The King's letter was dated the 28th of June, 1662, and was presented by

Mr. Bradstreet and Mr. Norton to the Governor and General Court at

Boston, 8th of October, 1662;[128] but it was not until a General Court

called in August, 1664, that "the said letter was communicated to the

whole assembly, according to his Majesty's command, and copies thereof

spread abroad."[129] In the meantime they boasted of their Charter being

recognised by the King, according, of course, to their own

interpretation of it, while for _twenty-two months_ they withheld the

King's letter, against his orders, from being published; concealing from

the victims of their proscription and persecution the toleration which

the King had announced as the conditions of his perpetuating the

Charter.

It is not surprising that those proscribed and persecuted parties in

Massachusetts Bay Colony should complain to the King's Government that

the local Government had denied them every privilege which his Majesty

had assured to them through their friends in England, and by alleged

orders to the Government of Massachusetts Bay, and therefore that the

King's Government should determine to appoint Commissioners to proceed

to the New England colonies to investigate the complaints made, and to

regulate the affairs of the colonies after the disorders of the then

recent civil war, during which the Massachusetts Bay Government had

wholly identified itself with Cromwell, and acted in hostility to those

other American colonies which would not renounce their allegiance to the

Throne, and avow allegiance to the usurper.

It was not till the Government of Massachusetts Bay saw that their

silence could no longer be persisted in with safety, and that a Royal

Commission was inevitable,[130] that they even published the King's

letter, and then, as a means of further procrastination and delay, they

appended their order that the conditions prescribed in the Royal letter,

which "had influence upon the Churches as well as the civil state,

should be suspended until the Court should take action thereon"--thus

subordinating the orders of the King to the action of the Massachusetts

Bay Court.

From the Restoration, reports were most industriously circulated in the

Bay Colony, designed to excite popular suspicion and hostility against

the Royal Government, such as that their constitution and Church

privileges were to be suppressed, and superseded by a Royal Governor and

the Episcopal hierarchy, etc.; and before the arrival of the Royal

Commissioners the object of their appointment was misrepresented and

their character assailed; it was pretended their commission was a bogus

one, prepared "under an old hedge,"[131] and all this preparatory to the

intended resistance of the Commissioners by the Governor and Council of

Massachusetts Bay.

The five conditions of continuing the Charter, specified in the King's

letter of the 28th of June, 1662, the publication of which was

suppressed by the Massachusetts Bay Court for nearly two years, and the

intolerance and proscription which it was intended to redress being

still practised, were doubtless among the causes which led to the

appointment of the Royal Commissioners; but that Commission had

reference to other colonies as well as Massachusetts Bay, and to other

subjects than the intolerant proscriptions of that colony.[132]

All the New England colonies except that of Massachusetts Bay

respectfully and cordially received the Royal Commissioners, and gave

entire satisfaction in the matters which the Commissioners were intended

to investigate.[133] The Congregational rulers of Massachusetts Bay

alone rejected the Royal Commissioners, denied their authority, and

assailed their character. In the early history of Upper Canada, when one

Church claimed to be established above every other, and the local

Government sustained its pretensions as if authorized by law, it is

known with what tenacity and denunciation the Canadian ecclesiastic-civil

government resisted all appeals, both to the Local Legislature and to

England, for a liberal government of equal laws and equal rights for all

classes of the King's subjects in Canada. But the excluded majority of

the Canadians had little to complain of in comparison of the excluded

majority of his Majesty's subjects of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where

the only avenue to office, or even the elective franchise, was membership

in the Congregational Church, and where no dissenter from that Church

could have his children baptized, or worship God according to his

conscience, except under pain of imprisonment, fine, banishment, or

death itself.

The "Pilgrim Fathers" crossed the Atlantic to Plymouth in 1620, and the

"Puritan Fathers" to Massachusetts Bay in 1628, professedly for the same

purpose, namely, liberty to worship God without the imposition of

ceremonies of which they disapproved. The "Pilgrim Fathers," as true and

consistent friends of liberty, exercised full liberty of worship for

themselves, and left others to enjoy the same liberty of worship which

they enjoyed; but the "Puritan Fathers" exercised their liberty not only

by abandoning the Church and worship which they professed when they left

England, and setting up a Congregational worship, but by prohibiting

every other form of worship, and its adherents with imprisonment, fine,

exile, and death. And under this pretext of liberty of worship for

themselves, they proscribed and persecuted all who differed from them in

religious worship for fifty years, until their power to do so was taken

from them by the cancelling of the Charter whose provisions they had so

persistently and so cruelly abused, in contradistinction to the tolerant

and liberal conduct of their brethren and neighbours of the Plymouth,

Rhode Island, and Connecticut colonies. In note on page 148, I have

given extracts of the Report of the Royal Commissioners relative to

these colonies and their conduct and treatment of the Commissioners;

and in the lengthened extract of the report relative to Massachusetts

Bay Colony, it is seen how different was the spirit and government of

the rulers of that colony, both in respect to their fellow-colonists and

their Sovereign, from that of the rulers of the other New England

colonies, which had, indeed, to seek royal protection against the

oppressions and aggressions of the more powerful domineering Government

of Massachusetts Bay. The rulers of this colony alone rejected the Royal

Commissioners. For nearly two years the King's letter of the 28th of

June, 1662 (given in note on page 140), pardoning their acts of

disloyalty and assuring them of the continuance of their Charter on

certain conditions, remained unpublished and unnoticed; but on the

appointment of the Royal Commissioners, in 1664, they proceeded to

acknowledge the kindness of the King's letter of 1662, and other Royal

letters; then changing their tone, they protest against the Royal

Commission. They sent a copy of their address to the King, to Lord

Chancellor Clarendon, who, in connection with the Earl of Manchester and

Lord Say, had befriended them. They also wrote to others of their

friends, and among others to the Hon. and celebrated Robert Boyle, than

whom no man had shown himself a warmer or more generous friend to their

colony. I will give, not in successive notes, but in the text, their

address to the King, the King's reply, Lord Clarendon's and the Hon.

Robert Boyle's letters to them on the subject of their address to the

King, and their rejection and treatment of the Royal Commission. I will

then give the sentiments of what is called the "Petition of the

minority" of their own community on the subject, and their own answers

to the chief propositions of the Royal Commissioners. From all this it

will appear that the United Empire Loyalists were the true liberals, the

advocates of universal toleration and of truly liberal government; while

the rulers of Massachusetts Bay were the advocates of religious

intolerance and persecution of a government by a single religious

denomination, and hostile to the supreme authority of England, as well

as to their more tolerant and loyal fellow-colonists.

I will first give their characteristic address, called "Petition" or

"Supplication," to the King. I do so without abridgment, long as it is,

that I may not be chargeable with unfairness. It is as follows:--

Copy of the Address of the Massachusetts Colony to King Charles the

Second, in 1664:

"To the King's Most Excellent Majestie.--The humble Supplication of the

General Court of the Massachusetts Colony, in New England.

"DREAD SOVEREIGN,

"Iff your poor subjects, who have removed themselves into a remote

corner of the earth to enjoy peace with God and man, doe, in this day of

their trouble, prostrate themselves at your Royal feet, and beg your

favour, we hope it will be graciously accepted by your Majestie, and

that as the high place you sustain on earth doth number you here among

the gods, for you well imitate the God of heaven, in being ready to

maintain the cause of the afflicted, and the right of the poor,[135] and

to receive their cries and addresses to that end. And we humbly beseech

your Majestie with patience and clemency to heare and accept our plain

discourse, tho' of somewhat greater length than would be comely in other

or lesser cases. We are remote,[136] and can speake but seldom, and

therefore crave leave to speake the more at once. Wee shall not largely

repeat how that the first undertakers for this Plantation, having by

considerable summs purchased the right thereof granted to the Council

established at Plimouth by King James, your Royal grandfather, did after

obtain a patent given and confirmed to themselves by your Royal father,

King Charles the First, wherein it is granted to them, and their heirs,

assigns and associates for ever, not only the absolute use and propriety

of the tract of land therein mentioned, but also full and absolute power

of governing[137] all the people of this place, by men chosen from among

themselves, and according to such lawes as they shall from time to time

see meet to make and establish, being not repugnant to the laws of

England (they paying only the fifth part of the ore of gold and silver

that shall here be found, for and in respect of all duties, demands,

exactions, and service whatsoever), as in the said patent is more at

large declared. Under the encouragement and security of which Royal

Charter this people did, at their own charges,[138] transport

themselves, their wives and families, over the ocean, purchase the lands

of the natives, and plant this colony, with great labour, hazards, cost

and difficulties, for a long time wrestling with the wants of a

wilderness and the burdens of a new plantation; having, also, now above

30 years enjoyed the aforesaid power and priviledge of government within

themselves, as their undoubted right in the sight of God and man,[139]

and having had, moreover, this further favour from God and from your

Majestie, that wee have received several gracious letters from your

Royal selfe, full of expressions tending to confirme us in our

enjoyments, viz., in your Majestie's letter bearing date the 15th day of

February, 1660, you are pleased to consider New England as one of the

chiefest of your colonies and plantations abroad, having enjoyed and

grown up in a long and orderly establishment, adding this royal promise:

'Wee shall not come behind any of our royal predecessors in a just

encouragement and protection of all our loving subjects there.' In your

Majestie's letter of the 28th of June, 1662, sent us by our messengers,

besides many other gracious expressions, there is this: 'Wee will

preserve and do hereby confirme the patent and Charter heretofore

granted unto them by our Royal father of blessed memory, and they shall

freely enjoy all the privileges and liberties granted unto them in and

by the same.'[140] As for such particulars, of a civil and religious

nature, as are subjoined in the said letter, we have applyed ourselves

to the utmost to satisfy your Majesty, so far as doth consist with

conscience, of our duty toward God and the just liberties and privileges

of our patent.[141] Wee are further bound, with humble thankfulness, to

acknowledge your Majestie's gracious expressions in your last letter we

have received, dated April 23, 1664, as (besides other instances

thereof) that your Majestie hath not the least intention or thought of

violating, or in the least degree infringing, the Charter heretofore

granted by your Royal father with great wisdom, and upon full

deliberation, etc.

"But what affliction of heart must it needs be unto us, that our sins

have provoked God to permit our adversaries to set themselves against us

by their misinformations, complaints and solicitations (as some of them

have made it their worke for many years), and thereby to procure a

commission under the great seal, wherein four persons (one of them our

knowne and professed enemy) are impowered to hear, receive, examine and

determine all complaints and appeals, in all causes and matters as well

military as criminal and civil, and to proceed in all things, for

settling this country according to their good and sound discretion,

etc., whereby, instead of being governed by rulers of our owne choosing

(which is the fundamental privilege of our patent), and by lawes of our

owne, wee are like to be subjected to the arbitary power of strangers,

proceeding not by any established law, but by their own discretion. And

whereas our patent gives a sufficient royal warrant and discharge to all

officers and persons for executing the lawes here made and published, as

is therein directed, we shall now not be discharged, and at rest from

further molestation, when wee have so executed and observed our lawes,

but be liable to complaints and appeales, and to the determinations of

new judges, whereby our government and administrations will be made void

and of none effect. And though we have yet had but a little taste of the

words or actings of these gentlemen that are come over hither in this

capacity of Commissioners, yet we have had enough to confirm us in our

feares that their improvement of this power, in pursuance of their

commission (should the same proceed), will end in the subversion of our

all. We should be glad to hope that your Majesty's instructions (which

they have not been pleased to impart to us) may put such limitations to

their business here as will take off our fear; but according to the

present appearance of things, we thus speak.

"In this case (dread Sovereign), our refuge under God is your royal

selfe, whom we humbly address ourselves unto, and are the rather

emboldened therein because your Majesty's last gracious letter doth

encourage us to suggest what, upon the experience we have had, and

observations we have made, we judge necessary or convenient for the good

and benefit of this plantation, and because we are well persuaded that

had your Majestie a full and right information of the state of things

here,[142] you would find apparent reason to put a stop to these

proceedings, which are certainly discervient to your Majesty's interest

and to the prosperity and welfare of this place.

"If these things go on (according to the present appearance), your

subjects here will either be forced to seek new dwellings, or sink and

faint under burdens that will to them be intolerable. The rigour of all

new endeavours in the several callings and occupations (either for

merchandise abroad or for subduing this wilderness at home) will be

enfeebled, as we perceive it already begins to be, the good of

converting the natives obstructed, the inhabitants driven to we know not

what extremities, and this hopeful plantation in the issue ruined. But

whatever becomes of us, we are sure the adversary cannot countervail the

King's damages.

"It is indeed a grief to our hearts to see your Majesty put upon this

extraordinary charge and cost about a business the product whereof can

never reimburse the one half of what will be expended upon it. Imposed

rulers and officers will have occasion to expend more than can be raised

here, so as nothing will return to your Majesty's exchequer; but instead

thereof, the wonted benefit of customs, exported and imported into

England from hence, will be diminished by discouragement and diminution

of men's endeavours in their several occupations; or if the aim should

be to gratify some particular by livings and revenues here that will

also fail, where nothing is to be had, the King himself will be loser,

and so will the case be formed here; for such is the poverty and

meanness of the people (by reason of the length and coldness of the

winters, the difficulty of subduing a wilderness, defect of staple

commodity, the want of money, etc.), that if with hard labour men get a

subsistence for their families, 'tis as much as the generality are able

to do, paying but very small rates towards the public charges; and yet

if all the country hath ordinarily raised by the year for all the

charges of the whole government were put together and then doubled or

trebled, it would not be counted, for one of these gentlemen, a

considerable accommodation.[143]

"It is true, that the estates men have in conjunction with hard labour

and vigorous endeavours in their several places do bring in a

comfortable subsistence for such a mean people (we do not diminish our

thankfulness to God, that he provides for us in a wilderness as he

doth), yet neither will the former stand or the latter be discouraged,

nor will both ever answer the ends of those that seek great things.

"We perceive there have been great expectations of what is to be had

here raised by some men's informations. But those informations will

prove fallacious, disappointing them that have relied upon them; and if

the taking of this course should drive the people out of the country

(for to a coalition therein they will never come), it will be hard to

find another people that will stay long or stand under any considerable

burden in it, seeing it is not a country where men can subsist without

hard labour and great frugality.

"There have also been high representations of great divisions and

discontents among us, and of a necessity of sending commissioners to

relieve the aggrieved, etc.; whereas it plainly appears that the body of

this colony are unanimously satisfied in the present government, and

abhorrent from change, and that what is now offered will, instead of

relieving, raise up such grievances as are intolerable. We suppose there

is no government under heaven wherein some discontented persons may not

be found; and if it be a sufficient accusation against a government that

there are some such, who will be innocent? Yet, through the favour of

God, there are but few amongst us that are malcontent, and fewer that

have cause to be so.

"Sir, the all-knowing God knows our greatest ambition is to live a poor

and quiet life, in a corner of the world, without offence to God or man.

We came not in this wilderness to seek great things for ourselves; and

if any come after us to seek them here, they will be disappointed. We

keep ourselves within our line, and meddle not with matters abroad; a

just dependence upon and subjection to your Majesty, according to our

Charter, it is far from our hearts to disacknowledge. We so highly prize

your favourable aspect (though at so great a distance), as we would

gladly do anything that is within our power to purchase the continuance

of it. We are willing to testify our affection to your Majesty's

service, by answering the proposal of your honourable Commissioners, of

which we doubt not but that they have already given your Majesty an

account. We are carefully studious of all due subjection to your

Majesty, and that not only for wrath, but for conscience sake; and

should Divine Providence ever offer an opportunity wherein we might, in

any righteous way, according to our poor and mean capacity, testify our

dutiful affection to your Majesty, we hope we should most gladly embrace

it. But it is a great unhappiness to be reduced to so hard a case, as to

have no other testimony of our subjection and loyalty offered us but

this, viz., to destroy our own being, which nature teacheth us to

preserve; or to yield up our liberties, which are far dearer to us than

our lives, and which, had we had any fears of being deprived of, we had

never wandered from our fathers' houses into these ends of the earth,

nor laid our labours or estates therein; besides engaging in a most

hazardous and difficult war, with the most warlike of the natives, to

our great charge and the loss of some of the lives of our dear friends.

Neither can the deepest invention of man find out a more certain way of

consistence than to obtain a Royal donation from so great a prince under

his great seal, which is the greatest security that may be had in human

affairs.

"Royal Sir, it is in your power to say of your poor people in New

England, they shall not die. If we have found favour in the sight of our

King, let our life be given us at our petition (or rather that which is

dearer than life, that we have ventured our lives, and willingly passed

through many deaths to obtain), and our all at our request. Let our

government live, our patent live, our magistrates live, our laws and

liberties live, our religious enjoyments live; so shall we all yet have

further cause to say from our hearts, let the King live for ever. And

the blessing of them that were ready to perish shall come upon your

Majesty; having delivered the poor that cried, and such as had none to

help them. It was an honour to one of your royal ancestors that he was

called the poor man's king. It was Job's excellency that he sat as king

among his people--that he was a father to the poor. They are a poor

people (destitute of outward favour, wealth and power) who now cry to

their lord the King. May your Majesty please to regard their cause and

maintain their right. It will stand among the marks of lasting honour to

after generations. And we and ours shall have lasting cause to rejoice,

that we have been numbered among your Majesty's most humble servants and

suppliants.

"25th October, 1664."

As the Massachusetts Governor and Council had endorsed a copy of the

foregoing petition to the Earl of Clarendon, then Lord Chancellor (who

had dictated, with the Puritan ministers of the King, his generous

letter of the 28th of June, 1662), I will here insert Lord Clarendon's

reply to them, in which he vindicates the appointment of the

Commissioners, and exposes the unreasonableness of the statements and

conduct of the Massachusetts Court. The letter is as follows:

Copy of a letter from the Earl of Clarendon to the Massachusetts Colony

in 1664:--

"MR. GOVERNOR AND GENTLEMEN,

"I have received yours of the 7th of November, by the hands of Mr.

Ashurst, a very sober and discreet person, and did (by his communicating

it to me) peruse the petition you had directed to his Majesty; and I do

confess to you, I am so much a friend to your colony that if the same

had been communicated to nobody but myself, I should have dissuaded the

presenting the same to his Majesty, who I doubt will not think himself

well treated by it, or the singular care he hath expressed of his

subjects in those parts sufficiently acknowledged; but since I found by

your letter to my Lord Chamberlaine and Mr. Boyle, that you expect some

effect from your petition, upon conference with them wee all agreed not

to hinder the delivery of it, though I have read to them and Mr. Ashurst

every word of the instructions the Commissioners have; and they all

confessed that his Majesty could not expresse more grace and goodness

for that his plantation, nor put it more out of their power in any

degree to invade the liberties and privileges granted to you by your

Charter; and therefore wee were all equally amazed to find that you

demand a revokation of the Commission and Commissioners, without laying

the least matter to their charge of crymes or exorbitances. What sense

the King hath of your addresse to him, you will, I presume, heare from

himself, or by his direction. I shall only tell you that as you had long

cause to expect that the King would send Commissioners thither, so that

it was absolutely necessary he should do so, to compose the differences

amongst yourselves of which he received complaint, and to do justice to

your neighbours, which they demand from his royall hands. I know not

what you mean by saying, the Commissioners have power to exercise

government there altogether inconsistent with your Charter and

privileges, since I am sure their commission is to see and provide for

the due and full observation of the Charter, and that all the privileges

granted by that Charter may be equally enjoyed by all his Majesty's

subjects there. I know they are expressly inhibited from intermeddling

with or obstructing the administration of justice, according to the

formes observed there; but if in truth, in any extraordinary case, the

proceedings there have been irregular, and against the rules of justice,

as some particular cases particularily recommended to them by his

Majesty, seeme to be, it cannot be presumed that his Majesty hath or

will leave his subjects of New England without hope of redresse by any

appeale to him, which his subjects of all his other kingdoms have free

liberty to make. I can say no more to you but that it is in your owne

power to be very happy, and to enjoy all that hath been granted to you;

but it will be absolutely necessary that you perform and pay all that

reverence and obedience which is due from subjects to their king, and

which his Majesty will exact from you, and doubts not but to find from

the best of that colony both in quality and in number. I have no more to

add but that I am,

"Gentlemen,

"Your affectionate servant,

"CLARENDON, C.

"Worcester House, 15 March, 1665."

To Lord Clarendon's letter I will add the letter of the Honourable

Robert Boyle to Governor Endicot. The Hon. Robert Boyle was not only

distinguished as the first philosopher of his age, but as the founder of

the Royal Society and the President of the Society for the Propagation

of the Gospel in New England--the Society which supported John Eliot,

the apostle to the Indians of New England--for the Massachusetts Bay

Government neither established nor supported his mission to the Indians.

New England never had a warmer and more benevolent friend than the

celebrated Robert Boyle, who, in a letter dated March 17th, 1665, and

addressed to the Governor Endicot and the Massachusetts Court, after

acknowledging their resolution of thanks, through Mr. Winthrop, to him

for his exertions on their behalf, proceeds as follows:

"I dealt very sincerely with Mr. Winthrop in what I informed him

concerning the favourable inclinations I had found both in his Majesty

and in my Lord Chancellor toward the united colonies of New England; and

though his lordship again repeats and confirms the assurances he had

authorized me to give to your friends in the city, yet I cannot but

acquaint you with this, observing that in your last addresses to his

Majesty, and letters to his lordship, there are some passages that were

much more unexpected than welcome; insomuch that not only those who are

unconcerned in your affairs, but the most considerable persons that

favour you in England, have expressed to me their being unsatisfied in

some of the particulars I am speaking of. And it seems generally

unreasonable that when the King had so graciously remitted all that was

past, and upon just and important inducements, sent Commissioners to

promote the welfare of your colony, you should (in expressions not over

manly or respectfully worded) be importunate with him to do an action

likely to blemish his wisdom or justice, or both, as immediately to

recall public ministers from so remote a part of the world before they

or any of them be so much as accused of any one crime or miscarriage.

"And since you are pleased I should concern myself in this business, I

must deal so ingenuously with you as to inform you, that hearing about

your affairs, I waited upon my Lord Chancellor (and finding him, though

not satisfied with your late proceedings, yet neither your enemy, nor

indisposed to be your favourer as before). His lordship was pleased,

with a condescending and unexpected freedom, to read himself, not only

to me, but to another good friend of yours that I brought along with me,

the whole instructions and all the other papers that were delivered to

the Commissioners, and by the particulars of those it appeared to us

both that they had been so solicitous, viz., in the things that related

to your Charter, and especially to the liberty of your consciences, that

I could not but wonder at it, and add to the number of those that cannot

think it becomes his Majesty to recall Commissioners sent so far with no

other instructions than those, before they have time to do any part of

the good intended you by themselves, and before they are accused of

having done any one harmful thing, even in your private letters either

to me or (as far as I know) to any of your friends here, who will be

much discouraged from appearing on your behalf; and much disabled to do

it successfully so long as such proceedings as these that relate to the

Commissioners supply others with objections which those that wish you

well are unable to answer.

"I should not have taken this liberty, which the honour of your letter

ought to have filled with little less than acknowledgment, if the

favourable construction you have made of my former endeavours to do you

good offices did not engage me to continue them, though in a way which

(in my poor apprehension) tends very directly to serve you, whether I do

or no to please you; and as I presume you will receive, both from his

Majesty and my Lord Chancellor, express assurances that there is nothing

intended in violation to your Charter, so if the Commissioners should

break their instructions and endeavour to frustrate his Majesty's just

and favourable intentions towards you, you may find that some of your

friends here were not backward to accuse the Commissioners upon general

surmises that may injure you, than they will be ready to represent your

grievances, in case they shall actually oppress you; which, that they

may never do, is not more the expectation of them that recommended them

to you than it is the hearty wish of a person who, upon the account of

your faithfulness and care of so good a work as the conversion of the

natives among you, is in a peculiar manner concerned to shew himself,

honoured Sir, your most affectionate and most humble servant,[144]

"RO. BOYLE."

But in addition to the benevolent and learned Robert Boyle and their

other friends in England, besides Lord Clarendon and the King, who

disapproved of their pretentious spirit and proceedings, there were

numbers of their own fellow-colonists who equally condemned the

assumptions and conduct of Governor Endicot and his Council. It has been

shown in a previous chapter that in connection with the complete

suppression of the freedom of the press, petitioners to the Governor and

Court were punished for any expressions in their petitions which

complained of the acts or proceedings of the Court. It therefore

required no small degree of independence and courage for any among them

to avow their dissent from the acts of rulers so despotic and

intolerant. Yet, at this juncture of the rejection of the Royal

Commission, and the denial of the King's authority, there were found

United Empire Loyalists and Liberals, even among the Congregational

"freemen" of Massachusetts Bay, who raised the voice of remonstrance

against this incipient separation movement. A petition was prepared and

signed by nearly two hundred of the inhabitants of Boston, Salem,

Newbury, and Ipswich, and presented to the Court. The compiler of the

"Danforth Papers," in the Massachusetts Historical Collection, says:

"Next follows the petition in which the minority of our forefathers have

exhibited so much good sense and sound policy." The following is an

extract of the Boston petition, addressed "To the Honourable General

Court now assembled in Boston:"

"May it please the Hon. Court:

"Your humble petitioners, being informed that letters are lately sent

from his Majesty to the Governor and Council, expressive of resentment

of the proceedings of this colony with his Commissioners lately sent

hither, and requiring also some principal persons therein, with command

upon their allegiance to attend his Majesty's pleasure in order to a

final determination of such differences and debates as have happened

between his Majesty's Commissioners and the Governor here, and which

declaration of his Majesty, your petitioners, looking at as a matter of

the greatest importance, justly calling for the most serious

consideration, that they might not be wanting, either to yourselves in

withholding any encouragement that their concurrence might afford in so

arduous a matter, nor to themselves and the country in being involved by

their silence in the dangerous mistakes of (otherwise well united)

persons inclining to disloyal principles, they desire they may have

liberty without offence to propose some of their thoughts and fears

about the matter of your more serious deliberation.

"Your petitioners humbly conceive that those who live in this age are no

less than others concerned in that advice of the wise man, to keep the

King's commandment, because of the oath of God, and not to be tardy to

go out of his sight that doth whatever pleaseth him; wherefore they

desire that seeing his Majesty hath already taken no little displeasure

against us, as if we disowned his Majesty's jurisdiction over us,

effectual care be taken, lest by refusing to attend his Majesty's order

for clearing our pretences unto right and favour in that particular, we

should plunge ourselves into great disfavour and danger.

"The receiving of a Charter from his Majesty's royal predecessor for the

planting of this colony, with a confirmation of the same from his royal

person, by our late address, sufficiently declares this place to be

part of his dominions and ourselves his subjects. In testimony of which,

also, the first Governor, Mr. Matthew Cradock (as we are informed),

stands recorded _juratus de fide et obedientia_, before one of the

Masters in Chancery; whence it is evident that if any proceedings of

this colony have given occasion to his Majesty to say that we believe he

hath no jurisdiction over us, what effectual course had need be taken to

free ourselves from the incurring his Majesty's future displeasure by

continuance in so dangerous an offence? And to give his Majesty all due

satisfaction in that point, such an assertion would be no less

destructive to our welfare than derogatory to his Majesty's honour. The

doubtful interpretations of the words of a patent which there can be no

reason to hope should ever be construed to the divesting of the

sovereign prince of his Royal power over his natural subjects and liege

people, is too frail a foundation to build such transcendent immunity

and privilege upon.

"Your petitioners earnestly desire that no part will so irresistibly

carry on any design of so dangerous a consequence as to necessitate

their brethren equally engaged with them in the same undertaking to make

their particular address to his Majesty, and declaring to the world, to

clear themselves from the least imputation of so scandalous an evil as

the appearance of disaffection or disloyalty to the person and

government of their lawful prince and sovereign would be.

"Wherefore your petitioners do here humbly entreat that if any occasion

hath been given to his Majesty so to resent any former actings as in his

last letter is held forth, that nothing of that nature be further

proceeded in, but contrariwise that application be made to his Majesty,

immediately to be sent for the end to clear the transactions of them

that govern this colony from any such construction, lest otherwise that

which, if duly improved, might have been a cloud of the latter rain, be

turned into that which, in the conclusion, may be found more terrible

than the roaring of a lion.

"Thus craving a favourable interpretation of what is here humbly

presented, your petitioners shall ever be obliged to, etc."[145]

The following is the King's letter, referred to by Lord Clarendon,

evidently written on the advice of the Puritan Councillors, whom the

King retained in his government, and to whom the management of New

England affairs seems to have been chiefly committed, with the oversight

of the Lord Chancellor Clarendon. This letter, in addition to a previous

letter from the King of the same kind, together with the letters of Lord

Clarendon and the Hon. Robert Boyle, left them not a shadow of pretext

for the inflammatory statements they were putting forth, and the

complaints they were making, that their Charter privileges and rights of

conscience were invaded, and was a reply to the petition of the

Massachusetts Bay Governor and Council (inserted above at length, pages

153-159), and shows the utter groundlessness of their statements; that

what they contended for under the pretext of conscience was the right of

persecuting and proscribing all who did not conform to the

Congregational worship; and that what they claimed under the pretence of

Charter rights was absolute independence, refusing to submit even to

inquiry as to whether they had not encroached upon the rights and

territories of their white and Indian neighbours, or made laws and

regulations and performed acts contrary to the laws of England and to

the rights of other of the King's subjects. This letter breathes the

spirit of kindness and forbearance, and contends for _toleration_, as

did all the loyal colonists of the time, appealing to the King for

protection against the intolerance, persecution and proscription of the

Massachusetts Bay Congregational Government. The letter is as follows:

Copy of a Letter from Secretary Morrice to the Massachusetts Colony:

"SIRS,

"His Majesty hath heard this petition[146] read to him, and hath well

weighed all the expressions therein, and the temper and spirit of those

who framed it, and doth not impute the same to his colony of

Massachusetts, amongst whom he knows the major part consists of men well

affected to his service and obedient to his government, but he hath

commanded me to let you know that he is not pleased with this petition,

and looks upon it as the contrivance of a few persons who have had too

long authority there, and who use all the artifices they can to infuse

jealousies into his good subjects there, and apprehensions as if their

Charter were in danger, when it is not possible for his Majesty to do

more for the securing it, or to give his subjects there more assurance

that it shall not in any degree be infringed, than he hath already done,

even by his late Commission and Commissioners sent thither, who are so

far from having the least authority to infringe any clause in the said

Charter, that it is the principal end of their journey, so chargeable to

his Majesty, to see that the Charter be fully and punctually observed.

His Majesty did expect thanks and acknowledgments from that his colony,

of his fatherly care in sending his Commissioners thither, and which he

doubts not he shall receive from the rest of the colonies in those

parts, and not such unreasonable and groundless complaint as is

contained in your petition, as if he had thereby intended to take away

your privileges and to drive you from your habitations, without the

least mention of any misdemeanour or miscarriage in any one of the said

Commissioners or in any one particular. Nor can his Majesty comprehend

(except you believe that by granting your Charter he hath parted with

his sovereign power over his subjects there) how he could proceed more

graciously, or indeed any other way, upon so many complaints presented

to him by particular persons of injustice done contrary to the

constitution of that government: from the other colonies, for the

oppression they pretend to undergo by the conduct of Massachusetts, by

extending their bounds and their jurisdiction further than they ought to

do, as they pretend; from the natives, for the breach of faith and

intolerable pressures laid upon them, as they allege, contrary to all

kind of justice, and even to the dishonour of the English nation and

Christian faith, if all they allege be true. I say, his Majesty cannot

comprehend how he could apply proper remedies to these evils, if they

are real, or how he could satisfy himself whether they are real or no by

any other way or means than by sending Commissioners thither to examine

the truth and grounds of all the allegations, and for the present to

compose the differences the best they can, until, upon a full and clear

representation thereof to his Majesty, who cannot but expect the same

from them, his Majesty's own final judgement and determination may be

had. And it hath pleased God so far already to bless that service that

it's no small benefit his Majesty and his English colonies in those

parts have already received by the said Commissioners in the removal of

so inconvenient neighbours as the Dutch have been for these late years,

and which would have been a more spreading and growing mischief in a

short time if it had not been removed. To conclude, I am commanded by

his Majesty to assure you again of your full and peaceable enjoyment of

all the privileges and liberties granted to you by his Charter, which he

hath heretofore and doth now again offer to renew to you, if you shall

desire it; and that you may further promise yourselves all the

protection, countenance, and encouragement that the best subjects ever

received from the most gracious Prince; in return whereof he doth only

expect that duty and cheerful obedience that is due to him, and that it

may not be in the power of any malicious person to make you miserable by

entertaining any unnecessary and unreasonable jealousies that there is a

purpose to make you so. And since his Majesty hath too much reason to

suspect that Mr. Endicot,[147] who hath during all the late revolutions

continued the government there, is not a person well affected to his

Majesty's person or his government, his Majesty will take it very well

if at the next election any other person of good reputation be chosen in

the place, and that he may no longer exercise that charge. This is all I

have to signify unto you from his Majesty, and remain,

"Your very humble servant,

"WILL. MORRICE.

"Whitehall, February 25th, 1665."

But this courteous and explicit letter had no effect upon the Governor

and Council of Massachusetts Bay in allaying opposition to the Royal

Commissioners, whose authority they refused to acknowledge, nor did it

prevent their persecution of their brethren whom they termed

"Sectaries"--the "Dissenting party." The Commissioners having executed

the part of their commission relative to the Dutch and Indians, and

finding their authority resisted by the Governor and Council of

Massachusetts Bay, reported the result to the King's Government, which

determined to order the attendance of representatives of the

Massachusetts Bay Government, to answer in England the complaints

prepared against them, and for their conduct to the Commissioners. The

letter which the King was advised to address to that pretentious and

persecuting Government speaks in a more decisive but kindly tone, and is

as follows:

Copy of a letter from King Charles II. to the Massachusetts Colony,

April, 1666:

"CHARLES R.

"His Majesty having received a full information from his Commissioners

who were sent by him into New England, of their reception and treatment

in the several colonies and provinces of that plantation, in all which

they have received great satisfaction but only that of Massachusetts;

and he having likewise been fully informed of the account sent hither by

the Counsell of the Massachusetts, under the hand of the present

Governor, of all the passages and proceedings which have been there

between the said Commissioners and them from the time of their first

coming over; upon all which it is very evident to his Majesty,

notwithstanding many expressions of great affection and duty, that those

who govern the Colony of Massachusetts do believe that the commission

given by his Majesty to those Commissioners, upon so many and weighty

reasons, and after so long deliberation, is an apparent violation of

their Charter, and tending to the dissolution of it, and that in truth

they do, upon the matter, believe that his Majesty hath no jurisdiction

over them, but that all persons must acquiesce in their judgments and

determinations, how unjust soever, and cannot appeal to his Majesty,

which would be a matter of such a high consequence as every man

discernes where it must end. His Majesty, therefore, upon due

consideration of the whole matter, thinks fit to recall his said

Commissioners which he hath at this present done, to the end he may

receive from them a more particular account of the state and condition

of those his plantations, and of the particular differences and debates

they have had with those of the Massachusetts, that so his Majesty may

pass his final judgment and determination thereupon. His Majesty's

express command and charge is, that the Governor and Counsell of the

Massachusetts do forthwith make choice of five or four persons to attend

upon his Majesty, whereof Mr. Richard Bellingham and Major Hathorn are

to be two, both which his Majesty commands upon their allegiance to

attend, the other three or two to be such as the Counsell shall make

choice of; and if the said Mr. Bellingham be the present Governor,

another fit person is to be deputed to that office till his return, and

his Majesty will then, in person, hear all the allegations, suggestions,

or pretences to right or favour that can be made on the behalf of the

said colony, and will then make it appear how far he is from the least

thought of invading or infringing, in the least degree, the Royal

Charter granted to the said colony. And his Majesty expects the

appearance of the said persons as soon as they can possibly repair

hither after they have notice of this his Majesty's pleasure. And his

further command is, that there be no alterations with reference to the

government of the Province of Maine till his Majesty hath heard what is

alledged on all sides, but that the same continue as his Majesty's

Commissioners have left the same, until his Majesty shall further

determine. And his Majesty further expressly charges and commands the

Governor and Counsell there, that they immediately set all such persons

at liberty who have been or are imprisoned only for petitioning or

applying themselves to his Majesty's Commissioners. And for the better

prevention of all differences and disputes upon the bounds and limits of

the several colonies, his Majesty's pleasure is, that all determinations

made by his Majesty's said Commissioners with reference to the said

bounds and limits may still continue to be observed, till, upon a full

representation of all pretences, his Majesty shall make his own final

determination; and particularly the present temporary bounds set by the

Commissioners between the colonies of New Plymouth and Rhode Island,

until his Majesty shall find cause to alter the same. And his Majesty

expects that full obedience be given to this signification of his

pleasure in all particulars.

"Given at the Court at Whitehall, the 10th day of April, 1666, in the

eighteenth year of his Majesty's reign.

"WILL. MORRICE."

Before noticing the proceedings of the Massachusetts Bay Court in

reference to this letter of the King, it may be proper to pause a little

and retrospect past transactions between the two Charleses and the

Congregational rulers of Massachusetts Bay, and the correspondence of

the latter with the Royal Commissioners, so prominently referred to in

the above letter.

The foregoing documents which I have so largely quoted evince the Royal

indulgence and kindness shown to the Massachusetts Bay Colony after the

conduct of its rulers to the King and his father during the twenty years

of the civil war and Commonwealth; the utter absence of all intention on

the part of Charles the Second, any more than on the part of Charles the

First, to limit or interfere with the exercise of their own conscience

or taste in their form or manner of worship, only insisting upon the

enjoyment of the same liberty by those who preferred another form and

manner of worship. However intolerant and persecuting the Governments of

both Charles the First and Second were to all who did not conform to the

established worship and its ceremonies in England, they both disclaimed

enforcing them upon the New England colonies; and I repeat, that it may

be kept in mind, that when the first complaints were preferred to

Charles the First and the Privy Council, in 1632, against Endicot and

his Council, for not only not conforming to, but abolishing, the worship

of the Church of England, the accused and their friends successfully,

though falsely, denied having abolished the Episcopal worship; and the

King alleged to his Council, when Laud was present, that he had never

intended to enforce the Church ceremonies objected to upon the New

England colonists. The declarations of Charles the Second, in his

letters to them, confirmed as they were by the letters of the Earl of

Clarendon and the Honourable Robert Boyle, show the fullest recognition

on the part of the Government of the Restoration to maintain their

perfect liberty of worship. Their own address to the King in 1664 bears

testimony that for upwards of thirty years liberty of worship had been

maintained inviolate, and that King Charles the Second had himself

invariably shown them the utmost forbearance, kindness, and

indulgence.[148]

Yet they no sooner felt their Charter secure, and that the King had

exhausted the treasury of his favours to them, than they deny his right

to see to their fulfilment of the conditions on which he had promised to

continue the Charter. The Charter itself, be it remembered, provided

that they should not make any laws or regulations contrary to the laws

of England, and that all the settlers under the Charter should enjoy all

the rights and privileges of British subjects. The King could not know

whether the provisions of the Royal Charter were observed or violated,

or whether his own prescribed conditions of continuing the Charter were

ignored or fulfilled, without examination; and how could such an

examination be made except by a Committee of the Privy Council or

special Commissioners? This was what the King did, and what the Governor

and Court of Massachusetts Bay resisted. They accepted with a profusion

of thanks and of professed loyalty the King's pardon and favours, but

denied his rights and authority. They denied any other allegiance or

responsibility to the King's Government than the payment of five per

cent. of the proceeds of the gold and silver mines. The absurdity of

their pretensions and of their resistance to the Royal Commission, and

the injustice and unreasonableness of their attacks and pretended

suspicions, are well exposed in the documents above quoted, and

especially in the petition of the "minority" of their own

fellow-colonists. But all in vain; where they could not openly deny,

they evaded so as to render nugatory the requirements of the King as the

conditions of continuing the Charter, as will appear from their

correspondence with the Royal Commissioners. I will give two or three

examples.

They refused to take the oath of allegiance according to the form

transmitted to them by the King's order, or except with limitations that

neutralized it. The first Governor of their Corporation, Matthew

Cradock, took the oath of allegiance as other officers of the Crown and

British subjects, and as provided in the Royal Charter; but after the

secret conveyance of the Charter to Massachusetts Bay and the

establishment of a Government there, they, in secret deliberation,

decided that they were not British subjects in the ordinary sense; that

the only allegiance they owed to the King was such as the homage the

Hanse Towns paid to Austria, or Burgundy to the Kings of France; that

the only allegiance or obligation they owed to England was the payment

of one-fifth per cent. of the produce of their gold and silver mines;

that there were no appeals from their acts or decisions to the King or

Courts of England; and that the King had no right to see whether their

laws or acts were according to the provisions of the Charter. When the

King, after his restoration, required them to take the oath of

allegiance as the first condition of continuing the Charter, they evaded

it by attaching to the oath the Charter _according to their

interpretation of it_. Any American citizen could at this day take the

oath of allegiance to the Sovereign of England if it were limited to the

Constitution of the United States. First of all, they required of every

freeman the oath of fidelity to the local Government; and then, after

three years' delay and debating about the oath of allegiance to the

King, the Massachusetts Bay Court adopted the following order:

"May 16th, 1665.

"It is ordered by this Court and by the authority thereof, that the

following oath be annexed unto the oaths of every freeman, and oath of

fidelity, and to the Governor, Deputy Governor and Assistants, and to

all other public officers as followeth. The oaths of freemen and of

fidelity to run thus: 'Whereas, I, A.B., an inhabitant within this

jurisdiction, considering how I stand to the King's Majesty, his heirs

and successors, _by our Charter_, and the Government established

thereby, do swear _accordingly_, by the great and dreadful name of the

ever living God, that I will bear faithful and true allegiance to our

Sovereign Lord the King, his heirs and successors; and so proceed _as in

the printed oaths of freemen and fidelity_.'"[149]

On this, Col. Nichols, Chairman of the Royal Commission, addressing the

Court, remarks as follows:

"You profess you highly prize the King's favour, and that offending him

shall never be imputed to you; and yet you, in the same paper, refuse to

do what the King requires should be done--that all that come into this

colony to dwell should take the oath of allegiance here. Your Charter

commands it; yet you make promises not therein expressed, and, in short,

would curtail the oath, as you do allegiance, refusing to obey the King.

It is your duty to administer justice in the King's name; and the King

acknowledgeth in his letter, April 23, that it is his duty to see that

justice be administered by you to all his subjects here, and yet you

will not give him leave to examine by his Commissioners."

Referring to this subject again, Col. Nichols remarks:

"Touching the oath of allegiance, which is exactly prescribed in your

Charter, and no faithful subject will make it less than according to the

law of England. The oath mentioned by you was taken by Mr. Matthew

Cradock, as Governor, which hath a part of the oath of allegiance put

into it, and ought to be taken in that name by all in public office;

also in another part of the Charter it is expressly spoken of as the

oath of allegiance; and how any man can make that in fewer words than

the law of England enjoins, I know not how it can be acceptable to his

Majesty."[150]

As a sect in the Jewish nation made void the law by their traditions, so

the sect of Congregational rulers in Massachusetts Bay thus made void

the national oath of allegiance by their additions. On the subject of

liberty of worship according to the Church of England, these sectarian

rulers express themselves thus:

"Concerning the use of the Common Prayer Book and ecclesiastical

privileges, our humble addresses to his Majesty have fully declared our

ends, in our being voluntary exiles from our dear native country, which

we had not chosen at so dear a rate, could we have seen the word of God

warranting us to perform our devotions in that way; and to have the same

set up here, we conceive it is apparent, that it will disturb our peace

in our present enjoyments; and we have commended to the ministry and

people here the word of the Lord for their rule therein, as you may find

by your perusal of our law book, title 'Ecclesiastical,' p. 25."

To this the King's Commissioners reply as follows:

"The end of the first Planters coming hither was (as expressed in your

address, 1660), the enjoyment of the liberty of your own consciences,

which the King is so far from taking away from you, that by every

occasion he hath promised and assured the full enjoyment of it to you.

We therefore advise that you should not deny the liberty of conscience

to any, especially where the King requires it; and that upon a vain

conceit of your own that it will disturb your enjoyments, which the King

often hath said it shall not.

"Though you commend to the ministers and people the word of the Lord for

their rule, yet you did it with a proviso that they have the approbation

of the Court, as appears in the same page; and we have great reason both

to think and say that the King and his Council and the Church of England

understand and follow the rules in God's word as much as this

Corporation.

"For the use of the Common Prayer Book: His Majesty doth not impose the

use of the Common Prayer Book on any, but he understands that liberty of

conscience comprehends every man's conscience as well as any particular,

and thinks that all his subjects should have equal rights; and in his

letter of June 28, 1662, he requires and charges that all his subjects

should have equally an allowance thereof; but why you should put that

restraint on his Majesty's subjects that live under his obedience, his

Majesty doth not understand that you have any such privileges.

"Concerning ecclesiastical privileges, we suppose you mean sacraments,

baptisms, etc. You say we have commended the word of the Lord for our

rule therein, referring us to the perusal of the printed law, page 25.

We have perused that law, and find that that law doth cut off those

privileges which his Majesty will have, and see that the rest of his

subjects have."[151]

I now resume the narrative of questions as affecting the authority of

the Crown and the subjection of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. That

colony was the most populous and wealthy of all the New England

colonies. Its principal founders were men of wealth and education; the

twelve years' tyranny of Charles the First and Laud, during the

suspension of Parliament, caused a flow of more than twenty thousand

emigrants to Massachusetts Bay, with a wealth exceeding half a million

sterling, and among them not less than seventy silenced clergymen.

During the subsequent twenty years of the civil war and Commonwealth in

England, the rulers of that colony actively sided with the latter, and

by the favour and connivance of Cromwell evaded the Navigation Law

passed by the Parliament, and enriched themselves greatly at the expense

of the other British colonies in America, and in violation of the law of

Parliament. In the meantime, being the stronger party, and knowing that

they were the favourites of Cromwell, they assumed, on diverse grounds,

possession of lands, south, east, north, and west, within the limits of

the neighbouring colonies, and made their might right, by force of arms,

when resisted; and denied the citizenship of freemen to all except

actual members of the Congregational Churches, and punished Dissenters

with fine, imprisonment, banishment, and death itself in many instances.

On the restoration of Charles the Second to the throne of his ancestors,

it was natural that the various oppressed and injured parties, whether

of colonies or individuals, should lay their grievances before their

Sovereign and appeal to his protection; and it was not less the duty of

the Sovereign to listen to their complaints, to inquire into them, and

to redress them if well founded. This the King, under the guidance of

his Puritan Councillors, proceeded to do in the most conciliatory and

least offensive way. Though the rulers of Massachusetts Bay did not, as

did the other New England as well as Southern colonies, recognize and

proclaim the King on the announcement of his restoration, but observed a

sullen silence until they saw that the monarchy was firmly established;

yet the King took no offence at this, but addressed them in terms the

most conciliatory, assuring them that he would overlook the past and

secure to them the privileges of their Charter, and the continued

freedom of their worship, upon the conditions of their taking the oath

of allegiance, administer their laws as British subjects, and grant to

all their fellow-colonists equal freedom of worship and of conscience

with themselves. They professed, as well they might, to receive the

King's declaration of oblivion for past offences and irregularities, and

promise of perpetuating their original Charter, with feelings of

inexpressible gratitude and delight; but they did not publish the King's

letter for nearly two years, notwithstanding his command to do so; and

when they did publish it, they appended an order that the conditions

were not to be acted upon until their further order.

The King's proclamation of pardon of the past, and promise of the

future, produced no other effect than a profusion of wordy compliments

and a vague intimation of doing as the King required, _as far as their

Charter and conscience would permit_. Their policy of proscription and

ignoring the Royal authority in their laws and government remaining

unchanged, and the complaints of oppressed colonies and individuals

multiplying, the adoption of further measures became necessary on the

part of the Crown; and it was decided to appoint a Royal Commission,

which should be at once a Court of Inquiry and a Court of Appeal, at

least in the first instance, reporting the results of their inquiries

and their decisions in cases of appeal for the information and final

decision of the highest authority in England, to which any dissatisfied

party could appeal against the report or decision of the Commissioners.

The address or "Petition" to the King, dated 1664, and given above, pp.

153-9, in all its tedious length and verbiage, shows how grossly they

misrepresented the character and objects of the Commission, preparatory

to resisting and rejecting it, while the King's letter in reply, also

given above at length, p. 166, completely refutes their misstatements,

and duly rebukes their unjust and offensive insinuations.

On receiving the report of the Commissioners, together with the

statements and pretensions of the Massachusetts Bay Court, the King

might have employed ships and soldiers to enforce his just and

reasonable commands, or have cancelled the Charter, as the conditions of

its continuance had not been fulfilled, and have established

Massachusetts Bay Plantation as a Royal colony; but he was advised to

adopt the milder and more forbearing course of giving them opportunity

of answering directly the complaints made against them, and of

justifying their acts and laws. He therefore, in the Royal letter given

above, dated April 6, 1666, required them within six months to send five

of their number to England to answer and to disprove if they could

complaints made against them, and to furnish proof of the professions

and statements they had made in their address and petition. They could

no longer evade or delay; they were brought face to face with the

authority of King and Parliament; they could adduce nothing but their

own assertions in their justification; facts were against their words;

they adopted their usual resource to evade all inquiry into their laws

and acts by pleading the immunity of their Charter, and refused to send

representatives to England. They wished the King to take their own words

alone as proofs of their loyalty to the Crown and equity to their

fellow-colonists. In place of sending representatives to England to meet

their accusers face to face and vindicate their acts, they sent two

large masts, thirty-four yards long, which they said they desired to

accompany with a thousand pounds sterling as a present to his Majesty,

but could get no one to lend them that sum, for the purpose of thus

expressing their good-will to the King, and of propitiating his favour.

Their language of adulation and profession was most abject, while they

implored the Royal clemency for refusing to obey the Royal commands.

Their records state that "11, 7mo., 1666, the General Court assembled on

account of a signification from his Majesty requiring the Council of

this colony to send five able and meet persons to make answer for

refusing jurisdiction to his Commissioners last year; whereof Mr.

Richard Bellingham and Mr. Hawthorne to be two of them, whom he

requires, on their allegiance, to come by first opportunity. The Court

met and agreed to spend the forenoon of the next day in prayer.

"12, 7mo., 1666. The Court met and sundry elders, and spent the forenoon

in prayer.

"13, 7mo., 1666. The Court met and the elders were present after lecture

and some debate had in Court concerning the duty we owe to his Majesty

in reference to his signification."

On the 14th sundry petitions were presented from the "minority" in

Boston, Salem, Ipswich, and Newbury, in favour of compliance with the

King's requirement; and the subject was debated in Council some days,

when, on the 17th, the Court adopted an answer to the "King's

signification," containing the following words addressed to the King's

Secretary of State, Mr. Morrice:

"We have, in all humility, given our reasons why we _could_ not submit

to the Commissioners and their mandates the last year, which we

understand lie before his Majesty. To the substance thereof we have

nothing to add; and therefore can't expect that the ablest persons among

us could be in a capacity to declare our case more fully.

"We must therefore commit this our great concernment unto Almighty God,

praying and hoping that his Majesty (a prince of so great clemency) will

consider the estate and condition of his poor and afflicted subjects at

such a time, being in imminent danger, by the public enemies of our

nation, by sea and land, and that in a wilderness far remote from

relief; wherefore we do in this wise prostrate ourselves before his

Majesty, and beseech him to be graciously pleased to rest assured of our

loyalty and allegiance _according to our former professions_. Thus with

our humble service to your Honour, and earnest prayers to God for his

Majesty's temporal and eternal happiness, we remain your Honour's humble

servants.

"17, 7mo., 1666."[152]

But even in their Council, where the "elders" or ministers and their

nominees were supreme, both to rule and to persecute, and to maintain

which they were plotting and struggling with the intensity of the Papacy

of late years against the Government of Italy, there were yet among

their number men of distinction, who contended for the rights of the

Crown, to decide questions of appeal from the colony, and to appoint a

special commission for that purpose, such as Mr. Simon Bradstreet, who

had been Governor, and as their Commissioner to England, with Mr.

Norton, had obtained the famous letter of Charles the Second, dated 10th

of June, 1662, which filled the Court of Massachusetts Bay with

inexpressible joy; and Mr. Dudley, son of a former Governor, and himself

first Governor appointed by the Crown after the cancelling of the

Charter; and Major Dennison, a man of mark, also in their Council.

In Mr. Danforth's notes of the debate on the answer to the King's

signification, _Mr. Bradstreet_ is reported to have said: "I grant legal

process in a course of law reaches us not in an ordinary course; yet I

think the King's prerogative gives him power to command our appearance,

which, before God and men, we are to obey." _Mr. Dudley_: "The King's

commands pass anywhere--Ireland, Calais, etc.--although ordinary process

from judges and officers pass not. No doubt you may have a trial at law

when you come to England, if you desire it, and you may insist upon and

claim it. Prerogative is as necessary as law, and it is for the good of

the whole that there be always power in being able to act; and where

there is a right of power, it will be abused so long as it is in the

hands of weak men, and the less pious the more apt to miscarry; but

right may not be denied because it may be abused."

After the Court had adopted its answer of refusal to the King's

signification, Mr. Bradstreet said: "I fear we take not a right course

for our safety. It is clear that this signification is from his Majesty.

I do desire to have it remembered that I do dissent, and desire to have

it recorded that I dissent, from that part of it as is an answer to the

King's signification." Major Dennison declared his dissent from the

letter to Mr. Morrice, as not being proportionate to the end desired,

and he hoped, intended, and desired it might be entered--namely, due

satisfaction to his Majesty, and the preservation of the peace and

liberty of the colony.[153]

It is clear from the foregoing facts that the alleged invasion of

chartered rights and privileges put forth by the ruling party of

Massachusetts Bay was a mere pretext to cover the long-cherished

pretensions (called by them "dear-bought rights") to absolute

independence; that is, the domination of the Congregationalist

Government, to the exclusion of the Crown, to proscribe from the

elective franchise and eligibility to office all but Congregationalists,

and to persecute all who differed from them in either religious or

political opinion, including their control and suppression of the

freedom of the press.[154] They persisted in the cruel persecution of

their Baptist brethren as well as of the Quakers, notwithstanding the

King had established the fullest religious liberty by Royal Charter,

granted in 1663 to the Colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and had

by his letters in 1662 and 1664, and subsequently, forbidden religious

persecution and prescribed religious toleration as a condition of the

continuance of the Charter in Massachusetts Bay Colony.[155]

I will give in a note, from the records of their own Court, their

persecuting proceedings against certain Baptists in April, 1666, six

years after the Restoration.[156]

The Puritan historian, Neal, writing under date three years later,

1669, says: "The displeasure of the Government ran very high against the

Anabaptists and Quakers at this time. The Anabaptists had gathered one

Church at Swanzey, and another at Boston, but the General Court was very

severe in putting the laws in execution against them, whereby many

honest people were ruined by fines, imprisonment, and banishment, which

was the more extraordinary because their brethren in England were

groaning under persecution from the Church of England at the same time.

Sad complaints were sent over to England every summer of the severity of

the Government against the Anabaptists, which obliged the dissenting

ministers in London to appear at length in their favour. A letter was

accordingly sent over to the Governor of Massachusetts, signed by Dr.

Goodwin, Dr. Owen, Mr. Nie, Mr. Caryl, and nine other ministers,

beseeching him to make use of his authority and interest for restoring

such to their liberty as were in prison on account of religion, and that

their sanguinary laws might not be put in execution in future." [Mr.

Neal gives the letter, and then proceeds.] "But the excellent letter

made no impression upon them; the prisoners were not released, nor the

execution of the laws suspended; nay, so far from this, that ten years

after, in the year 1679, a General Synod being called to inquire into

the evils that provoked the Lord to bring his judgments on New England,

they mention these among the rest, 'Men have set up their thresholds by

God's threshold, and their posts by God's post; Quakers are false

worshippers, and such Anabaptists as have risen up among us, in

opposition to the Churches of the Lord Jesus,' etc., etc."

"Wherefore it must needs be provoking to God if these things be not duly

and fully testified against by every one in their several capacities

respectively."[158]

The present of two large masts and a ship-load of timber; successive

obsequious and evasive addresses; explanations of agents; compliance in

some particulars with the Royal requirements in regard to the oath of

allegiance, and administering the law, so far appeased the King's

Government that further action was suspended for a time in regard to

enforcing the granting of the elective franchise, eligibility to office,

and liberty of worship to other than Congregationalists,[159] especially

as the attention of Charles was absorbed by exciting questions at home,

by his war with Holland, which he bitterly hated, and his intrigues with

France, on which he became a paid dependant. But the complaints and

appeals to the King from neighbouring colonies of the invasion of

individual and territorial rights by the Court of Massachusetts Bay, and

from the persecuted and proscribed inhabitants of their own colony,

awakened at last the renewed attention of the King's Government to the

proceedings of the Massachusetts Bay rulers. The letter which the King

was advised to address to them is kind and conciliatory in its tone; but

it shows that while the King, as he had declared in his first letter,

addressed to them seventeen years before, recognized the "Congregational

way of worship," he insisted on toleration of the worship of

Episcopalians, Baptists, etc., and the civil rights and privileges of

their members,[161] denied by these "fathers of American liberty" to

the very last; until then, power of proscription and persecution was

wrested from them by the cancelling of their Charter.

The chief requirements of this letter were, as stated by Mr. Hutchinson:

"1. That agents be sent over in six months, fully instructed to answer

and transact what was undetermined at that time.

"2. That freedom and liberty of conscience be given to such persons as

desire to serve God in the way of the Church of England, so as not to

be thereby made obnoxious, or discountenanced from their sharing in the

government, much less that they, or any other of his Majesty's subjects

(not being Papists) who do not agree in the Congregational way, be by

law subject to fines or forfeitures or other incapacities.

"3. That no other distinction be observed in making freemen than that

they be men of competent estates, rateable at ten shillings, according

to the rules of the place, and that such in their turns be capable of

the magistracy, and all laws made void that obstruct the same.

"4. That the ancient number of eighteen assistants be observed, as by

Charter. (They had been limited to eight or ten.)

"5. That all persons coming to any privilege, trust or office, take the

oath of allegiance.

"6. That all military commissions as well as proceedings of justice run

in his Majesty's name.

"7. That all laws repugnant to, and inconsistent with, the laws of

England for trade, be abolished."[164]

There were certain injunctions in regard to complaints from neighbouring

colonies; but the necessity for such injunctions as those above

enumerated, and stated more at large in the King's letter, as stated in

note on p. 187, given for the third or fourth time the nineteenth year

after the Restoration, shows the disloyal proscriptions and persecuting

character of the Government of Massachusetts Bay, and the great

forbearance of the King's Government in continuing the Charter while the

conditions of its proposed continuance were constantly violated.

Dr. Palfrey speaks of these requirements, and the whole policy of the

King's Government, as "usurpations" on the chartered rights of the

Massachusetts Bay Colony. But let any reader say in which of the above

seven requirements there is the slightest "usurpation" on any right of a

British subject; whether there is anything that any loyal British

subject would not freely acknowledge and respond to; requirements

unhesitatingly obeyed by all the colonies except that of Massachusetts

Bay alone, and which have been observed by every British Province of

America for the last hundred years, and are observed by the Dominion of

Canada at this day.

Dr. Palfrey, referring to this period (1676-82), says: "Lord Clarendon's

scheme of colonial policy was now ripe," but he does not adduce a word

from Lord Clarendon to show what that policy was only by insinuations

and assertions, and assumes it to have been the subversion of the rights

and liberties of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Lord Clarendon, in his

letter to the Governor Endicot, given above, pp. 160, 161, explains his

colonial policy, which was not only to maintain the Charter in its

integrity, but to see that its provisions and objects were not violated

but fulfilled, and that while the Congregational worship should not be

interfered with, the Congregational Government should not proscribe from

the elective franchise and liberty of worship the members of other

Protestant denominations. The Hon. Robert Boyle, the philosopher and

benefactor of New England, and President of the New England Society for

Propagation of the Gospel among the Indians, expressed the same views

with Lord Clarendon, and there is not a shadow of proof that Lord

Clarendon ever entertained any other policy in regard to New England

than that which he expressed in his letter to Governor Endicot in 1664.

Dr. Palfrey and other New England historians occupy four-fifths of their

pages with accounts of the continental proceedings of the Governments of

the Stuarts, and their oppressions and persecutions of Nonconformists in

England, and then _assume_ that their policy was the same in regard to

the New England Colonies, and that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was

therefore the champion defender of colonial liberties, in denying

responsibility to the Imperial Government for its acts, and refusing the

usual oaths, and acts of allegiance to the Throne; whereas their

_assumptions_ (for they are nothing else) are unsupported by a single

fact, and are contradicted, without exception, by the declarations and

acts of the Government of Charles the Second, as well as by those of his

royal father. Language can hardly exaggerate or reprobate in too strong

terms the cruel persecutions of dissenters from the Established

Episcopal Church in England, by both Charles the First and Charles the

Second; but the Congregational Government of Massachusetts Bay exceeded

that of the Charleses in proscribing and persecuting dissenters from

their Established Congregational Churches in that colony; and as well

might Messrs. Palfrey, Bancroft, and other New England historians

maintain that, because Congregationalists contended for liberty of

worship for themselves in England, they practised it in regard to those

who did not agree with them in worship in Massachusetts Bay. The

proscription and persecution of Congregationalists and Baptists by

Episcopalian rulers in England were outrivalled by the Congregational

rulers in their proscriptions and persecutions of Episcopalians and

Baptists in Massachusetts.

It is also assumed by the New England historians referred to that the

King's advisers had intimated the intention of appointing a

Governor-General over the Colonies of New England to see to the

observance of their Charters and of the Navigation Laws; but wherein did

this infringe the rights or privileges of any Colonial Charter? Wherein

did it involve any more than rightful attention to Imperial authority

and interests? Wherein has the appointment or office of a

Governor-General of British North America, in addition to the

Lieutenant-Governor of each province, ever been regarded to this day as

an infringement of the rights and privileges of any Legislature or

British subject in the colonies? Wherein has the right of appeal by any

colony or party to the Supreme Courts or authorities of England, against

the decisions of local Courts or local executive acts, been regarded as

an infringement of colonial rights, or other than a protection to

colonial subjects? When has the right of appeal by parties in any of the

neighbouring States, to the Supreme Court at Washington, been held to be

an invasion of the rights of such States?

The rulers of Massachusetts Bay Colony concealed and secreted their

Charter; they then represented it as containing provisions which no

Royal Charter in the world ever contained; they represented the King as

having abdicated, and excluded himself from all authority over them as a

colony or as individuals; they denied that Parliament itself had any

authority to legislate for any country on the western side of the

Atlantic; they virtually claimed absolute independence, erasing the oath

of allegiance from their records, proscribing and persecuting all

nonconformists to the Congregational worship, invading the territories

of other colonies and then maintaining their invasions by military

force, denying the authority of Great Britain or of any power on earth

to restrict or interfere with their acts. The New England historians

referred to are compelled to confess that the Royal Charter contained no

such provisions or powers as the rulers of Massachusetts Bay pretended;

yet their narratives and argumentations and imputations upon the British

Government assume the truth of the fabulous representations of the

Charter, and treat not only every act of the King as royal tyranny, but

every suspicion of what the King might do as a reality, and the

hostility of the Massachusetts Bay Government as a defence of

constitutional rights and resistance of royal despotism. But in these

laboured and eloquent philippics against the Government of the

Restoration, they seem to forget that the Parliament and Government of

the Commonwealth and Cromwell asserted far larger powers over the

colonies than did the Government and Parliament of Charles the Second

(as is seen by their Act and appointments in their enactments quoted

above, pp. 88-90).

The Commonwealth appointed a Governor-General (the Earl of Warwick),

Commissioners with powers to remove and appoint Colonial Governors and

other local officers; whereas the Commissioners appointed by Charles the

Second had no authority to remove or appoint a single local Governor or

other officer, to annul or enact a single law, but to inquire and

report; and even as a Court of Appeal their proceedings and decisions

were to be reported for final action in England.

The famous Act of Navigation itself, which ultimately became the chief

ground of the American revolutionary war, was passed by the

Commonwealth, though, by a collusion between Cromwell and the rulers of

Massachusetts Bay, its provisions were evaded in that colony, while

rigorously enforced in the other colonies.[165]

In the first year of Charles the Second this Act was renewed, with some

additional provisions.[166]

But to return to the correspondence between the King's Government and

the rulers of Massachusetts Bay. It may be supposed that after the King

had promised, in 1662, to forget past offences and continue the justly

forfeited Royal Charter upon certain conditions, and that those

conditions were evaded by various devices during nearly twenty years,

the Royal patience would become exhausted, and that, instead of the

gentle instructions and remonstrances which had characterized his former

letters, the King would adopt more severe and imperative language. Hence

in his next letter, September 30, 1680, to the Governor and Council of

the Massachusetts, he commences in the following words:

"CHARLES R.

"Trusty and well beloved, we greet you well. When by our Royal letter,

bearing date the 24th day of July, in the one and thirtieth year of our

reign, we signified unto you our gracious inclination to have all past

deeds forgotten, setting before you the means whereby you might deserve

our pardon, and commanding your ready obedience to several particulars

therein contained, requiring withall a speedy compliance with the

intimations of your duty given to your late agents during their

attendance here, all which we esteem essential to your quiet settlement

and natural obedience due unto us. We then little thought that those

marks of our grace and favour should have found no better acceptance

among you, but that, before all things, you should have given preference

to the execution of our commands, when after so many months we come to

understand by a letter from you to one of our principal Secretaries of

State, dated the 21st of May last, that very few of our directions have

been pursued by your General Court, the further consideration of the

remaining particulars having been put off upon insufficient pretences,

and even wholly neglecting your appointment of other agents which were

required to be sent over unto us within six months after the receipt of

our said letters, with full instructions to attend our Royal pleasure

herein in relation to that our Government."

Among other matters, the King "strictly commanded and required" them,

"as they tendered their allegiance," to despatch such agents within

three months after their reception of the order, and with full powers to

satisfy his Majesty on the subjects of complaint; and "he ended the

letter," says Mr. Palfrey, "with a very definite injunction:"

"That the due observance of all our commands above mentioned may not be

any longer protracted, we require you, upon receipt thereof, forthwith

to call a General Court, and therein to read these our letters and

provide for our speedy satisfaction, and in default thereof we shall

take the most effectual means to procure the same. And so we bid you

farewell."[167]

This letter led to the calling of a "Special General Court," January,

1681, in which very protracted debates ensued on the revision of the

laws, so long delayed, and the election of agents to England according

to the King's command. Samuel Nowell and John Richards were elected

agents to England, but were restricted by instructions which forbade

conceding anything from their original Charter pretensions, and

therefore rendered their agency an insult to the Government and the

King, and hastened the catastrophe which they so much dreaded, the

cancelling of their Charter.

In the meantime, to appease the displeasure of the Crown, they passed

several Acts which had the appearance of obedience to the Royal

commands, but which they were careful not to carry into effect.[168] I

will give two or three examples.

They enacted "that the Acts of Trade and Navigation should be forthwith

proclaimed in the market-place of Boston by beat of drum, and that all

clauses in said Acts relating to this Plantation should be strictly

taken notice of and observed." This appears very plausible, and is so

quoted by Dr. Palfrey; but he does not add that care was taken that it

should not be carried into effect. And to accomplish their purposes, and

to assert the subordination of the Royal authority to their own local

authority, "they constituted naval _officers_, one for Boston, the other

for 'Salem and adjacent parts,' to be commissioned by the Governor, and

to exercise powers of a nature to control the Collector appointed in

England."[169]

After nearly twenty years' delay and evasions, they enacted, in 1679,

"that the Governor, Deputy Governor, and Magistrates should take the

oath of allegiance 'without any reservation,' in the words sent them by

his Majesty's orders; but instead of the 'reservation' in their form of

oath in former Acts, they virtually neutralized the oath by an Act

requiring a prior preliminary oath of fidelity to the local

Government,[170] an Act which the Board of Colonial Plantations viewed

as 'derogatory to his Majesty's honour, as well as defective in point of

their own duty.'"

They instructed their agents in England to represent that there was no

colonial law "prohibiting any such as were of the persuasion of the

Church of England." The design of this statement plainly was to impress

upon the mind of the King's Government that there was no obstruction to

the worship and ordinances of the Church of England, and that the

elective franchise and privilege of worship were as open to

Episcopalians as to Congregationalists--the reverse of fact. After

repeated letters from the King in favour of toleration as one of the

conditions of continuing their Charter, notwithstanding their past

violation of it, they _professed_ to comply with the royal injunctions,

but their professed compliance amounted practically to nothing, as they

had evidently intended. The King's Commissioners had said to the

Massachusetts Bay Court on this subject: "For the use of the Common

Prayer Book: His Majesty doth not impose the use of the Common Prayer

Book on any; but he understands that liberty of conscience comprehends

every man's conscience, as well as any particular, and thinks that all

his subjects should have equal right." To this the Massachusetts Court

replied: "Concerning the use of the Common Prayer Book and

ecclesiastical privileges, our humble addresses to his Majesty have

fully declared our main ends, in our being voluntary exiles from our

dear native country, which we had not chosen at so dear a rate, could we

have seen the word of God warranting us to perform our devotions in that

way; and to have the same set up here, we conceive it is apparent that

it will disturb our peace in our present enjoyment."[171]

But afterwards they found it dangerous longer to resist the King's

commands, and professed to obey them by providing that those who were

not Congregationalists might exercise the elective franchise, provided

that, in addition to taking the oath of fidelity to the local

Government, and paying a rate which was not paid by one in a hundred,

_and obtaining a certificate from the Congregational minister as to

their being blameless in words and orthodox in religion, they were then

approved by the Court_. The right of franchise was possessed by every

member of any Congregational Church, whether he had property or not, or

paid rate or not;[172] not so with any other inhabitant, unless he

adduced proof that he had paid rate, produced a certificate of character

and of orthodoxy in religion, signed by a Congregational minister, and

was approved by the Court. No instance is recorded of any Episcopalian

ever having obtained the freedom of the colony under such conditions;

"nor," as Mr. Hutchinson says, "was there any Episcopal Church in any

part of the colony until the Charter was vacated."[174]

The Court of Massachusetts Bay also instructed their agents in England,

in 1682, to represent that "as for Anabaptists, they were now subject to

no other penal statutes than those of the Congregational way." But as

late as the spring of 1680 the General Court forbade the Baptists to

assemble for their worship in a meeting-house which they had built in

Boston.[175] The statement which they instructed their agents to make in

England was clearly intended to convey the impression that the Baptist

worship was equally allowed with the Congregational worship; but though

penalties against individual Baptists may have been relaxed, their

worship was no more tolerated than that of the Episcopalian until the

cancelling of the Charter.

The same kind of misleading evasion was practised upon the Government in

England in regard to the Quakers, as in respect to the Baptists, the

Episcopalians, and the elective franchise. The agents of the colony in

England were instructed to state that the "severe laws to prevent the

violent and impetuous intrusions of the Quakers had been suspended;"

but they did not say that laws less severe had been substituted, and

that fines and imprisonments were imposed upon any party who should be

present at a Quakers' meeting. Yet, as late as 1677, the Court of

Massachusetts Bay made a law "That every person found at a Quakers'

meeting shall be apprehended, _ex officio_, by the constable, and by

warrant from a magistrate or commissioner shall be committed to the

House of Correction, and there have the discipline of the house applied

to him, and be kept to work, with bread and water, for three days, and

then released, or else shall pay five pounds in money as a fine to the

country for such offence; and all constables neglecting their duty in

not faithfully executing this order, shall incur the penalty of five

pounds upon conviction, one-third thereof to the informer."[176]

They likewise instructed their agents in England to give assurance "That

the Acts of Trade, so far as they concerned the colony, should be

strictly observed, and that all due encouragement and assistance should

be given to his Majesty's officers and informers that might prosecute

the breaches of said Acts of Trade and Navigation."[177] But while as a

Court they professed this in their records and through their agents in

England, officers were elected in the colony who would not execute the

law, and so not a farthing of duties was collected under it at

Massachusetts Bay.

Thus for twenty years the rulers of Massachusetts Bay resisted and

evaded the six conditions on which King Charles the Second, after his

restoration, proposed to overlook and pardon their past offences and

perpetuate the Charter given to them by his Royal father; for twenty

years the King, without committing a single unconstitutional or

oppressive act against them, or without demanding anything which Queen

Victoria does not receive, this day, from every colony of the British

Empire, endured their evasions and denials of his authority and insults

of his Commissioners and officers. In all the despatches of the King's

Government to the rulers of Massachusetts Bay, during these twenty

years, as the reader of the preceding pages will have seen, the spirit

of kindness, and a full recognition of their rights in connection with

those of the Crown, were predominant.

This they repeatedly acknowledged in their addresses to the King. They

pretended the Royal Charter gave them absolute independence; and on that

absurd interpretation and lawless assumption they maintained a

continuous contest with the mother country for more than fifty years.

Every party in England, and the Commonwealth as well as Royalty,

maintained the right of King and Parliament to be the supreme tribunal

of appeal and control in America as well as in England; while the rulers

of Massachusetts Bay Colony alone, in contradistinction to all the other

British colonies in America, denied in short the authority of both King

and Parliament, though often amidst wordy professions of personal

loyalty to the Throne. Mr. Bancroft well sums up the history of

Massachusetts pretensions and intolerance in the sentences:

"Massachusetts owned no King but the King of Heaven." "Massachusetts

gave franchises to the members of the visible Church," but "inexorably

disfranchised Churchmen, Royalists, and all the world's people." "In

Massachusetts, the songs of Deborah and David were sung without change;

hostile Algonquins like the Canaanites were exterminated or enslaved;

and a peevish woman was hanged, because it was written, 'The witch shall

die.'"[178]

No hostile pen ever presented in so few and expressive words the

character and policy of the Government of Massachusetts Bay during the

whole existence of the first Charter, as is presented in these words of

their eulogist Bancroft; and these words express the causes of their

contests with the Crown and Parliament, of their proscription and

persecution of the majority of their fellow-colonists not of their

politics or form of worship, and of their dealing at pleasure with the

territories of their neighbours,[179] and the lands and lives of the

Indian tribes.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 114: The captain of a ship brought the news from England in

July, that the King had been proclaimed, but a false rumour was

circulated that the Government in England was in a very unsettled state,

the body of the people dissatisfied; that the Scotch had demanded work;

that Lord Fairfax was at the head of a great army, etc. Such a rumour

was so congenial to the feelings of the men who had been lauding

Cromwell, that when it was proposed in the General Court of

Massachusetts Bay, in the October following, to address the King, the

majority refused to do so. They awaited to see which party would prevail

in England, so as to pay court to it. On the 30th of November a ship

arrived from Bristol, bringing news of the utter falsity of the rumours

about the unsettled state of things and popular dissatisfaction in

England, and of the proceedings of Parliament; and letters were received

from their agent, Mr. Leverett, that petitions and complaints were

preferred against the colony to the King in Council. Then the Governor

and assistants called a meeting of the General Court, December 9th, when

a very loyal address to the King was presently agreed upon, and another

to the two Houses of Parliament. Letters were sent to Sir Thomas Temple,

to Lord Manchester, Lord Say and Seal, and to other persons of note,

praying them to intercede in behalf of the colony. A most gracious

answer was given to the address by the King's letter, dated February 15,

1660 (1661, new style), which was the first public act or order

concerning them after the restoration. (Hutchinson's History of

Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp. 210, 211.)]

[Footnote 115: Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp.

211, 212.]

[Footnote 116: Holmes' Annals of America, Vol. I., p. 318. Hutchinson,

Vol. I., p. 216. Hazard, Vol. II., pp. 593-595. The address is a

curiosity in its way, and a strange medley which I must leave the reader

to characterize in view of the facts involved. The following are the

principal passages of it:

Extracts from the Massachusetts General Court--Address to the King,

dated 19th December, 1660:

"To the High and Mighty Prince, Charles the Second, by the grace of God,

King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith.

"Most gracious and dread Sovereign:

"May it please your Majesty--In the day wherein you happily say you know

you are King over your British Israel, to cast a favourable eye upon

your poore Mephiboseth now, and by reason of lameness in respect of

distance, not until now appearing in your presence, we mean upon New

England, kneeling with the rest of your subjects before your Majesty as

her restored King. We forget not our ineptness as to those approaches;

we at present owne such impotence as renders us unable to excuse our

impotency of speaking unto our Lord the King; yet contemplating such a

King, who hath also seen adversity, that he knoweth the hearts of

exiles, who himself hath been an exile, the aspect of Majesty

extraordinarily influenced animateth exanimated outcasts, yet outcasts

as we hope for the truth, to make this address unto our Prince, hoping

to find grace in your sight. We present this script, the transcript of

our loyall hearts, wherein we crave leave to supplicate your Majesty for

your gracious protection of us in the continuance both of our civill and

religious liberties (according to the grantees known, and of suing for

the patent) conferred on this Plantation by your royal father. This,

viz., our libertie to walk in the faith of the gospell, was the cause of

our transporting ourselves, with our wives, little ones, and our

substances, from that over the Atlantick ocean, into the vast

wilderness, choosing rather the pure Scripture worship with a good

conscience in this remote wilderness among the heathen, than the

pleasures of England with submission to _the impositions_ of the _then_

so disposed and so far _prevailing hierarchy_, which we could not do

without an evil conscience." "Our witness is in heaven that we left not

our native country upon any dissatisfaction as to the constitution of

the civil state. Our lot after the good old nonconformists hath been

only to _act a passive part throughout these late vicissitudes_ and

successive turnings of States. Our separation from our brethren in this

desert hath been and is a sufficient bringing to mind the afflictions of

Joseph. But providentiall exemption of us hereby from the late warres

and temptations of _either party_ we account as a favour from God; the

former cloathes us with sackcloth, the latter with innocency.

(Signed) "JOHN ENDICOT, _Governor_.

"In the name and by order of the _General Court of Massachusetts_."]

[Footnote 117: It is known that the "_old_ nonconformists" did not fight

against the king, denounced his execution, suffered for their

"nonconformity" to Cromwell's despotism, and were among the most active

restorers of Charles the Second.]

[Footnote 118: See above, in a previous page.]

[Footnote 119: Letter from Charles II. to Governor Endicot:

"CHARLES R.

"Trusty and well beloved--Wee greet you well. It having pleased Almighty

God, after long trialls both of us and our people, to touch their hearts

at last with a just sense of our right, and by their assistance to

restore us, peaceably and without blood, to the exercise of our legall

authority for the good and welfare of the nations committed to our

charge, we have made it our care to settle our lately distracted kingdom

at home, and to extend our thoughts to increase the trade and advantages

of our colonies and plantations abroad, amongst which as wee consider

New England to be one of the chiefest, having enjoyed and grown up in a

long and orderly establishment, so wee shall not be behind any of our

royal predecessors in a just encouragement and protection of all our

loving subjects there, whose application unto us, since our late happy

restoration, hath been very acceptable, and shall not want its due

remembrance upon all seasonable occasions; neither shall wee forget to

make you and all our good people in those parts equal partakers of those

promises of liberty and moderation to tender consciences expressed in

our gracious declarations; which, though some persons in this kingdom,

of desperate, disloyal, and unchristian principles, have lately abused

to the public disturbance and their own destruction, yet wee are

confident our good subjects in New England will make a right use of it,

to the glory of God, their own spiritual comfort and edification. And so

wee bid you farewell. Given at our Court of Whitehall, the 15th day of

February, 1660 (1661, new style), in the thirteenth year of our reigne.

(Signed) "WILL. MORRICE."]

[Footnote 120: The following are extracts from the reply of the General

Court of Massachusetts Bay to the foregoing letter of Charles the

Second:

"ILLUSTRIOUS SIR,--

"That majestie and benignitie both sate upon the throne whereunto your

outcasts made their former addresse; witness this second eucharistical

approach unto the best of kings, who to other titles of royaltie common

to him with other gods amongst men, delighteth herein more particularily

to conforme himselfe to the God of gods, in that he hath not despised

nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither hath he hid his

face from him, but when he heard he cried.

"Our petition was the representation of exiles' necessities; this

script, congratulatory and lowly, is the reflection of the gracious

rayes of Christian majestie. There we besought your favour by presenting

to a compassionate eye that bottle full of tears shed by us in this

Teshimon: here we acknowledge the efficacie of regal influence to

qualify these salt waters. The mission of ours was accompanied with

these Churches sitting in sackcloth; the reception of yours was as the

holding forth the scepter of life. The truth is, such were the

impressions upon our spirits when we received an answer of peace from

our gracious Sovereigne as transcends the facultie of an eremitical

scribe. Such, as though our expressions of them neede pardon, yet the

suppression of them seemeth unpardonable."

The conclusion of their address was as follows:

"ROYAL SIR,--

"Your just Title to the Crown enthronizeth you in our consciences, your

graciousness in our affections: That inspireth us unto Duty, this

naturalizeth unto Loyalty: Thence we call you Lord; hence a Savior.

Mephibosheth, how prejudicially soever misrepresented, yet rejoiceth

that the King is come in Peace to his own house. Now the Lord hath dealt

well with our Lord the King. May New England, under your Royal

Protection, be permitted still to sing the Lord's song in this strange

Land. It shall be no grief of Heart for the Blessing of a people ready

to perish, daily to come upon your Majesty, the blessings of your poor

people, who (not here to alledge the innocency of our cause, touching

which let us live no longer than we subject ourselves to an orderly

trial thereof), though in the particulars of subscriptions and

conformity, supposed to be under the hallucinations of weak Brethren,

yet crave leave with all humility to say whether the voluntary quitting

of our native and dear country be not sufficient to expiate so innocent

a mistake (if a mistake) let God Almightie, your Majesty, and all good

men judge.

"Now, he in whose hands the times and trials of the children of men are,

who hath made your Majesty remarkably parallel to the most eminent of

kings, both for space and kind of your troubles, so that vere day cannot

be excepted, wherein they drove him from abiding in the inheritance of

the Lord, saying, 'Go, serve other gods; make you also (which is the

crown of all), more and more like unto him, in being a man after God's

own heart, to do whatsoever he will.' Yea, as the Lord was with David,

so let him be with your most excellent Majesty, and make the Throne of

King Charles the Second both greater and better than the Throne of King

David, or than the Throne of any of your Royal Progenitors. So shall

always pray,

"Great Sir,

"Your Majesty's most humble and loyal subjects.

"JOHN ENDICOT, _Governor_."

(Hutchinson's Collection of Original Papers, etc., pp. 341, 342.

Massachusetts Records, August 7, 1661.)]

[Footnote 121: The Government of New England received a letter from the

King, signifying his pleasure that there should be no further

prosecution of the Quakers who were condemned to suffer death or other

corporal punishment, or who were imprisoned or obnoxious to such

condemnation; but that they be forthwith sent over to England for trial.

The Massachusetts General Court, after due consideration of the King's

letter, proceeded to declare that the necessity of preserving religion,

order, and peace had induced the enactment of laws against the Quakers,

etc., and concluded by saying, "All this, notwithstanding their restless

spirits, have moved some of them to return, and others to fill the royal

ear of our Sovereign Lord the King with complaints against us, and have,

by their unwearied solicitations, in our absence, so far prevailed as to

obtain a letter from his Majesty to forbear their corporal punishment or

death; although we hope and doubt not but that if his Majesty were

rightly informed, he would be far from giving them such favour, or

weakening his authority here, so long and orderly settled: Yet that we

may not in the least offend his Majesty, this Court doth hereby order

and declare that the execution of the laws in force against Quakers as

such, so far as they respect corporal punishment or death, be suspended

until this Court take further order." Upon this order of the Court

twenty-eight Quakers were released from prison and conducted out of the

jurisdiction of Massachusetts. (Holmes' Annals, Vol. I., pp. 318, 319.)]

[Footnote 122: "Upon the Restoration, not only Episcopalians, but

Baptists, Quakers, etc., preferred complaints against the colony; and

although, by the interest of the Earl of Manchester and Lord Say, their

old friends, and Secretary Morrice, all Puritans, King Charles continued

their Charter, yet he required a toleration in religion, and an

alteration in some civil matters, neither of which were fully complied

with." (Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. II., p. 3.)]

[Footnote 123: "In the Earl of Manchester and Lord Say; in Annesley,

created Earl of Anglesea; in Denzil Hollis, now Lord Hollis; and in

Ashley Cooper, now Lord Ashley, the expectant cavaliers saw their old

enemies raised to the place of honour. Manchester had not taken any part

in public affairs since the passing of the self-denying ordinances. He

was still a Presbyterian, but had favoured the return of the King. Lord

Say, also, had long since withdrawn from public life, and though of a

less pliant temper than Manchester, his new friends had no reason to

doubt his steady adherence to the new order of things. Annesley was an

expert lawyer. Hollis had been the leader of the Presbyterians in the

Long Parliament, until the crisis which turned the scale in favour of

the Independents.

"Lord Ashley, better known as the Earl of Shaftesbury, had been devoted

successively to the King, the Parliament, and the Protector. Nichols and

Morrice were the two Secretaries of State."--Dr. R. Vaughan's

Revolutions in English History, Vol. III., B. 14, Chap. i., pp. 430,

431.

"Totally devoid of resentment, as well from natural lenity as

carelessness of his temper, Charles the Second ensured pardon to the

most guilty of his enemies, and left hopes of favour to his most violent

opponents. From the whole tenor of his actions and discourse, he seemed

desirous of losing the memory of past animosities, and of making every

party in affection to their prince and their native country.

"Into his Council he admitted the most eminent men of the nation,

without regard to former distinctions; the Presbyterians equally with

the Royalists shared this honour. Annesley was created Earl of Anglesea;

Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley; Denzil Hollis, Lord Hollis; the Earl of

Manchester was appointed Lord Chamberlain; and Lord Say, Privy Seal.

Calamy and Baxter, Presbyterian clergymen, were even made chaplains to

the King; Admiral Montague, created Earl of Sandwich, was entitled from

his recent services to great favour, and he obtained it. Monk, created

Duke of Albemarle, had performed such signal services that according to

a vulgar and inelegant observation, he ought rather to have expected

hatred and ingratitude, yet was he ever treated by the King with great

marks of distinction. Charles' disposition was free from jealousy; and

the prudent conduct of the General, who never overrated his merits,

prevented all State disgusts which naturally arise in so delicate a

situation. Morrice, his friend, was created Secretary of State, and was

supported more by his patron's credit than by his own abilities and

experience."--Hume's History of England, Vol. VII., Chap, xliii., pp.

338, 339.]

[Footnote 124: Letter of King Charles the Second to the General Court at

Massachusetts (June 28, 1662):

"CHARLES REX.

"Trusty and well beloved, We greete you well:

"Whereas we have have lately received an humble address and petition

from the General Court of our colony of Massachusetts, in New England,

presented to us by Simon Bradstreet and John Norton: We have thought it

agreeable to our princely grace and justice to let you know that the

same have been very acceptable unto us, and that we are satisfied with

your expressions of loyalty, duty and good affection made to us in the

said address, which we doubt not proceeds from the hearts of good and

honest subjects, and We are therefore willing that all our good subjects

of that Plantation do know that We do receive them into our gracious

protection, and will cherish them with our best encouragement, and that

We will preserve and do hereby continue the patent and charter

heretofore granted to them by our royall father of blessed memory, and

that they shall freely enjoy all the priviledges and libertys granted to

them in and by the same, and that We will be ready to renew the same

charter to them under our great seale of England, whenever they shall

desire it. And because the licence of these late ill times has likewise

had an influence upon our colony, in which they have swerved from the

rules prescribed, and even from the government instituted by the

charter, which we do graciously impute rather to the iniquity of the

time than to the evil intents of the hearts of those who exercised the

government there. And we do therefore publish and declare our free and

gracious pardon to all our subjects of that our plantation, for all

crimes and offences committed against us during the late troubles,

except any persons who stand attainted by our parliament here of high

treason, if any such persons have transported themselves into these

parts; the apprehending of whom and delivering them into the hands of

justice, we expect from the dutiful and affectionate obedience of those

of our good subjects in that colony, if they be found within the

jurisdiction thereof. Provided always, and be it our declared

expectation, that upon a review of all such laws and ordinances that are

now or have been during these late troubles in practice there, and which

are contrary or derogatory to our authority and government, the same may

be annulled and repealed, and the rules and prescriptions of the said

charter for administering and taking the oath of allegiance be

henceforth duly observed, and that the administrations of justice be in

our name. And since the principle and foundation of that charter was and

is the freedom of liberty of conscience, We do hereby charge and require

you that freedom and liberty be duly admitted and allowed, so that they

that desire to use the book of common prayer and performe their devotion

in that manner that is established here be not denied the exercise

thereof, or undergoe any prejudice or disadvantage thereby, they using

their liberty peaceably without any disturbances to others; and that all

persons of good and honest lives and conversations be admitted to the

sacrament of the Lord's Supper, according to the said Book of Common

Prayer, and their children to baptism."]

[Footnote 125: Indeed, so conscious were they that they had justly

forfeited all consideration from the King, that the first address

extracted from them when they found the monarchy firmly established,

expressed deep humiliation and confession, and implored the forgiveness

and favour of their Sovereign; and being sensible of the many and

well-founded complaints made against them by the victims of their

persecuting intolerance, they appointed two of their ablest and most

trusted members--Simon Bradstreet, an old magistrate, and John Norton, a

minister of Boston--to proceed to England to present their address, to

intercede for them, and secure the interest of those of their old

friends who might have influence with the King and his councillors. But

as Bradstreet and Norton had both been persecutors of their

Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Baptist brethren, and were conspicuous

in promoting the bloody persecutions of the Quakers (now getting a

favourable hearing for their sufferings at the English Court), they were

unwilling to undertake so difficult and hazardous a mission without

formal provision being made by the Massachusetts Court for indemnity for

all the damage they might incur.

"At length," says their historian, "the Committee appointed to do

everything for their dispatch in the recess of the Court, 'engaged to

make good all damages they might sustain by the detention of their

persons in England, or otherwise.' They departed the 10th of February

(1662.)

"Their reception in England was much more favourable than was expected;

their stay short, returning the next autumn with the King's most

gracious letter, some parts of which cheered the hearts of the country;

and they then looked upon and afterwards recurred to them as a

confirmation of their charter privileges, and an amnesty of all past

errors. The letter was ordered to be published (as the King had

directed), and in an order for public thanksgiving, particular notice is

taken of 'the return of the messengers, and the continuance of the

mercies of peace, liberties, and the Gospel.'"

The early New England historian, Hubbard, says: "They returned like

Noah's dove, with an olive branch of peace in their mouths."

"There were some things, however, in the King's letter hard to comply

with; and though it was ordered to be published, yet it was with this

caution, that 'inasmuch as the letter hath influence upon the Churches

as well as the civil state, all manner of acting in relation thereto

shall be suspended until the next General Court, that all persons may

have opportunity to consider what was necessary to be done, in order to

know his Majesty's pleasure therein.'" (Hutchinson's History of

Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp. 221, 222.)]

[Footnote 126: So dissatisfied were these Congregational "freemen" with

the conditions which were intended to put an end to their persecutions

of their brethren and their disloyal practices, that they denounced

their old friends and representatives to England, Messrs. Bradstreet and

Norton, for those conditions which they could not prevent, and upon

which they might well be thankful to preserve the Charter and obtain

pardon for their past offences. Their historian says: "The agents met

with the fate of most agents ever since. The favours they obtained were

supposed to be no more than might well have been expected, and their

merits were soon forgot; the evils which they had it not in their power

to prevent, were attributed to their neglect or unnecessary concessions.

Mr. Bradstreet was a man of more phlegm and not so sensibly touched, but

Mr. Norton was so affected that he grew melancholy; and died suddenly

soon after his return (April 5, 1633)." (Hutchinson's History of

Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p. 223.)

In a note the historian quotes the remark of Mr. Norton to the

Massachusetts Court, that "if they complied not with the King's letter,

the blood that should be spilt would lie at their door."

"Dr. Mather says upon this occasion: 'Such has been the jealous

disposition of our New Englanders about their dearly bought privileges,

and such also has been the various interpretations of the people about

the extent of their privileges, that of all the agents sent over to the

Court of England for now forty years together, I know of not one who did

not, at his return, meet with some forward entertainment among his

countrymen.'" (_Ib._, p. 222.)]