The Leyden leaders had apparently favored purchasing also the larger vessel still needed for the voyage, hoping, perhaps, to interest therein at least one of their friends, Master Edward Pickering, a merchant of Holland, himself one of the Adventurers, while Master Weston had, as appears, inclined to hire.  From this disagreement and other causes, perhaps certain sinister reasons, Weston had become disaffected, the enterprise drooped, the outlook was dubious, and several formerly interested drew back, until shipping should be provided and the good faith of the enterprise be thus assured.

It transpires from Robinson’s letter dated June 14., before quoted (in which he says:  “For shipping, Master Weston, it should seem is set upon hiring"), that Robinson’s own idea was to purchase, and he seems to have dominated the rest.  There is perhaps a hint of his reason for this in the following clause of the same letter, where he writes:  “I do not think Master Pickering [the friend previously named] will ingage, except in the course of buying [’ships?’—­Arber interpolates] as in former letters specified.”  If he had not then “ingaged” (as Robinson intimates), as an Adventurer, he surely did later, contrary to the pastor’s prediction, and the above may have been a bit of special pleading.  Robinson naturally wished to keep their, affairs, so far as possible, in known and supposedly friendly hands, and had possibly some assurances that, as a merchant, Pickering would be willing to invest in a ship for which he could get a good charter for an American voyage.  He proved rather an unstable friend.

Robinson is emphatic, in the letter cited, as to the imperative necessity that shipping should be immediately provided if the enterprise was to be held together and the funds subscribed were to be secured.  He evidently considered this the only guaranty of good faith and of an honest intention to immediately transport the colony over sea, that would be accepted.  After saying, as already noted, that those behind-hand with their payments refuse to pay in “till they see shipping provided or a course taken for it,” he adds, referring to Master Weston:  “That he should not have had either shipping ready before this time, or at least certain [i.e. definite] means and course, and the same known to us, for it; or have taken other order otherwise; cannot in [according to] my conscience be excused.”

Bradford also states that one Master Thomas Weston a merchant of London, came to Leyden about the same time [apparently while negotiations for emigration under their auspices were pending with the Dutch, in February or March, 1620], who was “well acquainted with some of them and a furtherer of them in their former proceedings.... and persuaded them.... not to meddle with the Dutch,” etc.  This Robinson confirms in his letter to Carver before referred to, saying:  “You know right well we depend on Master Weston alone,.... and when we had in hand another course with the Dutchman, broke it off at his motion.”