Governor, Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1679-1686 First elected Deputy Governor under John Leverett, 1673-1679 Colonial Secretary for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630-1644 Dudley, Thomas 1576-1653 English colonial administrator in America who served as governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony (1634, 1640, 1645, and 1650) and as one of Harvard College's first overseers. This independence helped the settlers to maintain their Puritan religious practices without interference from the king, Archbishop Laud, or the Anglican Church. BIOGRAPHY: Governor Thomas Dudley was the second Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was commissioned President of the United Colonies. In December John Jr. was elected as an Assistant to the Colony and was re-elected to that position many times during the 1630s and 1640s. John Winthrop First Governor of Massachusetts 1588 - 1649 John Winthrop, a Puritan lawyer, was a founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its first Governor.Winthrop, along with Thomas Dudley, founded the town of Boston. 7 Felt. 11. I. In 1692 the Province of Massachusetts Bay was established, merging Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, which then included … The group arrived in October 1631, and John Winthrop, Sr. was elected the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 5. In March 1633 he established a settlement at Agawam (now Ipswich). Puritan governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Dominion of New England combined these and other New England colonies into a single unit in 1686, but collapsed in 1689. He believed that the Puritans were too powerful and was ordered to leave the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his religious beliefs. With him they had a copy of the Massachusetts Bay charter as written and approved in London. Winthrop was elected Governor before the colony set out from England in 1629, and would continue to govern for fifteen of the colony's first twenty years. He and other congregants eventually sailed from England on the Mayflower to establish a colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where Bradford became longtime governor after a … John Winthrop John Winthrop was part of the first group of Puritan who came to and settle the city of Boston. Vol. The Massachusetts Bay Company was established in 1628, and was funded in part by investors in the failed Dorchester Company.In that year, the company elected Matthew Cradock as its governor and received a grant from the Plymouth Council for New England for land roughly between the Charles and Merrimack Rivers. Winthrop was elected by the men of the community in 1630. In fact, in 1641, Massachusetts became the first state in the North American colonies to make slavery legal when John Winthrop helped write a law allowing slavery in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colonial history of Massachusetts begins with the founding first of the Plymouth Colony in 1620, and then the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1628. (Boston: Phelps and Farnham, 1825). 6 Savage, James, The History of New England from 1630 to 1649 by John Winthrop, Esq. 5 Ibid. The Massachusetts Bay Colony became the first English chartered colony whose board of governors did not reside in England. The speech was later used in the content of American Exceptionalism. First Governor of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay for His Original Manuscripts With Notes. Who Was the First Governor of Massachusetts? (Boston: Press of T. R. Marvin, 42 Congress Street, 1853). John Winthrop, known today for his speech, A Model of Christian Charity, where the concept of the Colony as a city on a hill appears.