for a plantation in Massachusetts Bay" to Captain John Endicott, written
at Gravesend, England, the 17th of April, 1629, says: "If you want any
Swyne wee have agreed with those of Ne[w] Plimouth that they deliver you
six Sowes with pigg for which they a[re] to bee allowed 9 lb. in accompt
of what they the Plymouth people owe unto Mr. Goffe [our] deputie
[Governor]." It appears from the foregoing that the Pilgrims at New
Plymouth were in debt to Mr. Goffe in 1629, presumably for advances and
passage money on account of the contingent of the Leyden congregation,
brought over with Higginson's company to Salem, on the second trip of the
MAY-FLOWER. Mr. Goffe's intimate connection with the Pilgrims was
certainly unbroken from the organization of their Merchant Adventurers in
1619/20, through the entire period of ten years, to 1630. There is every
reason to believe, and none to doubt, that his ownership of the MAY-
FLOWER of imperishable renown remained equally unbroken throughout these
years, and that his signature as her owner was appended to her Pilgrim
charter-party in 1620. Whoever the signatories of her charter-party may
have been, there can be no doubt that the good ship MAY-FLOWER, in charge
of her competent, if treacherous, Master, Captain Thomas Jones, and her
first "pilot," John Clarke, lay in the Thames near London through the
latter part of June and the early part of July, in the summer of 1620,
undergoing a thorough overhauling, under contract as a colonist-
transport, for a voyage to the far-off shores of "the northern parts of
Virginia."

In whatever of old English verbiage, with quaint terms and cumbersome
repetition, the stipulations of this contract of were concealed, there
can be no doubt that they purported and designed to "ingage" that "the
Good ship MAY-FLOWER of Yarmouth, of 9 score tuns burthen, whereof for
the present viage Thomas Joanes is Master," should make the "viage" as a
colonist-transport, "from the city of London in His Majesty's Kingdom of