Massachusetts Bay Company is established in London.

The private trading company is made up of 26 incorporators (including Thomas Dudley, John Endicott (then Endecott), Isaac Johnson, John Winthrop, and other well-off Puritans from East Anglia and Lincolnshire), who had bought up controlling shares of the Dorchester Company. They receive what comes to be called the Rosewell Patent, which grants “the New England Company” rights to the land from three miles north of the Merrimack River to three miles south of the Charles River “from sea to sea.” This subsequently causes controversy, since it appears to contradict a patent already granted to the Northern Colony of Virginia.