of Wards. Disillusioned as to life
in England because of financial losses and family bereavements, and now
barred from his customary employment by act of the Government, he turned
his thoughts toward America. Acting with the approval of the Earl of
Warwick and in conjunction with a group of Puritan friends--Thomas
Dudley, Isaac Johnson, Richard Saltonstall, and John Humphrey,--he
decided in the summer of 1629 to leave England forever, and in September
he joined the Massachusetts Bay Company. Almost immediately he showed
his capacity for leadership, was soon elected governor, and was able
during the following winter to obtain such a control of affairs as to
secure a vote in favor of the transfer of charter and company to New
England. The official organization was remodeled so that only those
desiring to remove should be in control, and on March 29, 1630, the
company with its charter, accompanied by a considerable number of
prospective colonists, set sail from Cowes near the Isle of Wight in
four vessels, the _Arabella_, the _Talbot_, the _Ambrose_, and the
_Jewel_, the remaining passengers following in seven other vessels a
week or two later. The voyages of the vessels were long, none less than
nine weeks, by way of the Azores and the Maine coast, and the distressed
Puritans, seven hundred altogether, scurvy-stricken and reduced in
numbers by many deaths, did not reach Salem until June and July. Hence
they moved on to Charlestown, set up their tents on the slope of the
hill, and on the 23rd of August, held the first official meeting of the
company on American soil; but finding no running water in the place and
still pursued by sickness and death, they again removed, this time to
Boston, where they built houses against the winter. With the founding of
this colony--the colony of Massachusetts Bay--a new era for New England
began.

This grant of territory to the Massachusetts Bay Company and of the
charter confirming the title and conveying powers of government put a
complete stop to Gorges's plans for a final proprietorship in New
England. Gorges had acquiesced in the first grant by the New England
Council because he thought it a sub-grant, like that to Plymouth, in no
way injuring his own control. But when in 1632, he learned the true
inwardness of the Massachusetts title and discovered that Warwick and
the Puritans had outwitted him by obtaining royal confirmation of a
grant that extinguished his own proprietary rights,