Massachusetts Bay Company, included all this region. Neither Brereton nor Oldham were disposed to yield their claims, and had failed to come to any agreement with the Council of the Massachusetts Bay Company, in regard to them. The question was a frequent subject at the meetings of the Council in London, and Cradock - who spoke of Oldham as a man obstinate and violent in his opinions-wrote to Endicott to send "forty or fifty persons to Massachusetts Bay to inhabit there. . . . with all speed. . . . whereby the better to strengthen our possession there against all or any that shall intrude upon us." This

was aimed at the rival claimants, Brereton and Oldham, whose title the Company believed, would not hold good in law against their own, but was coupled with a caution not to molest such other Englishmen as had there planted, and who were willing to live under the government of the new Company.

Some of these we have spoken of in a previous chapter- Maverick, on Noddle's Island, now East Boston; Thompson, on Thomp