The Plymouth Company and Massachusetts Bay Company (1622–1639): Establishing Theocratic Corporate Governance

Abstract

This chapter examines the development of a different form of corporate religious governance in the Atlantic in the years after the Jamestown massacre. It focuses on the denominational identity of its members and how this influenced the direction and formation of a theocratic model of governance that the company would adopt. This chapter illustrates how the leaders of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay companies, such as William Bradford, John Endicott and John Winthrop, established authoritarian governments by manipulating charter privileges, forming a theocratic model of governance in New England. It examines how the leaders and members of the Plymouth Company and Massachusetts Bay Company, as corporate bodies, established and nurtured a distinct form of governmental identity. By tracing the development of the Massachusetts Bay Company’s congregational theocratic governance through works such as Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation, the Winthrop Papers, as well as the Records of the Town of Plymouth and the Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay New England, it shows how the joint stock corporation offered its members the legal and structural framework that would dogmatically police the religious behaviour of its members to secure and establish a godly republic.