cerning
either their state public, or the utility of individuals." The
commissioners were authorised to support the clergy by assigning them
"tithes, oblations, and other profits, according to their discretion;
to inflict punishment on those who should violate their ordinances; to
remove governors of plantations, and to appoint others; and to
constitute tribunals and courts of justice, ecclesiastical and civil,
with such authority and form as they should think proper;" but their
laws were not to take effect until they had received the royal assent,
and had been proclaimed in the colonies. The commissioners were also
constituted a committee to hear complaints against a colony, its
governor or other officers, with power to remove the offender to
England for punishment. They were farther directed to cause the
revocation of such letters patent, granted for the establishment of
colonies, as should, upon inquiry, be found to have been unduly
obtained, or to contain a grant of liberties hurtful to the royal
prerogative.[59]

[Footnote 59: Chalmer. Hutchison.]

From the first settlement at Salem, the colony of Massachusetts had
cultivated the friendship of their neighbours of New Plymouth. The
bonds of mutual amity were now rendered more strict, not only by some
appearances of a hostile disposition among the natives, but by another
circumstance which excited alarm in both colonies.

The voyages for discovery and settlement, made by the English and
French, to the coast of North America, having been nearly
cotemporaneous, their conflicting claims soon brought them into
collision with each other. The same lands were granted by the
sovereigns of both nations; and, under these different grants, actual
settlements had been made by the French as far south and west as St.
Croix, and, by the English, as far north and east as Penobscot. During
the war with France, which broke out early in the reign of Charles I.,
that monarch granted a commission to captain Kirk for the conquest of
the countries in America occupied by the French; under which, in 1629,
Canada and Acadie were subdued; but, by the treaty of St. Germains,
those places were restored to France without any description of their
limits; and Fort Royal, Quebec, and Cape Breton, were severally
surrendered by name. In 1632, a party of French from Acadie committed
a robbery on a trading house established at Penobscot by the people of
New Plymouth. With the intelligence of th