d preserving of the plantations from open
violence and private disturbance and destruction.

In the exercise of these powers the commissioners never embraced the
full opportunity offered to them by their charter. They did appoint
one governor, Sir Thomas Warner, governor of the Caribbee Islands.
They granted to the inhabitants of Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport
a patent of incorporation and conferred upon the patentees authority
"to rule themselves by such form of civil government as by voluntary
consent of all or the greater part of them they should find most
suitable to their estate or condition.[33] They also endeavored to make
a grant of the Narragansett country to Massachusetts, at the special
request of Massachusetts' agents in 1643, but failed, partly because
they had no certain authority to grant land and partly because the
only clause of their commission which seemed to give such authority
required the consent of a majority, and the agents could obtain but nine
signatures to the grant. Even these activities on the part of the board
lasted but little over a year, and after 1644 the commissioners played a
more or less passive role. They continued to sit but their only recorded
interest in colonial affairs concerned New England. From 1645 to 1648
they became involved in the controversy over the Narragansett country,
and in the attempt of Massachusetts to thwart her enemies, the
Gortonists and the Presbyterians.[34] Whether the commission continued
to sit after the execution of the King is uncertain; there are no
further references to its existence. That many of its members remained
influential in colonial affairs is evident from the fact that at least
seven of the commissioners became members of the Council of State,
appointed February 13, 1649: Philip, Earl of Pembroke (died 1650); Sir
Arthur Haslerigg, Sir Harry Vane, the younger; Oliver Cromwell, Dennis
Bond, Miles Corbet, and Cornelius Holland. Haslerigg was a conspicuous
leader in colonial as well as other matters during the entire period of
the Commonwealth and the Protectorate; Vane became president of the new
board of trade created in August, 1650, was at the head of the Committee
of the Admiralty, which often had colonial matters referred to it, and
served frequently on plantation committees from 1649 to 1659; while
Bond, Corbet, and Holland, though never very active, were members of
one general and a few special committees that concerned themselves wi