Note 63 — PART IV.

The Congregational Society of Boston has published, in 1876, a new book in justification of the "Banishment of Roger Williams from the Massachusetts Plantation," by the Rev. Dr. Henry M. Dexter, of Boston. It is a book of intense bitterness against Roger Williams, and indeed everything English; but his account of the origin and objects of the Massachusetts Charter suggests, stronger than language can express, the presumption and lawlessness of Endicot's proceedings in establishing a new Church and abolishing an old one; and Dr. Dexter's account of the removal of the Charter, and its secrecy, is equally suggestive. It is as follows:

"Let me here repeat and emphasize that it may be remembered by and by that this 'Dorchester Company,' originally founded on the transfer of a portion of the patent of Gorges, and afterwards enlarged and re-authorized by the Charter of Charles the First, as the 'Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay,' was in its beginning, and in point of fact, neither more nor less than a private corporation chartered by the Government for purposes of fishing, real estate improvement, and general commerce, for which it was to pay the Crown a fifth part of all precious metals which it might unearth. It was then more than this only in the same sense as the egg, new-laid, is the full-grown fowl, or the acorn the oak. It was not yet a State. It was not, even in the beginning, in the ordinary sense, a colony. It was a plantation with a strong religious idea behind it, on its way to be a colony and a state. In the original intent, the Governor and General Court, and therefore the Government, were to be and abide in England. When, in 1628, Endicot and his little party had been sent over to Salem, his authority was expressly declared to be 'in subordination to the Company here' [that is, in London]. And it was only when Cradock [the first Governor of the Company] found that so many practical difficulties threatened all proceedings upon that basis, as to make it unlikely that Winthrop, and Saltonstall, and Johnson, and Dudley, and other men whose co-operation was greatly to be desired, would not consent to become partners in the enterprise unless a radical change were made in that respect, that he proposed and the Company consented, 'for the advancement of the Plantation, the inducing and encouraging persons of worth and quality to transplant themselves and families thither, and for other weighty reasons therein contained, to transfer the government of the Plantation to those that shall inhabit there,' &c. It was even a grave question of law whether, under the terms of the Charter, this transfer were possible." ... "They took the responsibility—so quietly, however, that the Home Government seem to have remained in ignorance of the fact for more than four years thereafter." (pp. 12, 13.)

In a note Dr. Dexter says: "I might illustrate by the Hudson Bay Company, which existed into our time with its original Charter—strongly resembling that of the Massachusetts Company—and which has always been rather a corporation for trade charterers in England than a colony of England on American soil." (Ib., p. 12.)

It is evident from the Charter that the original design of it was to constitute a corporation in England like that of the East India and other great Companies, with powers to settle plantations within the limits of the territory, under such forms of government and magistracy as should be fit and necessary. The first step in sending out Mr. Endicot, and appointing him a Council, and giving him commission, instructions, etc., was agreeable to this constitution of the Charter. (Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp. 12, 13.)