ENDECOTT, JOHN (c. 1588-1665), English colonial gov ernor in America, was born probably at Dorchester, Dorsetshire, England, about 1588. Little is known of him before 1628, when he was one of the six "joint adventurers" who purchased from the Plymouth Company a strip of land about 6o m. wide along the Massachusetts coast and extending westward to the Pacific Ocean. By his associates Endecott was entrusted with the respon sibility of leading the first colonists to the region, and with some 6o persons proceeded to Naumkeag (later Salem) where Roger Conant, a seceder from the colony at Plymouth, had begun a settlement two years earlier. He was the local governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony from April 3o, 1629, to June 12, 1630, when John Winthrop brought the charter to Salem and became governor of the colony. Endecott continued to take a promi nent part in the affairs of the colony, commanding an expedition against the Pequots in 1636. At Salem he was a member of the congregation of Roger Williams, whom he resolutely de fended in his trouble with the New England clerical hierarchy. He was deputy-governor in 1641-44, and governor in and served also as commander-in-chief of the militia and as one of the commissioners of the United Colonies of New Eng land, of which in 1658 he was president. On the death of John Winthrop in 1649 he became governor, and by annual re-elec tions served continuously until his death, with the exception of two years (1650-51 and 1654-55), when he was deputy-gover nor. Under his authority the colony of Massachusetts Bay made rapid progress, and except in the matter of religious intolerance— he showed great bigotry and harshness, particularly towards the Quakers—his rule was just and praiseworthy. Of him Edward Eggleston says : "A strange mixture of rashness, pious zeal, genial manners, hot temper, and harsh bigotry, his extravagances supply the condiment of humour to a very serious history—it is perhaps the principal debt posterity owes him." He died on March 15, 1665.
See C. M. Endicott, Memoirs of John Endecott (Salem, 1847), and a "Memoir of John Endecott" in Antiquarian Papers of the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, Mass., 1879).