The colonists naturally wanted to bring over their friends at Leyden, but the partners regarded Robinson as the great leader of the Independents, and London was already rife with rumors of the heretical character of the rulers at Plymouth.

It seemed to the partners evidently for their interest to introduce settlers of a different religious opinion from Bradford and Brewster, and to this was largely due the fact that the emigrants who came over after the Mayflower's return in 1621 had little in common with the original band of Pilgrims.
In January, 1624, arrived another miscellaneous cargo, including a minister named John Lyford.

Upon his arrival he professed intense sympathy with the settlers, and when they received him as a member of their church he renounced, pursuant to the extreme tenets of Separatism, "all universall, nationall, and diocessan churches."[11] Nevertheless, he joined with John Oldham, who came the year before, in a conspiracy to overturn the government; but was detected and finally banished from the colony.

In March, 1625, Lyford and Oldham went to Wessagusset, from which they moved with Roger Conant and other friends to Nantasket, where, in the mean time, a new settlement had sprung up.
In the division of 1623, the region around Cape Ann fell to Lord Sheffield, and the same year he conveyed the country to Robert Cushman and Edward Winslow in behalf of the colonists at Plymouth.[12] The next year the new owners sent a party to establish a fishing stage at Cape Ann, but they found other persons on the spot, for in 1623 some merchants of Dorchester, England, who regularly sent vessels to catch fish in the waters of New England, had conceived the idea of planting a colony on the coast, and in the summer of that year landed fourteen men at Cape Ann, soon increased to thirty-four.
For some months the two parties got along amicably together and fished side by side.

An element of discord was introduced in 1625 when the Dorchester men invited Roger Conant and Rev.Mr.Lyford from Nantasket, and made the former manager and the latter minister of their settlement; while John Oldham was asked to become their agent to trade with the Indians.