I have received your letter through our friends Mr. Allerton and Mr. Hatherley, who, blessed be God, have arrived safely at Bristol. Mr. Hatherley has come to London, but Mr. Allerton I have not yet seen. We thank you, and are very glad you dissuaded him from the Spanish voyage, and that he did not fulfill his intentions; for we all utterly disliked the project, as well as the fishing of the Friendship. We wished him to sell the salt, and were unwilling to have him undertake so much business, partly because of previous failure, and partly because we were loth to disburse so much money. But he assured us this would repay us, and that the colony would be long in doing so; nay, I remember that he even doubted if by your trading there you could meet your expenses and pay us, and for this very reason he induced us to undertake that business with Ashley, though he was a stranger to us....
As to the cost of the fishing ship we are sorry it proves so heavy, and are willing to take our share of it. What Mr. Hatherley and Mr. Allerton have proposed no doubt they themselves will make good; we gave them no authority to make any composition to separate you from us in this or any other scheme. Furthermore, I think you have no cause to forsake us, for we involved you in nothing but what your agent advocated and you in your letters desired. If he exceeded your authority I hope you will not blame us, much less leave us in the lurch, now that our money is expended.... But I fear neither you nor we have been properly dealt with; for, as you write, surely one half of £4000—nay a quarter—in commodities, despatched in seasonable time, would have provided you more effectively. Yet, in spite of all this and much more that I might write, I cannot but think him honest, and that his intentions were good; but the wisest may fail. Well, now that it has pleased God to give us hope of agreeing, doubt not but we shall all endeavour to adjust these accounts fairly, as soon as we possibly can. I suppose you sent over Mr. Winslow and we Mr. Hatherley to certify each other how the state of things stood. We have received some satisfaction upon Mr. Hatherley’s return, and I hope you will receive the same upon Mr. Winslow’s return.
Now to answer your letter more particularly; I shall be very brief. The charging of the White Angel to your account could not be more surprising to you than the purchase of her was to us; for you commissioned[8] that what he did you would stand by; we gave him no such commission, yet for his credit and your sakes paid the bills he charged us with.... As to my writing that she was to fulfill two purposes, fishing and trading, believe me I never so much as thought of any private trading, nor will I countenance any; for I was always against it, and used these very words: It will reduce the profits of the settlement and ruin it.
The rest of the letter I omit as it is not very pertinent. It was dated Nov. 19th, 1631. In another letter, dated Nov. 24th, in answer to the general letter on the same subject, there are these words:
As to the White Angel about which you write so earnestly, saying we thrust her upon you contrary to the intentions of the purchaser, we say you forget yourselves and do us wrong. We will not take upon us to divine what the thoughts or intentions of the purchaser were; but what he spoke we heard, and that we will affirm and make good against anyone, viz., that unless she were bought Ashley could not be supplied, and if he were not supplied we could not recoup ourselves for our losses on your account.
From another of his dated Jan. 2nd, 1631:
We propose to keep the Friendship and the White Angel, as regards last year’s voyages, on the general account, hoping that together they will produce profit rather than loss, and cause less confusion in our accounts and less disturbance in our intercourse. As for the White Angel, though we laid out the money and took bills of sale in our own names, none of us had so much as a thought of separating from you in any way this year, because we did not wish the world (I may say Bristol) to see any breach between Mr. Allerton and you, or between him and us, and so disgrace him in his proceedings. We have now let him the ship at £30 per month, by charter-party and secured him in a bond of £1000 to perform the contract and bring her back to London, if God please. What he takes in her for you shall be marked with your mark, and bills of lading shall be taken and sent in Mr. Winslow’s letter, who is this day riding to Bristol about it. So in this voyage we deal with him as strangers, not as partners. He has turned in three books of accounts, one for the company, another for Ashley’s business, and the third for the White Angel and Friendship. The books, or copies of them, we propose to send you, for you may discover the errors in them more readily than we could. It can be reckoned how much money he has had from us, and you can charge him with all the beaver he had from you. The total sum, as he has it, is £7103-7-1. Of this he has expended, and given to Mr. Vines and others, about £543. You will know from your books whether you had the goods he charges to you. This is all I can say at present concerning the accounts. He expected to complete them in a few hours; but he and Straton and Fogg were over a month at them; but he could not wait till we had examined them for fear of losing his fishing voyage,—which I fear he has already done....
We bless God Who put it into our minds to send to each other; for had Mr. Allerton gone on in that risky and expensive way one year more we should not have been able to meet his expenditure; nay, both he and we must have lain in the ditch and sunk under the burden.... Had there been an orderly course taken and your business better managed, by the blessing of God yours would have been the ablest colony we know of, undertaken by Englishmen....
Thus far of these letters of Mr. Sherley’s.