nd that the franchise be extended to all freemen of sufficient
substance, with the liberty to use in worship, public and private, the
forms of the English Church. The people obeyed but in part, for they
would not even appear to admit the king's will to be their law. The
franchise was slightly extended, in a grudging way, but no new religious
privileges were at this time conceded. Unfortunately political and
religious liberty were now in conflict. It was worse for the Baptists
and Quakers that the king favored them, and the treatment which they
received in the colony inclined them to the royalist side in the
controversy.

In July, 1664, commissioners arrived in Boston with full authority to
investigate the administration of the New England charters. Such a
procedure not being provided for in the Massachusetts document, the
General Court, backed by the citizens almost to a man, successfully
prevented complainants from appearing before the commission. The
commissioners having summoned the colony as defendant in a certain case,
a herald trumpeted proclamation through the streets, on the morning set
for the trial, inhibiting all from aiding their designs. The trial
collapsed, and the gentlemen who had ordered it, baffled and disgusted,
moved on to New Hampshire, there also to be balked by a decree of the
Massachusetts Governor and Council forbidding the towns so much as to
meet at their behest.

[1668]

Vengeance for such defiance was delayed by Charles II.'s very vices.
Clarendon's fall had left him surrounded by profligate aides, too timid
and too indolent to face the resolute men of Massachusetts. They often
discussed the contumacy of the colony, but went no further than words.
Massachusetts was even encouraged, in 1668, forcibly to reassert its
authority in Maine, against rule either by the king or by Sir Ferdinanda
Gorges's heir as proprietary.

Its charter had assigned to the colony land to a point three miles north
of the Merrimac. Bold in the favor of the Commonwealth, the authorities
measured from the head-waters of that river. But Plymouth had originally
claimed all the territory west of the Kennebec, and had sold it to
Gorges. Charles II. favored the Gorges heirs against Massachusetts, and
for some years previous to 1668 Massachusetts' power over Maine had been
in abeyance. Ten years later, in 1678, to make assurance doubly sure,
Massachusetts bought off the Gorges claimants, at the round price of
twelve hun