Financial Backing.

The survival of the Plymouth Colony planted in 1620 spurred others to think about settlements in the same area. In 1622 Thomas Weston gave up on Plymouth and financed another group at Wessagusset in Boston harbor. The next year the Dorchester Adventurers, a group of investors who were interested in the codfish industry, attempted to set up a permanent base on the mainland, but only a small settlement arose at Naumkeag. In 1628 the New England Company for a Plantation in Massachusetts-Bay received a grant that included some of the lands already given. John Endicott led fifty new colonists in June to the Naumkeag settlement, which would become Salem, Massachusetts. The most important group, The Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, received a royal charter in 1629. Many of its stockholders were Puritans, people who believed that the Church of England still...