(b) Sir Dudley Carleton, the English ambassador at the Hague, doubtless promptly reported these negotiations to the King, through Sir Robert Naunton;

(c) The King, naturally enough, probably mentioned the matter to his intimate and favorite, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the leading man in American colonization matters in the kingdom;

(d) Sir Ferdinando Gorges, recognizing the value of such colonists as the Leyden congregation would make, anxious to secure them, instead of permitting the Dutch to do so, and knowing that he and his Company would be obnoxious to the Leyden leaders, suggested, as he admits, to Weston, perhaps to Sandys, as the Leyden brethren’s friends, that they ought to secure them as colonists for their (London) Company;

(e) Weston was dispatched to Holland to urge the Leyden leaders to drop the Dutch negotiations, come under English auspices, which he guaranteed, and they, placing faith in him, and possibly in Sandys’s assurances of his (London) Virginia Company’s favor, were led to put themselves completely into the hands of Weston and the Merchant Adventurers; the Wincob patent was cancelled and Pierces substituted;

(f) Weston, failing to lead them to Gorges’s company, was next deputed, perhaps by Gorges’s secret aid, to act with full powers for the Adventurers, in securing shipping, etc.;

(g) Having made sure of the Leyden party, and being in charge of the shipping, Weston was practically master of the situation.  He and Cushman, who was clearly entirely innocent of the conspiracy, had the hiring of the ship and of her officers, and at this point he and his acts were of vital importance to Gorges’s plans.  To bring the plot to a successful issue it remained only to effect the landing of the colony upon territory north of the 41st parallel of north latitude, to take it out of the London Company’s jurisdiction, and to do this it was only necessary to make Jones Master of the ship and to instruct him accordingly.  This, with so willing a servant of his masters, was a matter of minutes only, the instructions were evidently given, and the success of the plot—­the theft of the may-Flower colony—­was assured.

To a careful and candid student of all the facts, the proofs are seemingly unmistakable, and the conclusion is unavoidable, that the may-Flower Pilgrims were designedly brought to Cape Cod by Captain Jones, and their landing in that latitude was effected, in pursuance of a conspiracy entered into by him, not with the Dutch, but with certain of the nobility of England; not with the purpose of keeping the planters out of Dutch territory, but with the deliberate intent of stealing the colony from the London Virginia Company, under whose auspices it had organized and set sail, in the interest, and to the advantage, of its rival Company of the “Northern Plantations.”

It is noteworthy that Jones did not command the may-Flower for another voyage, and never sailed afterward in the employ of Thomas Goffe, Esq., or (so far as appears) of any reputable shipowner.  Weston was not such, nor were the chiefs of the “Council for New England,” in whose employ he remained till his death.