Note 213 — Chapter VII

"A people who were of opinion that their Commonwealth was established by free consent (a); that the place of their habitation was their own; that no man had a right to enter into their society without their permission; that they had the full and absolute power of governing all the people by men chosen from among themselves, and according to such laws as they should see fit to establish, not repugnant to those of England (a restriction and limitation which they wholly ignored and violated), they paying only the fifth part of the ore of gold and silver that should be there found for all duties, demands, exactions, and services whatsoever; of course, that they held the keys of their territory, and had a right to prescribe the terms of naturalization to all noviciates; such a people, I say, whatever alterations they might make in their polity, from reason and conviction of their own motion, would not be easily led to comply with the same changes, when required by a king to whom they held themselves subject, and upon whose authority they were dependent only according to their Charter; and we shall find that their compliance was accordingly slow and occasional, as necessity compelled them to make it." (Minot's Continuation of the History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp. 42, 43.)

(a) Note by the Author.—The Colony of Plymouth was established in 1620, by free consent, by the Pilgrim Fathers on board of the Mayflower, without a Charter; yet that colony was always tolerant and loyal. But the Colony of Massachusetts Bay was established by the Puritan Fathers in 1629, under the authority of a Royal Charter; and it was the pretension to and assumption of independent power and absolute government, though a chartered colony, that resulted in their disloyalty to England and intolerance towards all classes of their fellow-colonists not Congregationalists.