ay, for such a
proceeding? And when they conceived the idea of transferring the
management of the Company from London to Massachusetts, and Mr. Winthrop
and his friends refused to emigrate except on the condition of such
transfer of the Charter, did not fairness and duty dictate application
to the King, who granted the Charter, for permission to transfer it as
the best means of promoting the original objects of it? And is there not
reason to believe that their application would have been successful,
from the kind conduct of the King and Privy Council towards them, as
stated above by themselves, when complaints were made against them? Was
their proceeding straightforward? Was not the secrecy of it suspicious,
and calculated to excite suspicion, when, after more than three years
of secrecy, the act became known to the King and Privy Council?[63]

The complainants against the Company in 1632, who found themselves so
completely overmatched before the Privy Council by the denials,
professions, and written statements produced by Mr. Cradock, Sir R.
Saltonstall, and others, could not but feel exasperated when they knew
that their complaints were well-founded; and they doubtless determined
to vindicate the truth and justice of them at the first opportunity.
That opportunity was not long delayed. The discovery that the Charter
and government of the Company had been secretly transferred from London
to Massachusetts Bay excited suspicion and curiosity; rumours and
complaints of the proscriptions and injustice of the Colonial Government
began to be whispered on all sides; appeal was again made to the King in
Council; and the further inquiry indicated in the proceedings of the
Privy Council two years before, was decided upon; a Royal Commission was
appointed to inquire into these and all other complaints from the
colonies, and redress the wrongs if found to exist; the appointment of a
Governor-General over all the New England colonies, to see justice done
to all parties, was contemplated.

The complainants against the conduct of the government of Endicot and
Winthrop are represented by their historians as a few individuals of
malicious feelings and more than doubtful character; but human nature at
Massachusetts Bay must have been different from itself in all civilized
countries, could it have been contented or silent when the rights of
citizenship were denied, as Mr. Bancroft himself says, to "by far the
larger proportion of the wh