anors, and neighborhood quarrels, if only the colony would
conform to British policy in all that concerned the royal prerogative
and the authority of Parliament; but it made it perfectly plain that
continued infractions of parliamentary acts and royal commands would not
be condoned.

Had the leaders of Massachusetts been more complaisant and less given to
a policy of evasion and delay, it is not unlikely that the colony would
have been allowed to retain its privileges; and had they been less
absorbed in themselves and more observant of the world outside, they
might have seen the changes that were coming over the temper and purpose
of those in England who were shaping the relations between England and
her colonies. But Massachusetts had grown provincial since the
Restoration, looking backward rather than forward and moving in very
narrow channels of thought and life, so that she was wrapped up in
matters of purely local interest. The clergy were struggling to maintain
their control in colony and college, while the deputies in the
legislature, representing in the main the conservative country
districts, were upholding the clerical party against some of the
magistrates, who represented the town of Boston and were inclined to
take a more liberal and progressive view of the matter. These country
members saw in England's attitude only the desire of a despotic Stuart
regime to suppress the liberties of a Puritan commonwealth, and failed
to see that the investigation into the affairs of Massachusetts was but
an effort to establish a colonial policy fundamental to England's
welfare and power.

It cannot be said that, from 1660 to 1684, the Government in England
displayed undue animus toward the colony. It allowed Massachusetts to do
a great many things that in law she had no right to do, such as coining
money and issuing a charter to Harvard College. Its demand for a
broadening of the Massachusetts franchise was in the interest of liberty
and not against it, and the insistence on freedom of worship deserves no
reproof. Its condemnation of many of the Massachusetts laws as
oppressive and unjust shows that in some respects legal opinion in
England at this time was more advanced than that in Massachusetts and
Connecticut, and, even at its worst, English law did not go to the
Mosaic code for its precedents. There is a distinct note of cruelty and
oppression in some of the Massachusetts and Connecticut legislation at
this time, and