royal feet, and beg your favor, we hope it will be graciously accepted by your Majestie. And that, as the high place you sustein on earth doth number you among the gods, so you will imitate the God of heaven in being ready to maintain the cause of the afflicted, and the rights of the poor, 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, thô of somewhat greater length than would be comely in other or lesser cases. Wee are remote, 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 counsel 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, their heirs, assigns, and associates forever, not only the absolute use and propriety of the tract of land therein mentioned, but also full and absolute power of governing 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 fit to make and establish, being not repugnant to the lawes of England (they paying only the fifth part of the oare of gold and silver that shall here be found, for and in respect of all duties, demands, exactions, and service whatsover) 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, transport themselves, their wives, and their families over the ocean, purchase the lands 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 30 yeares enjoyed the aforesaid power and privilege of government within themselves, as their undoubted right in the sight of God and man. And having had, moreover, this further favor from God, and from your Majestie, that wee have received several gracious letters from your royal selfe, full of expressions tending to confirm us in our enjoyments....

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 yeares) and thereby to procure a commission under the great seal, wherein 4 persons (one of them our knowne and professed enemy) are impowered to heare, 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 discretions, 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 arbitrary power of strangers, proceeding not by any established law, but by their own discretions. . . . And thô wee 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 confirme us in our feares, that their improvement of this power, . . . will end in the subversion of our all. We should be glad to hope that your Majestie's instructions (which they have not yet been pleased to impart unto us) may put such limitation to their business here, as will take off much of our feare; but according to the present appearance of things we thus speak. . . .

If these things go on (according to the present appearance) your subjects here will either be forced to seeke new dwellings, or sinke and faint under burdens that will be to them intollerable. The vigor of all new endeavors in the several callings and occupations (either for merchandize abroad, or further 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. . . .

There have also been high representations of great divisions and discontents amongst us, and of a necessity of sending commissioners to relieve the aggrieved, &c. Whereas it plainly appeares, that the body of this people are unanimously satisfied in the present government, and abhorrent from change, and

that which is now offered will, instead of relieving, raise up such grievances as are intolerable. Wee 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 favor of God there are but few amongst us that are malcontent, and fewer that have cause to be so.

Sir, the allknowing 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. Wee came not into this wilderness to seeke great things to ourselves, and if any come after us to seeke them heere they will be disappointed. Wee keep ourselves within our line, and meddle not with matters abroad. A just dependence upon and subjection to your Majestie, according to our charter, it is far from our hearts to disacknowledge. Wee so highly prize your favorable aspect (thô at this great distance) as wee would gladly do anything that is within our power to purchase the continuance of 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 owne 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 feares of being deprived of, wee had never wandered from our fathers houses into these ends of the earth. . . .

Royal Sir, it is in your power to say of your poor people in New England, they shall not die. If we have found favor in the sight of our king, let our life be given us at our petition. . . . Let our government live, our patent live, our magistrates live, our lawes and liberties live, our own religious enjoyments live, so shall we all yet have further cause to say, from our hearts, let the King live forever. And the blessings of them that were ready to perish shall come upon your Majestie . . . and wee and ours shall have lasting cause to rejoice, that we have been numbred among your Majestie's

Most humble servants

25th of October, 1664

and suppliants

16. The
"Glorious
Revolution"

of 1689

[51]

The later years of the Stuarts brought the realization of the worst of the New Englanders' fears. In 1684 the Massachusetts Charter was revoked by Charles II, and on June 3, 1686, Sir Edmund Andros received from the new king, James II, a charter making him Captain General and Governor in Chief of all New England. Andros' tyrannical behavior is set forth in a "Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants of Boston and the Country Adjacent," published the day of his overthrow, April 18, 1689.

... Sir Edmund Andross arrived as our Governour; who besides his Power, with the Advice and Consent of his Council, to make Laws and raise Taxes as he pleased; had also Authority by himself to Muster and Imploy all Persons residing in the Territory as occasion shall serve and to transfer such Forces to any English Plantation in America, as occasion shall require. And several companies of Souldiers were now brought from Europe, to support what was to be imposed upon us, not without repeated Menaces that some hundreds more were intented for us.

The Government was no sooner in these Hands, but care was taken to load preferments principally upon such Men as were strangers to, and haters of the People: and evryones Observation hath noted, what Qualifications recommended a man to publick Offices and Employments, only here and there a good Man was used, where others could not easily be had. . . . But of all our Oppressors we were chiefly squeez'd by à crew of abject Persons, fetched from New York to be the Tools of the Adversary, standing at our right hand; by these were extraordinary and intollerable Fees extorted from evry one upon all occasions, without any Rules but those of their own insatiable Avarice and Beggary; and even the probate of a Will must now cost as many Pounds perhaps as it did Shillings heretofore; nor could a small Volume contain the other Illegalities done by these Horse-Leeches in the two or three Years that they have been sucking of us; and what Laws they made it was as impossible for us to know, as dangerous for us to break. . . .

It was now plainly affirmed, both by some in open Council, and by the same in private converse, that the People in New England were all Slaves, and the only difference between them and the Slaves is in their not being bought and sold; and it was a maxim delivered in open Court to us by one of the Council, that we must not think the Priviledges of Englishmen would follow us to the end of the World: Accordingly we have been treated with multiplied contradictions to Magna Charta, the rights of which we laid claim to. Persons who did but peaceably object against the raising of Taxes without an Assembly, have been for it fined, some twenty, some thirty, and others fifty Pounds. Packt and pickt Juries have been very common things among us. . . . Without a Verdict, yea, without a Jury sometimes have People been fined most unrighteously; and some, not of the meanest Quality, have been kept in long and close Imprisonment without any least Information appearing against them or an Habeas Corpus allowed unto them. . . .

Because these things could not make us miserable fast enough, there was a notable Discovery made of we know not what Flaw in all our Titles to our Lands: and tho besides our purchase of them from the Natives; and besides our actual peaceable unquestioned possession of them for near threescore Years, and besides the Promise of K. Charles II in his Proclamation sent over to us in the Year 1683, That no Man here shall receive any Prejudice in his Free Hold or Estate . . . yet were we every day told, That no Man was owner of a Foot of Land in all the Colony; Accordingly, Writs of Intrusion began everywhere to be served on People, that after all their Sweat and their Cost upon their formerly purchased Lands, thought themselves Freeholders of what they had. And the Governour caused the Lands pertaining to these and these particular Men, to be measured out for his Creatures to take possession of. . . .

All the Council were not ingaged in these ill Actions, but those of them which were true Lovers of their Country were seldom admitted to and seldomer consulted at the Debates which produced these unrighteous things. Care was taken to keep them under Disadvantages; and the Governor, with five or six more, did what they would. We bore all these and many