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Sept. 16.

should then be determined about it, and more fit for the Commissioners first to consider of." Stuyvesant was getting more and more uneasy as to the issue of the quarrel he had provoked, "both in regard of the weakness the State of Holland, especially the West-India Company, were fallen into, . . . . . and also in respect of the doubts which he was fallen into at this time, both from his own. unruly people, and also of their neighbor Indians;" and he was importunate for a reconciliation.1 At their next meeting, the Commissioners addressed to him a joint letter, inquiring what it was that he proposed to refer, and what credentials he could produce from his principals, and reiterating their complaints of the dangerous practices of the Dutch with the Indians, and of the exorbitant duties levied by him upon commerce. They informed him that, until some accommodation should be made, Dutch traders would be subjected to the same liabilities in the harbors of New England, as were imposed upon Englishmen in New Netherland; that they should seize all arms and ammunition, suitable for trading with the Indians, which they might find in Dutch vessels within the English jurisdiction; and that they should strictly retaliate any injustice done "to any merchant or mariner, either English, Dutch, or other nation, admitted to be planters within any of the United Colonies," and should "vindicate the English rights by all suitable and just means." There was no reason to doubt that they would be as good as their word, and that, in their assumed plenitude of authority, they would act with promptness. But such a course would not do for Stuyvesant. He could not take the responsibility of involving his superiors in the consequences which might ensue. He wrote home, asking instructions, and urging that a settlement of the dispute should be made in Europe

Dec. 23.

And here it rested for the present.

1

2 Winthrop, II. 316, 324, 325, 329.

Records, &c., in Hazard, II. 102-105.

CHAPTER V.

WHEN Winslow went to England as agent for Massachusetts, to counteract the plots of Gorton and Child and their respective associates, eleven years had passed since the last of his three previous voyages to that country.1 He might now promise himself a more agreeable position there than he had occupied on the earlier occasions. Formerly he had had in charge an humble suit to a domineering Privy Council, and a vexatious negotiation with some London merchants about the investment of a few thousand pounds. The cause of a community beginning to be confident in its power was now to be pleaded by him in the hearing of rulers of England, whom he could trust for that devotion to freedom, civil and religious, which, while it had nerved some of its votaries for their triumph at home, had still earlier conducted others to a distant exile. He arrived in England in the Edward month in which the King was surrendered by Winslow the Scottish army to the English Parliament, and two months before the question about disbanding the troops provoked the open quarrel between the Independents and the Presbyterians.

in England.

1647.

January.

His proceedings in relation to the dispute of the authorities of Massachusetts with the Presbyterians in that Colony were related in the last chapter. The intrigues of Gorton, Greene, and Holden had demanded the agent's still earlier attention. As Child and his party relied upon the Presbyterians for support, so in the Levellers and Ranters, whom the strong hand of Cromwell, after help

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Samuel Gor

ing them to rise, was now hardly keeping in check, the emissaries from Shawomet found sympathizers who had such numbers, activity, and means of influence, that other parties were not disposed to offend them without necessity. "I preached," says Gorton, "the word of ton in Eng God publicly, in divers as eminent places as any were then in London, as also about London, and places more remote ; . . . . . publicly and immediately after the word delivered, the people giving thanks to God, that ever such a word came to be uttered among them.”1

land.

1646.

Gorton and his colleagues in the embassy had gone to England more than a year before Winslow. They took with them the Act of Submission of the Narragansetts, and they presented to the Commissioners for Foreign Plantations 3 a memorial complaining of the treatment which had been experienced by their company. "The petitioners, being favored by some of the Commissioners, partly for private respects and partly for their adhering to some of their corrupt tenets," obtained an Order to the government of Massachusetts, "to May 15. permit and suffer the petitioners, and all the late inhabitants of Narragansett Bay, with their families and all such as should hereafter join with them, freely and quietly to live and plant upon Shawomet," and such adjacent lands as they had previously occupied, till such time as the adverse claim of Massachusetts could be presented and considered. The Order also required that Gorton and his companions should be allowed to pass peaceably through Massachusetts to their homes. Holden arrived with it in Boston three months before Winslow's departure. The Governor refused him permission to land, till the advice of the Council could be obtained. The Council debated the question, and concluded

Sept. 13.

1 Gorton, Letter to Nathaniel Morton, in Force, Tracts, IV. (vii.) 14. An incomplete copy of the paper is in Hutchinson, I. 469.

* See above, p. 137.

See Vol. I. 633, 634.

4 R. I. Rec., I. 368; Winthrop, II. 280, 281.

to consult the neighboring Elders. The Elders were also divided in opinion; but "the greater part, both of Magistrates and Elders, thought it better to give so much respect to the protection which the Parliament had given him (and whereupon he adventured his life), as to suffer him to pass quietly away."

"1

When the General Court came to consider the course fit to be taken respecting the mandate from England, "one question," they said, "was, whether we should give the Commissioners their title, lest thereby we should acknowledge all that power they claimed in our jurisdiction." This question was decided in favor of courtesy. A far more important one lay behind, relating to the invitation given to Massachusetts, in the recent Order of the Commissioners, to make an answer to the charges of Gorton and his confederates. As to this, the conclusion, as Winthrop records it, was, " that, in point of government, we have granted by patent such full and ample power of choosing all officers that shall command and rule over us, of making all laws and rules of our obedience, and of a full and final determination of all cases in the administration of justice, that no appeals or other ways of interrupting our proceedings do lie against us. Concerning our way of answering complaints against us in England, we conceive that it doth not well suit with us, nor are we directly called upon, to profess and plead our right and power, further than in a way of justification of our proceedings questioned, from the words of the patent. . . . . . If the Parliament should be less inclinable to us, we must wait upon Providence for the preservation of our just liberties."2

This theory of colonial relation was implied in the "commission and instructions" which Winslow had carried over, and in a "remonstrance and a petition to the Com

1 Winthrop, II. 273.

2 Ibid., 282, 283.

Representa

Parliament.

missioners in England." Among the points which he was directed to maintain, as occasion should arise, were these: that the freemen of Massachusetts had a right to tions of Mas- omit the King's name from legal processes, both sachusetts to ❝ for avoiding appeals," and because the Company "claimed not as by commission, but by a free donation of absolute government;" that they showed their "subjection to England" by "framing their government according to their patent" received from her; that their exercise of admiralty jurisdiction was an incident of their chartered "power to defend themselves and of fend others, as well by sea as by land;" that the charter "gave the liberty of votes in elections expressly to the freemen only;" and that the "absolute power of government," vested in them by the charter, secured them against the imposition of a General Governor.1

In their Remonstrance to the Commissioners, the Magistrates of Massachusetts, in the first place, expressed their apprehension, that an answer on their part to Gorton's complaint might "be prejudicial to the liberties granted by their charter, and to their well-being in this remote part of the world ;" and they protested against its being drawn into precedent, lest, "when times should be changed, for all things below are subject to vanity, and other princes or Parliaments should arise, the generations succeeding should have cause to lament, and say, ' England sent our fathers forth with happy liberties, which they enjoyed many years, notwithstanding all the enmity and opposition of the prelacy and other potent adversaries; how came we to lose them, under the favor and protection of that State, at such a season when England itself recovered its own?"" They desired the Commissioners to attend to the evidence which Winslow would produce, to show that, in dealing with Gorton's company,

1 Winthrop, II. 299–301.

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