roswell, Sir John Young, Sir Richard Saltonstall, John Endicott, John Winthrop, and other representatives of the landed gentry and commercial classes—the virile and sturdy stock that, as we have said, gave England its Cromwells, Hampdens, and Pyms.
Unlike the Plymouth band, the Massachusetts Company had a formal charter of incorporation from the king. Its members in the manner of such commercial corporations were authorized to enlarge their number, elect a governor and his assistants, make laws, dispose of the immense
