ter.

The foregoing documents which I have so largely quoted evince the Royal
indulgence and kindness shown to the Massachusetts Bay Colony after the
conduct of its rulers to the King and his father during the twenty years
of the civil war and Commonwealth; the utter absence of all intention on
the part of Charles the Second, any more than on the part of Charles the
First, to limit or interfere with the exercise of their own conscience
or taste in their form or manner of worship, only insisting upon the
enjoyment of the same liberty by those who preferred another form and
manner of worship. However intolerant and persecuting the Governments of
both Charles the First and Second were to all who did not conform to the
established worship and its ceremonies in England, they both disclaimed
enforcing them upon the New England colonies; and I repeat, that it may
be kept in mind, that when the first complaints were preferred to
Charles the First and the Privy Council, in 1632, against Endicot and
his Council, for not only not conforming to, but abolishing, the worship
of the Church of England, the accused and their friends successfully,
though falsely, denied having abolished the Episcopal worship; and the
King alleged to his Council, when Laud was present, that he had never
intended to enforce the Church ceremonies objected to upon the New
England colonists. The declarations of Charles the Second, in his
letters to them, confirmed as they were by the letters of the Earl of
Clarendon and the Honourable Robert Boyle, show the fullest recognition
on the part of the Government of the Restoration to maintain their
perfect liberty of worship. Their own address to the King in 1664 bears
testimony that for upwards of thirty years liberty of worship had been
maintained inviolate, and that King Charles the Second had himself
invariably shown them the utmost forbearance, kindness, and
indulgence.[148]

Yet they no sooner felt their Charter secure, and that the King had
exhausted the treasury of his favours to them, than they deny his right
to see to their fulfilment of the conditions on which he had promised to
continue the Charter. The Charter itself, be it remembered, provided
that they should not make any laws or regulations contrary to the laws
of England, and that all the settlers under the Charter should enjoy all
the rights and privileges of British subjects. The King could not know
whether the provisions of the Royal Charter we