The case was very different with another of these earliest settlements, which deserves especial mention as coming directly in the line of causation which led to the founding of Massachusetts by Puritans.  For some years past the Dorchester adventurers—­a small company of merchants in the shire town of Dorset—­had been sending vessels to catch fish off the New England coast.  In 1623 these men conceived the idea of planting a small village as a fishing station, and setting up a church and preacher therein, for the spiritual solace of the fishermen and sailors.  In pursuance of this scheme a small party occupied Cape Ann, where after two years they got into trouble with the men of Plymouth.  Several grants and assignments had made it doubtful where the ownership lay, and although this place was not near their own town, the men of Plymouth claimed it.  The dispute was amicably arranged by Roger Conant, an independent settler who had withdrawn from Plymouth because he did not fully sympathize with the Separatist views of the people there.  The next step was for the Dorchester adventurers to appoint Conant as their manager, and the next was for them to abandon their enterprise, dissolve their partnership, and leave the remnant of the little colony to shift for itself.  The settlers retained their tools and cattle, and Conant found for them a new and safer situation at Naumkeag, on the site of the present Salem.  So far little seemed to have been accomplished; one more seemed added to the list of failures.

But the excellent John White, the Puritan rector of Trinity Church in Dorchester, had meditated carefully about these things.  He saw that many attempts at colonization had failed because they made use of unfit instruments, “a multitude of rude ungovernable persons, the very scum of the land.”  So Virginia had failed in its first years, and only succeeded when settled by worthy and industrious people under a strong government.  The example of Plymouth, as contrasted with Wessagusset, taught a similar lesson.  We desire, said White, “to raise a bulwark against the kingdom of Antichrist.”  Learn wisdom, my countrymen, from the ruin which has befallen the Protestants at Rochelle and in the Palatinate; learn “to avoid the plague while it is foreseen, and not to tarry as they did till it overtook them.”  The Puritan party in England was numerous and powerful, but the day of strife was not far off and none might foretell its issue.  Clearly it was well to establish a strong and secure retreat in the New World, in case of disaster in the Old.  What had been done at Plymouth by a few men of humble means might be done on a much greater scale by an association of leading Puritans, including men of wealth and wide social influence.  Such arguments were urged in timely pamphlets, of one of which White is supposed to have been the author.  The matter was discussed in London, and inquiry was made whether fit men could be found “to engage their persons in the voyage.”