page_title: Matthew Cradock
section_title: Massachusetts Bay Company
hierarchical_section_title: Matthew Cradock / Massachusetts Bay Company
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop. It was held in the Winthrop family until the 19th century, when it was donated to the American Antiquarian Society.
context_page_description: Matthew Cradock was a London merchant, politician, and the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Founded in 1628, it was an organization of Puritan businessmen that organized and established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Although he never visited the colony, Cradock owned property and businesses there, and he acted on its behalf in London. His business and trading empire encompassed at least 18 ships, and extended from the West Indies and North America to Europe and the Near East. He was a dominant figure in the tobacco trade.
  Cradock was a strong supporter of the Parliamentary cause in the years leading up to the English Civil War. He opposed royalist conservatism in the East India Company and, as a member of the Long Parliament, supported the Root and Branch attempts to radically reform the Church of England. He played a leading role in the Protestation of 1641, and died not long after.
context_section_description: Interest by London merchants in establishing and managing colonial settlements in North America waned after the 1624 failure of the London Company and the subsequent conversion of the Colony of Virginia into a Crown colony.  Cradock was a notable exception; a Puritan, in 1628 he made a major investment in the New England Company, formed by a group of Puritan religious and business leaders to take over the assets of the failed Dorchester Company and make new ventures in the colonisation of North America.  Cradock was elected the company's first governor on 13 May 1628. Not long after, the company acquired a grant of land on Massachusetts Bay from the Plymouth Council for New England, and sent John Endecott with a small group of settlers to begin the process of establishing a colony at a place now called Salem, Massachusetts.
  The company's land grant was not without problems, because it overlapped a grant that had previously been acquired by John Oldham.  Cradock wrote to Endecott in early 1629, warning him about the issue, suggesting that he settle colonists in the claimed area and also that he treat well the Old Planters (the surviving colonists from the failed Dorchester Company settlement).  Cradock also recommended the colonists work on building ships and other profit-making activities.  Later in 1629 another small fleet sailed for the colony; on board, in addition to Puritan settlers, were skilled craftsmen of all types who were engaged in Cradock's businesses.
  The company, in order to protect its claims, acquired a royal charter in 1629, under which Cradock was named the colony's governor in London, while Endecott governed in the colony.  In that same year, financial instability in the government caused by King Charles I's desire to prosecute a war with Scotland led the company's investors to fear their investment might be at risk.  Cradock, at a shareholder meeting in July 1629, suggested that the company transfer its governance to the colony itself, something that was only possible because the charter did not specify where the company's shareholder meetings were to be held.  However, some investors (Cradock among them) did not want to emigrate to the colony, so a means to buy out those investors needed to be devised.  After negotiating through the summer, an agreement was reached on 29 August 1629. It called for those shareholders who were emigrating to buy out those that remained in England after seven years; the latter would also receive a share of some of the colony's business activities, including the fur trade. John Winthrop, one of the shareholders who was emigrating, was elected the company's governor in October.
  Winthrop sailed to Massachusetts in 1630, and the fleet carrying the colonists included two of Cradock's ships, and agents and servants of his who were to see to his commercial interests.  Cradock, who took leave of the emigrants at the Isle of Wight, remained behind in England. Cradock's representatives secured for him a plantation at Medford, which became a base for business operations funded by Cradock, including the colony's first shipyard.  As the colony developed, Cradock's land holdings expanded to include properties in Ipswich and Marblehead.
  Even though he did not travel to the colony, he continued to operate in London on its behalf.  In 1629 he worked to recruit sympathetic Puritan ministers to emigrate.  He sought permission from the king's Privy Council to freely export provisions to the colony, claiming the colonists were in dire straits due to a shortage of provisions and threats from Native Americans.  He and Governor Winthrop exchanged letters; in one written in 1636 Cradock promised £50 toward the establishment of an institute of higher learning now known as Harvard University.
  Actions by the Massachusetts Bay Colony rulers came into question at the Privy Council in 1633.  Several opponents of the Puritans levelled charges that the colony's administrators sought independence from the crown and laws of England; Cradock and other company representatives were called before the council
caption: John Winthrop succeeded Cradock as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company
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