The Earliest Settlers at Jamestown and Massachusetts Bay
...fe of drudgery and refused to fish, clear fields or plant crops. Diseases from water and hunger started to kill many of the colonists. One colonist quoted “Thus we lived for the space of five months in this miserable distress…our men night and day groaning in every corner of the fort, most pitiful to hear…. Every night and day for six weeks: some departing out of the World, many times three of four in a night…” One winter day, Smith took control and told the remaining 38 colonists that “You must now obey this law,…he that will not work shall not eat.” Smith held the colony together by forcing them to work, and farm. He also convinced the local Powhatans to supply them with food. Later that winter, a stray spark lit a bag of gunpowder Smith had been wearing, and set him on fire. As a result, he had to return to England leaving Jamestown to “fend for itself.” The colonizing of Jamestown was not an easy one. The colonists did not cooperate or make efforts to help the colony thrive. Their attitudes cost them the lives of many men. A few years later, in 1629, King Henry VIII broke with Roman Catholicism and his daughter Elizabeth formed the Anglican Church. The Puritans felt persecuted and repressed and in 1629, John Winthrop and his friends got a royal charter for a joint-stock enterprise called the Massachusetts Bay Company. Winthrop and the colonists transferred the charter, and the company’s headquarters to New England, so when the Puritans came to America, they had the authority for an independent government. In September of 1630, Winthrop and the colonists boarded Arbella and established the Massachusetts Bay Company, making the port town of Boston the capitol. A lot of settlers came to Massachusetts so other towns were formed. In the 1st year of the colony’s settlement, 17 ships brought 1000 Englishmen aboard. This migration was the largest and most thoroughly planned of all previous migrations. The puritans had a plan to stick together, and get along. As Winthrop said “We must be knit together in this work;…we must uphold [each other]… in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality [generosity]. We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together.” Winthrop did not believe in social equality or political democracy. “Some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity, others mean [common] and in subjugation.” The Massachusetts Bay Company gave voting rights to stockholders and to all adult men who belonged to the Puritan Church. These men represented a...