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CHAPTER Church, replied the next year in a pamphlet, to which XIV. Mather wrote a preface, and which fully came up to the 1680. tone of the motto, "Ne sutor ultra crepidam”—“ Let the shoemaker stick to his last"-an insolent allusion to the former occupation of Russell.

A curious offshoot from the Baptist sect had lately sprung up in Connecticut, called Rogerenes, after Jonathan Rogers, of New London, their founder. Their most distinguishing tenet was the observance of the seventh day (Saturday) as the Sabbath, and their violent denunciation of Sunday as the "idol-Sabbath." They made it a point to work on that day, and then to complain of themselves to the magistrates. They also held the use of medicines to be a sinful attempt to thwart. God's providence. They denounced family prayers and saying grace at meals as mere formalities, for which there was 1677. no Scripture warrant. To a remonstrance from the

Baptists of Rhode Island against the fining and imprisoning of some of these enthusiasts, Governor Leet replied that they had been treated with "all condescension imaginable," and that they might be indulged in "their persuasions" if they would forbear to offend "our consciences" by insisting upon too open an avowal of their opinions.

As Mason had no charter of New Hampshire, but only a grant under the great patent of New England, he had no claims to jurisdiction; and, according to the forms of the English law, even his title to the soil, as against the occupiers, could only be tried on the spot. To facilitate these trials, and to give them a turn as favorable as might be to Mason, the jurisdiction of New Hampshire had been assumed by the king; and Randolph had brought out with him a royal commission for setting up a government. To reconcile the people to the

XIV.

change, a president and counselors were selected from CHAPTER among them, the president being John Cutts, a principal inhabitant of Portsmouth. An Assembly was also con- 1680. ceded, so long as the king might find it convenient." This Assembly, at its first session, opened with prayers March 16. and a sermon by Moody, minister of Portsmouth, gratefully acknowledged the past care and kindness of Massachusetts. They enacted, also, a body of laws, compiled from the Massachusetts code; but these were rejected in England as " fanatical and absurd."

Mason presently visited the province, and, under a 1681. royal appointment, took a seat in the council. Little satisfied with Cutts, he procured the appointment of gov ernor for Cranfield, an office-holder of London, who was 1682. to have for salary a fifth part of all quit-rents recovered of the settlers, and to whom Mason guaranteed, by a mortgage on the province, the annual payment of £150. Mason put in a claim to all that part of Massachusetts north of Salem, as included in his grandfather's old grant of Mariana, and hence a new subject of alarm in Massachusetts.

While New Hampshire thus finally passed from their control, the General Court of Massachusetts proceeded to establish over Maine a proprietary government on the basis of Gorges's charter. Deputy-governor Danforth was appointed president of this resuscitated province, with a council named by the General Court of Massachusetts. The inhabitants were allowed the privilege, according to the terms of Gorges's charter, of choosing deputies from the towns, who formed, along with the president and council, a provincial assembly. But those to whom even full citizenship of Massachusetts had not been satisfactory, were still less pleased with this dependent position. Danforth proceeded to Maine with a body of horse

CHAPTER and foot, and some show, if not exercise of force, became necessary to support the new government.

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1680. Randolph made a vigorous attempt at Boston to exSept. ercise his office by seizing vessels for violation of the acts of trade. But the whole population was against him; he was overwhelmed with law-suits for damages, and in almost every case was cast with costs. Having 1681. appealed in vain to the General Court, he noted and April. posted on the Exchange à protest against what he called "a faction" in that body, meaning thereby the ultra theocratic party. The deputy whom he had appointed at Portsmouth encountered the same sort of obstructions. Gookin, on Denison's death elected major general of the colony, and the last who held that office, was specified by Randolph as among the most vigorous of his opponents.

Finding himself involved in law-suits and perplexities, and alleging that he was even in danger of being tried for his life under the old law against subverters of the colonial Constitution, Randolph obtained leave to go to 1682. England, whence, however, he speedily came back, with a royal letter complaining of these obstructions, and demanding the immediate appointment of agents empowered to consent to a modification of the charter.

Feb.

Disobedience was no longer safe. Affairs in England had undergone a great change. After a fierce struggle, which had long engaged the attention of the king and his cabinet, and which may partly serve to account for the feeble and vacillating policy hitherto pursued toward Massachusetts, the court party, or Tories, as they began to be called, the High Churchmen, the advocates of divine right and arbitrary power, had completely triumphed. The king already threatened with writs of Quo Warranto the English cities and boroughs, the strongholds of his opponents. In this emergency Stoughton

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was again appointed agent, and with him Joseph Dud- CHAPTER ley, son of the former governor, a young man of thirty-five, who now began to come conspicuously forward. Stough- 1682. ton having declined the thankless task, his place was supplied by Richards, a strong advocate for the theocracy, who had raised himself from an indented servant to be a wealthy merchant, and who subsequently became chief justice of the province. Dudley, as Randolph wrote, "had his fortune to make in the world, and if he find things resolutely managed, will cringe and bow to any thing." "If, upon alteration of the government, he were made captain of the castle of Boston and the forts in the colony, his majesty," it was suggested, "will gain a popular man and oblige the better party.”

Randolph's commission was ordered to be enrolled. The court, by a new act, charged their newly-appointed naval officer to look strictly after the enforcement of the acts of trade. The penalty of death for plotting the overthrow of the colonial Constitution was repealed. For the word "Commonwealth" throughout the laws, "jurisdiction" was substituted. The agents were merely authorized to lay these concessions before the king, which it was humbly hoped would satisfy his majesty.

On the appearance of these agents at court with pow- July. ers so restricted, a Quo Warranto was threatened forthwith unless they were furnished with ampler authority. Informed of this threat, the General Court, after great 1683. debates, authorized their agents to consent to the regu- March. lation of any thing wherein the government "might ignorantly or through mistake have deviated from the charter;" to accept, indeed, any demands consistent with the charter, the existing government established under it, and the "main ends of our predecessors in coming hither," which main ends were defined to be "our liberties and

CHAPTER privileges in matters of religion and worship of God, XIV. which you are, therefore, in no wise to consent to any in1683. fringement of." They were authorized to give up Maine to the king, and even to tender him a private gratuity of two thousand guineas. Bribes were quite the fashion at Charles's court; the king and all his servants were accustomed to take them. The Massachusetts agents had expended considerable sums to purchase favor or to obtain information, and, by having clerks of the Privy Council in their pay, they were kept well informed of the secret deliberations of that body. But this offer, unskillfully managed, and betrayed by Cranfield, the lately appointed royal governor of New Hampshire, who had advised the magistrates to make it, exposed the colony to blame and ridicule.

Nov.

Nothing further could now be done. The agents returned home. Randolph filed articles of high misdeA writ of Quo Warranto issued, and that indefatigable enemy again crossed the ocean in a royal frigate, and himself served the writ on the magistrates.

meanor.

If the charter were surrendered without the delays and formality of a trial, the king promised to be gracious, and to make as few innovations as possible. The English cities, except London, had agreed to surrender their charters, and London, after an unavailing resistance, had lost hers by a judgment of court. What should Massachusetts do?

The popular party in England had just been crushed a second time by the execution of Russell and Sidney. Bradstreet and the moderate party were inclined to bend to the storm, and to authorize the agents to receive the king's commands. The magistrates passed a vote to that effect. But all the zeal and obstinacy of the theocratic party had been roused by the present crisis-a zeal resulting, as hot zeal often does, in the ultimate loss of

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