As John Winthrop ventured to the Americas in 1630 aboard the Arbella, he wrote his guidelines, “A Model of Christian Charity,” for the community he and his fellow colonists hoped to establish along New England’s shores. Born in 1587/8 into a gentry family in Suffolk, England, Winthrop grew up at Groton Manor as the heir apparent. He attended Cambridge before marrying Mary Forth in 1605. Winthrop’s education stretched far beyond lessons from his father and his tutors; he caught the fire of Puritanism. In Winthrop, this manifested as a constant struggle to live in a sinful world without succumbing to temptations. In 1615, after ten years of marriage and five children, Mary Forth Winthrop died from complications of childbirth. By 1618 Winthrop had remarried twice more—first to Thomasine Clopton, who died in childbirth within a year, and finally to Margaret Tyndal. Increasingly frustrated by the disintegrating financial situation and decadence of the pro-Catholic monarch, Charles I, Winthrop joined the newly reorganized Massachusetts Bay Company. In November 1629 members of the company elected him governor, and he made preparations to depart. On April 8, 1630, he set sail.