After a disastrous beginning this company was
dissolved, but only to be immediately reorganized on a greater scale.
In 1628 a grant of the land between the Charles and Merrimack rivers
was obtained from the Plymouth Company; and in 1629 a charter was
obtained from Charles I. So many men from the east of England had
joined in the enterprise that it could no longer be fitly called a
Dorchester Company. The new name was significantly taken from the
New World. The charter created a corporation under the style of the
Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England. The freemen
of the Company were to hold a meeting four times a year; and they were
empowered to choose a governor, a deputy governor, and a council of
eighteen assistants, who were to hold their meetings each month. They
could administer oaths of supremacy and allegiance, raise troops
for the defence of their possessions, admit new associates into the
Company, and make regulations for the management of their business,
with the vague and weak proviso that in order to be valid their
enactment must in no wise contravene the laws of England. Nothing was
said as to the place where the Company should hold its meetings, and
accordingly after a few months the Company transferred itself and
its charter to New England, in order that it might carry out its
intentions with as little interference as possible on the part of the
crown.
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