or the relief of the
whole."

Hooker arrived in the colony in September, 1633,[42] and in May, 1634,
at the first annual general court after his arrival, his congregation
at Newtown petitioned to be permitted to move to some other quarters
within the bounds of Massachusetts.[43] The application was granted,
and messengers were sent to Agawam and Merrimac to look for a suitable
location.[44] After this, when the epidemic on the Connecticut became
known, a petition to be permitted to move out of the Massachusetts
jurisdiction was presented to the general court in September, 1634.
This raised a serious debate, and though there can be little doubt
that Winthrop and the other leaders in Massachusetts shrewdly
cherished the idea of pre-empting in some way the trade of the
Connecticut, against both the Plymouth people and the Dutch, an
emigration such as was proposed appeared too much like a desertion.
The fear of the appointment by the crown of a governor-general for New
England was at its height, and so the application, though it met with
favor from the majority of the deputies, was rejected by the court of
assistants.[45]

The popularity of the measure, however, increased mightily, and there
is a tradition that in the winter of 1634-1635 some persons from
Watertown went to Connecticut and managed to survive the winter in a
few huts erected at Pyquag, afterwards Wethersfield.[46] The next
spring the Watertown and Dorchester people imitated the Newtown
congregation in applying to the general court for permission to
remove. They were more successful, and were given liberty to go to any
place, even outside of Massachusetts, provided they continued under
the Massachusetts authority.[47]

Then began a lively movement, and Jonathan Brewster, in a letter
written from the Plymouth fort at Windsor in July, 1635, tells of the
daily arrival by land and water of small parties of these adventurous
settlers. Their presence around the fort caused Brewster much
uneasiness, since some began to cast covetous eyes upon the very spot
which the Plymouth government had bought from the Mohegans and held
against the Dutch.

As their numbers grew their confidence increased; and finally the men
of Dorchester, headed by Roger Ludlow, one of the richest men in
Massachusetts, pretending that the land was theirs as the "Lord's
waste," upon which "the providence of God" had cast them, intruded
themselves into the actual midst of the Plymouth people.