Edward Bates arrived in Boston from England September 18, 1633 onboard the Griffin. On that ship were 100 passengers, including Anne Hutchinson who would play a part in his life. Most on the Griffin were likely followers of Reverend John Cotton who had already made his way to Boston. On the passenger list was the Reverend Jonathan Lothrop who had conducted separatist services in Edgerton, Kent and London, and the Rev. Zachariah Symmes of Canterbury, Kent. From The Planters of the Commonwealth by Charles Edward Banks:

    It is a puzzle to imagine what things occupied the time of these emigrants for ten weeks on the crowded decks of the small vessels which took them across the three thousand miles that lay between the continents. Even to-day with our many permitted diversions time hangs heavily. Certainly those residents of the rural hamlets left nothing of interest behind them, and so missed nothing in their drab lives when exchanging their pithless parochial existence ashore for the monotonous doldrums of a swaying deck at sea. Ships carrying religious groups, like the Mayflower or the Arbella, indulged in daily services when their spiritual leaders 'exercised' the Godly in prayer and sermon. We can readily believe that Mistress Anne Hutchinson furnished enough excitement aboard the Griffin when she engaged the Reverend John Lothrop and the Reverend Zachariah Symmes in theological bouts, but these were exceptional ships, as the vast majority of emigrants came without ministerial leaders to entertain them. If the voyage were stormy, they were obliged to go below decks and kill time in the darkness. Doubtless they went to bed at sundown, as there was no way to light the decks. They rose at the break of day to begin another round of nothing in particular. 

 We do not know how much Edward Bates may have been involved in the religious discussion that most likely occurred on the Griffin but we do know that he found something he liked in what Anne Hutchinson had to say, if not then, in the near future.
From The Bates Bulletin (Series VII, Volume II, Spring/Summer 1995) by Mary Jean Evans - Edward of Boston and His Descendants: Free-Thinkers, Heretics, Patriots:  

Edward came as a servant to Thomas Leverett, [a lawyer Alderman from Boston, England who had come previously with John Cotton and would also be an Elder in the First Church of Boston], but he soon earned his freedom, and became a freeman in 1637. He married Lydia Fairbanks and embarked on a brief but colorful life in the new Boston. " In the 9th month (1633) List to First Church . . . Edward Baytes, Anthony Harker, our brother Thos. Leverett's men servants." Memorial History of Boston, page 567
Edward was excommunicated and disarmed for heresy as a follower of Anne Hutchinson. She was a strong and good woman who tended the sick, offered aid at birthing and dying, and believed in a personal relationship with God. She led discussions and prayer meetings, infuriating the men clergy who banished her from Massachusetts Bay Colony. Her followers were allowed to remain but were branded "heretics" and allowed no rights or property, including weapons. It must have been a fearful punishment in that society.

Edward eventually recanted and was allowed back into the fold. He is mentioned several times in the Boston Town Records. He was given 14 acres of land on Pullen Poynt (now the town of Winthrop, where a Bates Road still exists). He almost lost the land because he sailed off to Sable Island to hunt instead of tending to the required house building but the town fathers relented and gave him an extension of time.

The date and circumstances of Edward's death aren't known, but in 1645 his widow married William Fletcher in Concord. Mr. Fletcher raised John along with the children he had with Lydia: Joshua, Lydia, Samuel and Paul. Thus began the Bates history in Chelmsford. All of the children were presented to the church in Chelmsford in 1656.

The Documentary History of Chelsea lists Edward Bates as receiving an allotment in 1637, notes "owned by Capt. Leverett", who would have been Edward's grandfather.....