st
president, with eighteen associates, including John Winthrop, Isaac
Johnson, Sir Richard Saltonstall, and other persons of "like quality."
The chief object of these gentlemen in promoting a settlement in New
England was to provide a retreat where their co-religionists of the
Church of England could enjoy liberty in matters of religious worship
and discipline. But the proposed undertaking could not be prosecuted
with success without large means; in order to secure subscriptions for
which the commercial aspect of it had to be prominently presented.

The religious aspect of the enterprise was presented under the idea of
connecting and civilizing the idolatrous and savage Indian tribes of New
England. There was no hint, and I think no intention, of abolishing and
proscribing the worship of the Church of England in New England; for Mr.
White himself, the projector and animating spirit of the whole
enterprise, was a conformist clergyman.[24] It was professedly a
religio-commercial undertaking, and combined for its support and
advancement the motives of religion and commerce, together with the
enlargement of the Empire.

For greater security and more imposing dignity, the "adventurers"
determined to apply for a Royal Charter of incorporation. Their
application was seconded by Lord Dorchester and others near the Throne;
and Charles the First, impressed with the novel idea of at once
extending religion, commerce, and his Empire, granted a Royal Patent
incorporating the Company under the name of "The Governor and Company of
Massachusetts Bay, in New England." But several months before the Royal
Charter was obtained, or even application for it made, Endicot, one of
the stockholders, was sent out with a ship of one hundred emigrants,
and, in consequence of his favourable report, application was made for a
Royal Charter.[25]

It was the conduct of Endicot, a few months after his arrival at
Massachusetts Bay--first condemned and afterwards sustained and
justified by the Directors of the Corporation in London--that laid the
foundation of the future Church history of New England, and of its
disputes with the mother country. Endicot and his one hundred emigrant
adventurers arrived in the summer of 1628, and selected Naumkeag, which
they called Salem, as their place of settlement, the 6th of September.
Endicot was sent, with his company, by the Council for New England, "to
supersede Roger Conant at Naumkeag as local manager."[26] "