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CHAP. establish. A royal donation, under the great seal, is the greatest security that may be had in human affairs. 1664. Under the encouragement and security of the royal 25. charter, this people did, at their own charges, transport themselves, their wives and families, over the ocean, purchase the land of the natives, and plant this colony, with great labor, 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 thirty years, enjoyed the privilege of GOVERNMENT WITHIN THEMSELVES, as their undoubted right in the sight of God and man. To be governed by rulers of our own choosing and lawes of our own, is the fundamental privilege of our patent.

"A commission under the great seal, wherein four persons (one of them our professed enemy) are impowered to receive and determine all complaints and appeals according to their discretion, subjects us to the arbitrary power of strangers, and will end in the subversion of our all.

"If these things go on, your subjects here will either be forced to seeke new dwellings, or sink under intolerable burdens. The vigor of all new endeavors will be enfeebled; the king himself will be a loser of the wonted benefit by customs, exported and imported from hence into England, and this hopeful plantation will in the issue be ruined.

"If the aime should be to gratify some particular gentlemen by livings and revenues here, that will also fail, for the poverty of the people. If all the charges of the whole government by the year were put together, and then doubled or trebled, it would not be counted for one of those gentlemen a considerable accommodation. To a coalition in this course the people will

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never come; and it will be hard to find another people CHAP. that will stand under any considerable burden in this country, seeing it is not a country where men can 1664. subsist without hard labor and great frugality.

"God knows, our greatest ambition is to live a quiet life, in a corner of the world. We came not into this wildernesse to seek great things to ourselves; and if any come after us to seeke them heere, they will be disappointed. We keep ourselves within our line; a just dependence upon, and subjection to, your majestie, according to our charter, it is far from our hearts to disacknowledge. We would gladly do any thing within our power to purchase the continuance of your favorable aspect. But it is a great unhappiness to have no testimony of our loyalty offered but this, to yield up our liberties, which are far dearer to us than our lives, and which we have willingly ventured our lives, and passed through many deaths to obtain.

"It was Job's excellency, when he sat as king among his people, that he was a father to the poor. A poor people, destitute of outward favor, wealth, and power, now cry unto their lord the king. May your majestie regard their cause, and maintain their right; it will stand among the marks of lasting honor to after generations."

The spirit of the people corresponded with this address. Did any appear to pay court to the commissioners, they became objects of derision. Even the writing to the king and chancellor was not held to be a duty; the compact by the charter required only the payment to the king of one fifth of all gold and silver ore; this was an obligation; any notice of the king beyond this was only by way of civility.' It was also

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CHAP. hoped to weary the English government by a tedious correspondence; which might be continued till a new 1664. revolution. "For who knows," it was said, "but there may be a new revolution in England?" It is sometimes difficult to distinguish the instinct of fanaticism from the soundest judgment; fanaticism is sometimes of the keenest sagacity. There were many in New England who confidently expected a revival of liberty after the restoration, and what was called "the slaying of the witnesses." "Who knows," it was asked, "what the event of this Dutch war will be?' The establishment of arbitrary power would bring arbitrary taxation in its train, for the advantage of greedy courtiers. A report was spread, that Massachusetts was to yield a revenue of five thousand pounds yearly, for the king. Public meetings of the people were held; the brave and liberal Hawthorne, at the head of a company of train-bands, made a speech which royalists deemed "seditious;" and the inflexible Endicott, just as the last sands of life were running out, addressed the people at their meeting-house in Boston. Charles II. had written to the colony against Endicott, as a person not well affected, and desired that some other person might be chosen governor in his stead; but Endicott, who did not survive till the 1665. day of election, retained his office till the King of Mar. Kings summoned him from the world. The aged

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Davenport was equally unbending. "The commission," said he from New Haven, "is but a tryal of our courage; the Lord will be with his people while they are with him. If you consent to this court of appeals, you pluck down with your own hands the house which wisdom has built for you and your posterity."

The elections in the spring of 1665 proceeded with

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great quiet; the people firmly sustained the govern- CHAP. ment. Meantime letters of entreaty had been sent to Robert Boyle and the earl of Manchester; for, from 1664. the days of Southampton and Sandys, of Warwick and Say, to those of Burke and Chatham, America was not entirely destitute of friends in England. But none of them would perceive the reasonableness of complaining against an abstract principle. "We are all amazed,” wrote Clarendon, who, says Robert Boyle, was no 1665. enemy to Massachusetts; "you demand a revocation of the commission, without charging the commissioners with the least matter of crymes or exorbitances." Boyle echoed the astonishment: "The commissioners are not accused of one harmful thing, even in your private letters." The statesmen of that day in Massachusetts were more wise, and understood the doctrine of liberty better than the chancellor of England. A century later, and there were none in England who did not esteem the commission an unconstitutional usurpation.1

To Connecticut, the controversy of Massachusetts 1664 with the commissioners was fraught with beneficial results. It facilitated the entire union of the two colonies of Hartford and New Haven; and, as the commissioners were desirous to make friends in the other colonies, they avoided all angry collisions, gave no countenance to a claim advanced by the duke of Hamilton to a large tract of territory in the colony; and, in arranging the limits of New York, though the charter of Clarendon's son-in-law extended to the River Connecticut, they established the boundary, on the main, in conformity with the claims of Connecticut itself. Long Island went to the duke of York. Sat

1 Boyle, in Mass. Hist. Coll. xviii. Chalmers.

CHAP. isfied with the harmony which they had secured by

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attempting nothing but for the interests of the colony, 1664. the commissioners saw fit to praise to the monarch "the dutifulness and obedience of Connecticut," which was "set off with the more lustre by the contrary deportment of Massachusetts."

We shall soon have occasion to narrate the events in which Nichols was engaged at New York, where he remained. Carr, Cartwright, and Maverick, the other Feb. commissioners, returning to Massachusetts, desired that, 15. at the next general election day, the whole male popu

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lation might be assembled in Boston, to hear the message from the king. The absurd proposal was rejected. "He that will not attend to the request," said Cartwright, "is a traitor."

The nature of the government of Rhode Island, its habitual policy of relying on England for protection, secured to the royal agents in that province a less unfavorable reception. Plymouth,' the weakest colony of all, stood firm for its independence; although the commissioners, flattering the long-cherished hopes of the inhabitants, had promised them a charter if they would but set an example of compliance, and allow the king to select their governor from among three candidates, whom they themselves should nominate. The general assembly, after due consideration, “ with many thanks to the commissioners, and great protestations of loyalty to the king," "chose to be as they were." The people of Plymouth at that time were so poor,

they could not maintain scholars to their ministers; " but in some places made use of "a guifted brother; but the brethren were as "guifted" in the nature of liberty as in religion.

1 Morton and Davis, 310, &c., and 417, &c.

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