The London Company complained to the king in 1620 and to Parliament in 1621, but the king refused any relief, and prevented Parliament from interfering by dissolving it.[6] Thereupon, the Council for New England, appreciating the danger, made a grand effort to accomplish something in America.

As a preliminary step they induced the king to publish a proclamation, November 6, 1622, against all unlicensed trading and other infringements upon the rights granted them,[7] and shortly afterwards sent out Francis West as admiral to reduce the fishermen on the coast to obedience.

West came to America, but found them "stuberne fellows,"[8] and he returned in about a year to England without effecting anything.
During his absence the Council for New England set to work to send out a colony under Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando; and, June 29, 1623, a division was made among twenty patentees, of the North Atlantic coast from the Bay of Fundy to Narragansett Bay.[9] In September, 1623, Gorges arrived at Plymouth attended by an Episcopal minister, William Morell, and a company of settlers, whom he planted at Wessagusset.

He remained in New England throughout the winter, and in the effort to exert his authority had a long wrangle with Weston.
In the spring of 1624 he received news from his father that discouraged his further stay.

It seems that in March, 1624, a committee of Parliament, at the head of which was Sir Edward Coke, had reported the charter of the Council for New England as a national grievance, which so discouraged the patentees that most of them abandoned the enterprise, and it became, in the language of the elder Gorges, "a carcass in a manner breathless."[10] After Robert Gorges' departure most of his party dispersed, some going to England and some to Virginia, but a few remained at Wessagusset, which was never entirely abandoned.
The relations between the colony and the London merchant adventurers, never very pleasant, became more unsatisfactory as time went on.