hat could redress their
grievances, of their disappointments, and wrongs as British subjects
emigrating to Massachusetts. And could the King in Council refuse to
listen to such complaints, and authorize inquiry into their truth or
falsehood, without violating rights which, even at that period of
despotic government, were regarded as sacred to even the humblest
British subject? And the leading complainants were men of the most
respectable position in England, and who had investments in New
England--not only the Messrs. Brown, but Capt. John Mason and Sir
Ferdinand Gorges, who complained that the Massachusetts Company had
encroached upon the territory held by them under Royal Charter--territory
which afterwards constituted portions of New Hampshire and Maine. Were
the King and Privy Council to be precluded from inquiring into such
complaints? Yet New England historians assail the complainants for stating
their grievances, and the King and Council for listening to them even so
far as to order an inquiry into them. The petitioners are held up as
slanderers and enemies, and the King and Council represented as acting
tyrannically and as infringing the rights of the Massachusetts Puritans,
and seeking the destruction of their liberties and enterprise even by
inquiring into complaints made. The actual proceedings of the King in
Council prove the injustice and falsity of such insinuations and
statements.

The pretence set up in Massachusetts was that the authority of the Local
Government was _supreme_; that to appeal from it to the King himself was
sedition and treason;[61] and the defence set up in England was that the
allegations were untrue, and that the Massachusetts Corporation was
acting loyally according to the provisions of the Charter and for the
interests of the King. The account of these proceedings before the
King's Privy Council is given in a note from Mr. Palfrey himself.[62]

In regard to these proceedings, the reader's attention is directed to
the following facts: 1. The principal charges of the complainants were
denied--resting to be proved by parties that must be called from that
place [Massachusetts], which required long, expensive time, "and were in
due time further to be inquired into;" and the Massachusetts Corporation
took effectual precaution against any documentary evidence being brought
thence, or "parties" to come, unless at the expense of their all, even
should the complainants be able and willing to