Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 29.

[p. 39] with multitudes of wolves, beavers, foxes, and martens, awaiting transformation into pounds sterling. How he acquired his wealth we do not know, but he traded in all the seas. He invested two thousand pounds in Persia and the East Indies, sent ships to the Levantine, the Mediterranean and the Baltic provinces. If one could only identify him with Dick Whittington the romantic appeal would be complete. Also romantic is the very name of his first wife, Damaris.

But Cradock was apparently a shrewd and careful business man. He turned now from the east to where ‘westward the star of empire takes its way’ and invested his money in New England. We may as well confess here, that financially the investment was probably a failure, as far as Medford was concerned, but Medford is forever the debtor of the broadminded, far-sighted merchant. In 1620 James I had granted to the Grand Council for New England all the land between forty and forty-eight degrees north latitude, straight through to the South sea. In 1628 this court granted to the Massachusetts Bay company, consisting of six persons, all the land between a line everywhere three miles south of the Charles river and a line everywhere three miles north of the Merrimac. It is to be hoped that the Charles and the Merrimac in those days ran straight and parallel. Six persons were rather a close corporation for all this land and in 1629 twenty other persons, Cradock included, were associated with them and the corporation took a charter under the title of Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England. And by this charter the king constitutes ‘our welbeloved the saide Mathewe Craddocke to be the first and present Governor of the said Company.’ As Mr. Cushing, whose account I am closely following, continues to say, this company was formed primarily for purposes of trade, and to trade there must be a trading post at the other end. The first thing to do then was to found a settlement, and over this colony was to be placed John Endicott