primitive arrangement of her ecclesiastical constitutions. If, near the beginning of his honorable career on this continent, he had fallen into occasional imprudences, creating anxiety, or even meriting displeasure, no deception, or cowardice, or sordidness was ever laid to his charge; if unused to flinch, or retract, or compromise he did not know how to be lenient to interloping Quakers, it was plain that he understood himself to be only severe in the assertion of an absolute right, and the needful exercise of a public guardianship; nor, for the last sixteen years of his long life, did the people doubt whether their Commonwealth might be safely intrusted to the keeping of his integrity, resolution, and good sense. Undoubting in faith and heartily devout, but otherwise a man of action much more than of sentiment, his life-long purpose of unreserved obedience to God, and active usefulness to man, was vigorous and buoyant. When the cross of St. George came to seem to him a Romish abomination, he tore it from the ensigns which were to be borne against the heathen, with a hand not a whit the less ready, either because England had lifted it for ages in victorious fields, or because to offer it insult might bring on his own head the penalty of treason. The difficulties of the last part of his public career were great; and he passed through them free from the reproach, not more of timidity, than of any other kind of selfishness. Neither the impetuosity of his character, nor any weak self-conceit, prevented him from securing the advantage of good counsel. He knew his place, and did not hesitate to claim it; but he knew it too well to be envious of a superior, or jealous of rivals. It can scarcely be said that he would have been competent to the great function of Winthrop in laying the foundations of the State; nor, when he was taken away at one of its most threatening crises, was his presence found in

dispensable to its safety. to its safety. But New England, when she counts up the benefactors eminently worthy of her grateful and reverent remembrance, can never omit his name.'1

The Commissioners thought it prudent to attempt to secure the smaller Colonies, before they should undertake the decisive contest with Massachusetts.2 New Haven was no more a power. Opposition was not to be apprehended from Connecticut, conciliated as she was, on the one hand, to the King by the annexation of the neighboring Colony, and apprehensive, on the other, of losing all her western towns to enlarge the new province of the Duke of York. At Plymouth, whither they now proceeded, they conducted themselves with moderation, and experienced no difficulty. They

1 "A fit instrument to begin this wilderness work; of courage bold, undaunted, yet sociable and of a cheerful spirit, loving and austere, applying himself to either, as occasion served." (Wonder-working Providence, Chap. IX.) Endicott was brother-in-law of Ludlow (Endicott, Life of Endicott, 12); and his son, as did a son of Dudley, married a daughter of Winthrop (Ibid., 108). He died at Boston, having removed thither from Salem about the year 1655. His house stood upon the hill lately levelled into Pemberton Square. In his last year, the Commissioners were instructed to endeavor to have him superseded as Governor. "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 [Endicott] may no longer exercise that charge." (Letter of Secretary Morrice, in Hutch. Coll., 392.)

"I do think it will be better to begin at Connecticut, and to despatch the other three Colonies before this [Massachusetts]. For, if we have good success there, it will be a strong inducement to these to submit also to

his Majesty's Commission; and if these [Massachusetts] should any way oppose us, it would be an ill precedent to the other." (Letter of Cartwright to Nicolls, February 4, 1665, in O'Callaghan, Documents, &c., III. 87). This policy had been sketched in the "Considerations," &c. (See above, p. 578, note 2.) “Until.... some apparent inclination towards a compliance shall discover itself in Boston or the other lesser corporations, no applications or demands should be made to them, because they else may be moved thereby to mingle or intermeddle with the proceedings of the Commissioners in the other Provinces."

Disaffection, however, was not wanting in Connecticut. On the 14th of September, 1664, a letter from William Morton, of New London, was read to the Privy Council, representing that "treasonable words" had been "spoken by several persons there." And instructions were directed to be sent to the royal Commissioners to make inquiry, and take measures "for vindication of his Majesty's honor.” (Journal of the Privy Council.)

missioners at

Feb. 22.

presented the King's letter, and made four proposals. These were:-1. That all householders should Operations take the oath of allegiance, and that justice should of the Combe administered in the King's name; -2. That Plymouth. "all men of competent estates and civil conversation, though of different judgments, might be admitted to be freemen, and have liberty to choose and be chosen officers, both civil and military;"-3. That "all men and women of orthodox opinions, competent knowledge, and civil lives, not scandalous," should be admitted to the Lord's Supper and have their children baptized, either in the churches already existing, or in congregations of their own; - 4. That "all laws, and expressions in laws, derogatory to his Majesty," should be "repealed, altered, and taken off from the file." These proposals were the same as those which had occasioned such consternation in Massachusetts, when communicated through Norton and Bradstreet.2

To the first, the second, and the fourth of them the Court of Plymouth readily gave its assent, adding, as to the first two, that they accorded with former practice, and, as to the other, professing ignorance of the exist ence of any objectionable matter of the kind described. The third was likewise conceded; but with the explanation, that none should "withdraw from paying their due proportions of maintenance to such ministers as were orderly settled in the places where they lived, until they had one of their own, and in such places as were capable of maintaining the worship of God in two distinct congregations." When the King was informed of the "dutiful

ness and obedience" of the people of Plymouth, he wrote them a letter of commendation. "Your carriage," he said, "seems to be set off with the more lustre, by the contrary deportment of the Colony of the Massachusetts, as if, by their refractoriness, they had designed to recommend and heighten the merit of your compliance." The Commissioners made some suggestion "in reference unto the manner of choice of the Governors of this jurisdiction, and in reference unto an Address to be made to his Majesty for the renewal of the patent;" but the consideration of these questions was postponed by the freemen, and was not for the present resumed. They did not like the conditions, which were hinted at, of a more direct responsibility to the government in England, and "preferred to remain as they were.""

June 7.

3

In the settlements on Narragansett Bay, whither the Commissioners next proceeded, they were looked for with affectionate expectation. The planters at Warwick flattered themselves that their hour for revenge had come, and they lost no time in approaching the deliverers. In an "humble petition of Samuel Gorton, Randall Holden, John Weeks, and John Greene, in behalf of themselves and others," the early transactions between them and Massachusetts were narrated in

March 4.

league, neither did, nor shall, oblige you to refuse his Majesty's authority, though any one, or all the other three, should do so." The object was to confirm the King's "good opinion of their loyalty," who, it was said, had been informed "that that union was a war combination made by the Four Colonies, when they had a design to throw off their dependence on England, and for that purpose." (Mass. Hist. Coll., V. 192.) If Plymouth did what Cartwright proposed (Hutchinson, I. 215, note), she did not stain her records with it. The demand may have influenced her action when, soon after, she pro

detail, and the Commissioners were entreated to "please to take their distresses into their Honors' breasts," and cause "some responsible and correspondent satisfaction" to be made.1 All of the Commissioners had before this time made hasty visits to Rhode Island, except Nicolls; and to him the Governor and Deputy-Governor The Commishad written with the most profuse assurances of devotion to the King, and deferential supplica- gansett tions for the favor of his representatives.2

sioners in

the Narra

country.

Feb. 3.

March 20.

Their enthusiastic loyalty gained them little indulgence. The Commissioners were acquainted with the cession of the Narragansett country to the King, procured twenty years before by Gorton and his company. They made a prompt and peremptory use of this advantage. Cutting the knot of the questions pending between Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island for the possession of that territory, they took it away from all the claimants. "We," they proclaimed, "his Majesty's Commissioners, have received them [the Narragansett Indians] into his Majesty's protection, and do, in his Majesty's name, order, appoint, and command, that the said country henceforward be called the King's Province, and that no person, of what Colony soever, presume to exercise any jurisdiction within this the King's Province, but such as receive authority from us under our hands and seals, until his Majesty's pleasure be further known." They declared the Paucatuck River to be the western boundary of the new province, and decreed that the Atherton Company should relinquish its lands on the repayment by the Indians of the purchase money. As a provisional arrangement, they authorized the Magistrates of Rhode Island to administer "the

1 Mass. Rec., IV. (ii.) 253-255. 2 R. I. Rec., II. 86-89 (comp. 91, 92). It is odd to see Benedict Arnold's hand to such complaints against

April 8.