Their Obligations Increase
Having become dissatisfied with the way the affairs of the colony were being conducted in England, Mr. Winslow was sent over to effect an accounting while Mr. Allerton was discharged.
It developed that while the indebtedness of 1800 pounds previously assumed had been reduced to 1000 pounds, subsequent transactions engaged in by Mr. Allerton had increased their obligations by 4700 pounds. While it appears that Allerton had used the opportunity he enjoyed for his personal gain, the attitude of the Plymouth Colony toward him was one of generosity as shown by the following: “It is like, though Mr. Allerton might think not to wrong the plantation in the main, yet his own gain and private ends led him aside in these things; for it came to be known, and I have it in a letter under Mr. Sherley’s hand, that in the first 2 or 3 years of his employment, he had cleared up 400 pounds and put it in a brewhouse in London, at first under Mr. Shirley’s name, etc.”
1632
While the colony assumed this added burden of indebtedness, their income seems to have increased likewise. “The Lord prospered their trading” and “they made yearly large returns.” Cattle and corn increased in value and thus encouraged “there was no longer holding them together, but now they must of necessity, go to their great lots; they could not otherwise keep their cattle, and, having oxen grown, they must have land for plowing and tillage.”
The influx into the Massachusetts Bay colony gave impulse to this movement and to the increase in the price of cattle and products of the plantations. It resulted in the establishments of settlements where the quality of the soil encouraged cultivation. Thus the nucleus of future towns began to appear with separate places of worship, in the territory both to the north and south of Plymouth.