Gorges further maintained that he retained
possession of the country through the presence of his brother's tenants,
Blackstone, Maverick, Walford, and others on the shores of the bay. In
June, 1629, Endicott had responded by sending forward some fifty persons
from Salem to begin the settlement of Charlestown. Shortly before
Winthrop's departure from England, Gorges had sent that singular
personage Sir Christopher Gardiner to look after his interests in the
New World, and there he was presently found established near the mouth
of the Neponset river, in company with "a comly yonge woman whom he
caled his cousin." But these few claimants were now at once lost in the
human tide which poured over Charlestown, Boston, Newtown, Watertown,
Roxbury, and Dorchester. The settlement at Merrymount was again
dispersed, and Morton sent back to London; Gardiner fled to the coast
of Maine and thence sailed for England in 1632. The Puritans had indeed
occupied the country in force.
Here on the very threshold we are confronted by facts which show that
not a mere colonial plantation, but a definite and organized state was
in process of formation. The emigration was not like that of Jamestown
or of Plymouth. It sufficed at once to make the beginnings of half a
dozen towns, and the question as to self-government immediately sprang
up.
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