Massachusetts Bay Company

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This article is about Massachusetts Bay Company. For other uses of the term Massachusetts, please see Massachusetts (disambiguation).

The Massachusetts Bay Company was a joint-stock company started by a group of Puritans led by John Winthrop for the purpose of starting a colony in New England. Fearing the increasing power of first James I and then Charles I over religious expression in England, these Puritans sought to emigrate to New England.

But realizing, also, that should the company's headquarters still reside in London (as the London Company of Virginia was), the crown would still have great power over them. Winthrop resolved to move the company to New England as quickly as possible in order to escape the oppression of the English crown. He was able to accomplish this by avoiding any clause in the charter that specified where the company headquarters was to be located.