Massachusetts Bay Company

Massachusetts Bay Company, English trading company that evolved into a theocracy, organized in 1628 as the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England. The Council of New England granted the Massachusetts Bay Company, under the leadership of John Endecott, a piece of land between the Charles and Merrimack rivers. Puritan leaders in England, including John Winthrop, who in 1629 was elected first governor of the colony, saw it as a religious and political refuge; under the Cambridge Agreement (1629), Puritans (advocates of a more purely Protestant church of England) would immigrate to New England on the condition that control of the government and the charter of the company be given to the settlers. This agreement had far-reaching results in that suffrage in the colony came to be restricted to adherents of the Puritan philosophy, and the emphasis was shifted from trade to religion. Arriving in 1630, Winthrop and some 900 colonists went first to Salem, then to Charleston, and finally settled at the mouth of the Charles River, where Boston was established. Here the company and colony remained one until 1684, when the charter was revoked. Another charter was granted in 1691 extending the power of the Massachusetts colony over Plymouth and Maine.