distress, from which they were
happily saved by a ship-captain, John Huddleston, from the colony on
James River, who shared his supplies with them, and thus enabled them
to "make shift till corn was ripe again." Weston's emigrants were a
loose set, and before they left in August they stole most of the green
corn, and thus Plymouth was threatened with another famine.
Fortunately, about this time another ship from Virginia, bearing the
secretary of state, John Pory, arrived, and sold the colonists a
supply of truck for trading; by which they bought from the Indians not
only corn, but beaver, which proved afterwards a source of much
profit.

Weston's people removed to Wessagusset (modern Weymouth), on
Massachusetts Bay, where they conducted themselves in so reckless a
manner that they ran the double risk of starvation and destruction
from savages. To save them, Bradford, in March, 1623, despatched a
company under Captain Miles Standish, who brought them corn and killed
several of the Indians. Then Standish helped Weston's "rude fellows"
aboard ship and saw them safely off to sea. Shortly after Weston came
over to look after his emigrants, fell into the hands of the Indians,
escaped to Plymouth, where the colonists helped him away, and returned
in October, 1623, to create more disturbance.

Weston was not the only one of the partners that gave the colonists
trouble. John Pierce took advantage of the prominence given him by the
patent issued in his name for the benefit of all, to get a new one
which made him sole actual owner of the territory. His partners
resented this injustice, and the Council for New England, in March,
1623, was induced to revoke the grant to Pierce.[5]

About this time Bradford made a great change in the industrial system
of the colony. At Plymouth, as at Jamestown, communism was found to
breed "confusion and discontent," and he tried the experiment of
assigning to every family, in proportion to its size, a tract of land.
In July, 1623, arrived sixty other settlers, and the old planters
feared another period of starvation. Nevertheless, when harvest-time
arrived, the wisdom of Bradford's appeal to private interest was
demonstrated, for instead of misery and scarcity there was joyfulness,
and "plentie of corn." Later experience was equally convincing, for,
as Bradford wrote many years after, "any general wante or famine hath
not been known amongst them since to this day."

While the Pilgrim fathers