The agreement guaranteed that the colony of Massachusetts would be self-governing and accountable only to the English Crown. The colony and the company then became one and the same in all respects. The Puritan Winthrops carried this charter across the Atlantic and arrived in America in 1630. In Cambridge, England, on August 26, 1629, twelve Puritan members of the Massachusetts Bay Company, led by John Winthrop, signed an agreement committing themselves to emigrate with their families to New England. The signatories of the Cambridge Agreement insisted that the Company Charter be transferred to the New World and serve as the constitution for the new colony. This was an unprecedented demand, as traditionally a board of directors ruled over chartered colonies in England. A few days later, the company court passed a motion to move the company and charter to New England, making the Massachusetts Bay Company the only English colonization company without a board of directors in England. Subsequently, all the shareholders who were not willing to move to America sold their shares to those who were willing to make the trip. By taking the charter with them, the Puritans shifted the company`s attention from commerce to religion, and they guaranteed that the Crown would not endanger their religious freedom in America.

Under his terms, those who wanted to emigrate to the New World could buy shares held by shareholders who wanted to stay at home. Thus, the agreement was a precursor to the founding of Boston, Massachusetts. In the spring of 1630, Winthrop and a hundred followers sailed for the New World in the Arbella. The group arrived in Massachusetts in June 1630 and was soon supported by other English emigrants. By the end of the year, two thousand settlers of English origin were living in Massachusetts. Arbella`s journey marked the beginning of a ten-year period of mass emigration from England known as the Great Migration. By the end of the decade, about eighty thousand men, women and children had left England and twenty thousand of them had settled in Massachusetts. After the charter and incorporation of the company was established, the governor and the company again held court in Cambridge, England, near or within the boundaries of the famous university john Winthrop had attended. Here, a dozen members of the company used not only their energies and capital, but also their lives and decided to sail to New England to build and inhabit the plantation. Of these twelve signatories, ten (all but Browne and West) sailed with the fleet the following spring. The Cambridge Agreement[1] was signed on August 29, 1629 between the shareholders of the Massachusetts Bay Company in Cambridge, England.

And we further promise to pay for themselves, all those who will not be willing, by their own omission, until the day they designate, to pay the sum of £3 for each day to use the rest of the company, which will be ready on the same day and at the same time. Richard Saltonstall Thomas Dudley William Vassall Nicholas West Isaac Johnson John Humfrey Thomas Sharpe Increase Nowell John Winthrop William Pinchon Kellam Browne William Colbron Sir Richard Saltonstall, an early member of the Massachusetts Bay Company, one of the assistants and one of the principal owners of the stock, was the son of Samuel Saltonstall of Halifax. in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His uncle, Sir Richard Saltonstall, was Lord Mayor of London in 1597. He arrived in Massachusetts in 1630 and returned to England the following year, leaving his two eldest sons in the colony. He continued to take an interest in the affairs of New England and was one of the patent holders of Connecticut, whose great-grandson became governor of the colony. See Journal of 5 April 1630, note. A notable warning concludes this document that “the entire government, as well as the patent for said plantation,” should go with them to the new colony. In fact, they were determined to establish the full independence of the plantation from any authority in England. The entire court of the company accepted this reservation in a few days and after long discussions, no doubt influenced by the determination of the signatories and the fact that their willingness to colonize the plantation depended on this point. .