ole population," and confined to the members
of a particular denomination, when the only form of worship then
legalized in England was proscribed, and its members banished from the
land claimed as the exclusive possession of Puritan dissenters. The most
inquisitorial and vigilant efforts of the Local Government to suppress
the transmission of information to England, and punish complainants,
could not prevent the grievances of the proscribed and oppressed being
wafted to England, and commanding attention, and especially in
connection with the startling fact now first discovered, that the Royal
Charter had been removed from England, and a government under its
authority set up at Massachusetts Bay.

Mr. Bancroft ascribes the complaints on these subjects as originating in
"revenge," and calls them "the clamours of the malignant," and as
amounting to nothing but "marriages celebrated by civil magistrates,"
and "the system of Colonial Church discipline;" confined, as he himself
says elsewhere, "the elective franchise to a small proportion of the
whole population," and "established the reign of the [Congregational]
Church." Mr. Bancroft proceeds: "But the greater apprehensions were
raised by a requisition that the Letters Patent of the Company should be
produced in England--a requisition to which the emigrants returned no
reply."

"Still more menacing," says Mr. Bancroft, "was the appointment of an
arbitrary Special Commission [April 10, 1634] for all the colonies.[64]

"The news of this Commission soon reached Boston [Sept. 19, 1634;] and
it was at the same time rumoured that a Governor-General was on his way.
The intelligence awakened the most intense interest in the whole colony,
and led to the boldest measures. Poor as the new settlements were, six
hundred pounds were raised towards fortifications; 'and the assistants
and the deputies discovered their minds to one another,' and the
fortifications were hastened. All the ministers assembled in Boston
[Jan. 19, 1635]; it marks the age, that their opinions were consulted;
it marks the age still more, that _they unanimously declared against the
reception of a General Governor_. 'We ought,' said the fathers of
Israel, 'to defend our lawful possessions, if we are able; if not, _to
avoid and protract_.'"

The rumour of the appointment of a Governor-General over all the New
England colonies was premature; but it served to develop the spirit of
the ruling Puritans of Massachuset