ptember, 1637,
professed to offer "earnest prayers for long life and prosperity to his
sacred Majesty and his royal family, and all honour and welfare to their
Lordships;" but as soon as there was a prospect of a change, and the
power of the King began to decline and that of Parliament began to
increase, the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay transferred all their
sympathies and assiduities to the Parliament. In 1641, they sent over
three agents to evoke interest with the Parliamentary leaders--one
layman, Mr. Hibbins, and two ministers, Thomas Weld and Hugh Peters, the
latter of whom was as shrewd and active in trade and speculations as he
was ardent and violent in the pulpit. He made quite a figure in the
civil war in England, and was Cromwell's favourite war chaplain. Neither
he nor Weld ever returned to New England.

As the persecution of Puritans ceased in England, emigration to New
England ceased; trade became depressed and property greatly depreciated
in value; population became stationary in New England during the whole
Parliamentary and Commonwealth rule in England, from 1640 to 1660--more
returning from New England to England than emigrating thither from
England.[73]

The first success of this mission of Hugh Peters and his colleagues soon
appeared. By the Royal Charter of 1629, the King encouraged the
Massachusetts Company by remitting all taxes upon the property of the
Plantations for the space of seven years, and all customs and duties
upon their exports and imports, to or from any British port, for the
space of twenty-one years, except the five per cent. due upon their
goods and merchandise, according to the ancient trade of merchants; but
the Massachusetts delegates obtained an ordinance of Parliament, or
rather an order of the House of Commons, complimenting the colony on its
progress and hopeful prospects, and discharging all the exports of the
natural products of the colony and all the goods imported into it for
its own use, from the payment of any custom or taxation whatever.[74]

On this resolution of the Commons three remarks may be made: 1. As in
all previous communications between the King and the Colony, the House
of Commons termed the colony a "Plantation," and the colonists
"Planters." Two years afterwards the colony of Massachusetts Bay assumed
to itself (without Charter or Act of Parliament) the title and style of
"a Commonwealth." 2. While the House of Commons speaks of the prospects
being "ve