rulers at Plymouth. It seemed to the partners
evidently for their interest to introduce settlers of a different
religious opinion from Bradford and Brewster, and to this was largely
due the fact that the emigrants who came over after the Mayflower's
return in 1621 had little in common with the original band of
Pilgrims.

In January, 1624, arrived another miscellaneous cargo, including a
minister named John Lyford. Upon his arrival he professed intense
sympathy with the settlers, and when they received him as a member of
their church he renounced, pursuant to the extreme tenets of
Separatism, "all universall, nationall, and diocessan churches."[11]
Nevertheless, he joined with John Oldham, who came the year before, in
a conspiracy to overturn the government; but was detected and finally
banished from the colony. In March, 1625, Lyford and Oldham went to
Wessagusset, from which they moved with Roger Conant and other friends
to Nantasket, where, in the mean time, a new settlement had sprung up.

In the division of 1623, the region around Cape Ann fell to Lord
Sheffield, and the same year he conveyed the country to Robert Cushman
and Edward Winslow in behalf of the colonists at Plymouth.[12] The
next year the new owners sent a party to establish a fishing stage at
Cape Ann, but they found other persons on the spot, for in 1623 some
merchants of Dorchester, England, who regularly sent vessels to catch
fish in the waters of New England, had conceived the idea of planting
a colony on the coast, and in the summer of that year landed fourteen
men at Cape Ann, soon increased to thirty-four.

For some months the two parties got along amicably together and fished
side by side. An element of discord was introduced in 1625 when the
Dorchester men invited Roger Conant and Rev. Mr. Lyford from
Nantasket, and made the former manager and the latter minister of
their settlement; while John Oldham was asked to become their agent to
trade with the Indians. A short time after, the crew of a vessel
belonging to the Dorchester adventurers, instigated, it is said, by
Lyford, took from the Plymouth men their fishing stage; whereupon
Miles Standish came with soldiers from Plymouth, and the rival parties
would have come to blows had not Conant interfered and settled the
matter.[13] The Plymouth settlers built a new stage, but, as the war
with Spain affected the sale of fish, they soon abandoned the
enterprise altogether. The Dorchester men had