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April 7.

King's Province" till the royal pleasure should be known.1 The Indian, Pomham,2 was another party concerned in these determinations. To gratify the town of Warwick, the Commissioners ordered him to remove, after the next harvest, either within the line of Massachusetts, or to some place to be granted to him by Pessacus;-a step to which. with difficulty he was brought, by a present of forty pounds, to consent. The Apostle Eliot interposed modestly with Carr in Pomham's behalf, and received a tart reply. Roger Williams, venturing on an intercession for delay, was more respectfully treated. Williams sweetened his remonstrance by writing to the Commissioner: "Your Honor will never effect by force a safe and lasting conclusion, until you have first reduced the Massachusetts to the obedience of his Majesty; and then these appendants, towed at their stern, will easily, and not before, wind about also."8

The three Commissioners went next to Connecticut, where they made the same requisitions as had been comThe Commis- plied with by Plymouth; and in this quarter also they received a satisfactory reply. The April 20. demand relating to the conditions of citizenship

sioners in Connecticut.

1 R. I. Rec., II. 59, 60, 93, 95.

2 See above, p. 123.

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R. I. Rec., II. 132-138. The business was not brought to a conclusion till the spring of 1666..-"I desire you to take notice," wrote Carr to Eliot (February 28, 1666), "that I judge the persons employed in the affairs of the King's Province were well satisfied concerning his Majesty's royal and beneficent affections towards the Indians, and will, I doubt not, in observance thereof, continue, as they have in some measure begun, to take care, as in duty they are bound, to let them understand the same, though yourself had not taken upon you to be director. .... Your and others' in

terposings wherein you and they are not concerned, as though we were not able to order the King's affairs in these parts, without your advice and direction," &c. (Ibid., 135.) Unwonted language to be read by the honored correspondent of Robert Boyle. Williams could no more favorably describe his clients than as a barbarous scum and offscourings of mankind." (Ibid.) Writing to Lord Arlington of Williams's letter, Carr mentions him as "an ancient man, one (I think) that meant none ill in sending it.” (Ibid., 137.)

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was not in opposition to any existing theory or rule of Connecticut. The demand relating to ecclesiastical privileges had been favored in advance by the action of the recent Synod.1 But the submission which Connecticut was now able to make for New Haven, by reason of their new political relation to each other, was a surrender of the principles on which New Haven had been founded, and a bitter disappointment to her best men. Now was seen in part fulfilled the design for a union between those Colonies, so far as the scheme had proceeded from the English court.

The Commis

Rhode

Returning to Rhode Island, the Commissioners presented the same demands to the General Court of that Colony, and added a requisition for putting sioners in the Colony into "a posture of defence." With Island. lavish compliments the Court promised obedience, only qualifying the order respecting the Oath of Allegiance, by substituting, in favor of "such as made a scruple of swearing," an equivalent "engagement under the peril and penalty of perjury." Without objection on the part of the Colony, the Commissioners entertained appeals in litigations between private parties, most of which, however, they referred for determination to the General Court or the Governor, thus obtaining at the same time an acknowledgment of their own superior authority, and the credit of performing an act of grace.1

a little altered, with reference to the reply which had been made by Plymouth. Connecticut was commended by the King for its "dutifulness and obedience" in a letter of the same date and contents as that addressed to the primitive Colony. (Trumbull, Hist., I. 536.)

1 See above, p. 488.

"We began at Plymouth," wrote Carr, Cartwright, and Maverick, to

Bennet, from Boston (May 27), "and thence we went to Rhode Island, and so to Connecticut. . . . . . At New London we had heard William Morton's case, if he had been at home [see above, p. 600, note 3]. . . . . . From Connecticut we came through the Narragansett country." (O'Callaghan, Documents, &c., III. 96, 97.)

3

R. I. Rec., II. 110–118.
Ibid., 99, 106, 107, 143.

December.

1666. Sept. 4.

The Commissioners testified their complete satisfaction in their Report to the King. "The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations," they wrote, "returned their humble thanks to his Majesty for sending Commissioners, and made great demonstrations of their loyalty and obedience. They approved, as most reasonable, that appeals should be made to his Majesty's Commissioners, who, having heard and determined some causes among them, referred other some, in civility, to their General Court, and some to the Governor and others."1 The General Court maintained their position by an Address, in which they assured the King "that, however the other Colonies, or any of them, should stand affected or prove disloyal, yet that this Colony promised and resolved to stand loyal to his Majesty, and to promote his royal interest in these parts, to the very utmost of their power, upon all occasions whatsoever." And, in memorials to the King and Lord Clarendon, while they set forth at length their past deserts, sacrifices, and wrongs, they extolled the Commissioners; "declared some reasons why, of right and necessity, the whole country of Narragansetts, as in the very letter of the Charter, should belong" to themselves; prayed that the boundary line between them and Plymouth might be made to run "three miles to the east of the most easterly and northeasterly part" of Narragansett Bay; and bespoke some other favors, especially "in point of freedom of commerce.”2

From this sphere of easy negotiation the three Commissioners again transferred themselves to Boston. They arrived one by one, and in an obscure manner, their purpose being, as was supposed, to " prevent that respect and honorable reception, not only intended, but actu

1 R. I. Rec., II. 127. -The King complimented Rhode Island for its good behavior, in the same terms as Ply

mouth and Connecticut, and at the
same time. (Ibid., 149.)
Ibid., 154-166.

The Com

missioners

in Massa

chusetts.

ally prepared for them." Nicolls, coming from New York, joined them only the day before the meeting of the annual Court for Elections. The parties confronted each other, with a conviction on both sides that there was now to be a decisive contest. It was conducted on both sides with spirit, and was begun and ended within a month.

1665.

May 2.

Feb. 25.

Some of the circumstances, in which the Magistrates of Massachusetts found themselves compelled to undertake it, were not inspiriting. Secretary Morrice had written to them that the King was "not pleased with their petition, and looked upon it as the contrivance of a few persons who had had too long authority there, and who used all the artifices they could to infuse jealousies into his good subjects there, and apprehensions as if their charter were in danger." He spoke of it as containing "unreasonable and groundless complaint;" enlarged upon "many complaints presented to the King, by particular persons, of injustice contrary to the constitution of that government;" and concluded by informing them that "his Majesty had too much reason to suspect that Mr. Endicott, who had, during all the late revolutions, continued the government there, was not a person well affected to his Majesty's person or his government," or fit to be rechosen.3 To the letter which they had addressed to Lord Clarendon, he replied, that he had "perused the petition they had directed to his Majesty, and that he confessed to them he was so much a friend to their Colony, that, if the same had been communicated to nobody but himself, he should have dissuaded the pre

1 Cartwright came, April 13th, and Maverick the following day. Carr had not arrived on the 19th of that month. (Letter of Cartwright in O'Callaghan, Documents, &c., III. 94.) They had written in the most urgent terms to

March 15.

Nicolls, to persuade him to join them.
(Ibid., 19, 89.)

2 See above, p. 588.
* Hutch. Coll, 390.
See above, p. 590, note.

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senting the same to his Majesty, who he doubted would not think himself well treated by it. .. I can say no more to you," he added, "but that it is in your own 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." Nor had Boyle regarded their proceedings more favorably. He too expressed himself “amazed to find that they demanded a revocation of the Commission and Commissioners." The Magistrates of Massachusetts comprehended what they were undertaking better than great men in England.

March 17.

Debate of the Massachusetts

and the Commissioners.

1

The Deputy-Governor and some Magistrates and Deputies were together making arrangements for the approaching organization of the government, when they received a message from the Commissioners, Magistrates proposing a conference "with the Court." They replied, "that they were no Court;" but at length consented to a meeting. The Commissioners "immediately repaired to the Court-House, and delivered five several writings;" four of which proved to embrace portions of the royal Instructions to themselves. The first contained that part in which the King gave assurance of his friendly sentiments towards the Colonies; and to this the Commissioners appended a note of their own, enforcing the obligation of a grateful return. The second extract referred to the expedition against New Netherland, and was accompanied by a certificate of the Commissioners that they had given "the King an account of the readiness of this Colony in that ser

-

Hutch. Hist., I. 464, 465; Mass. Hist. Coll., XVIII. 49. They had written to Boyle: "We can sooner leave our place and all our pleasant

outward enjoyments, than leave that which was the first ground of wandering from our native country." (Hutch. Coll., 389.)

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