f, shall be repealed, altered, and
taken off from the file.

"By order of the General Court
For the jurisdiction of New Plymouth,
Per me, NATHANIEL MORTON, _Secretary_."

"The league between the four colonies was not with any intent, that ever
we heard of, to cast off our dependence upon England, a thing which we
utterly abhor, intreating your Honours to believe us, for we speak in
the presence of God."

"NEW PLYMOUTH, May 4th, 1665.

"The Court doth order Mr. Constant Southworth, Treasurer, to present
these to his Majesty's Commissioners, at Boston, with all convenient
speed."

The above propositions and answers are inserted, with some variations,
in Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts, Vol. I., p. 214. The remark
respecting the union between the colonies is not on the colony
records--it was inserted at the close of the copy delivered to the
Commissioners, in conformity to a letter from the Commissioners, written
to Governor Prince after they had left Plymouth. The conditions
expressed in the answer to the third proposition appeared so reasonable
to the Commissioners, that when they afterward met the General Assembly
of Connecticut, in April, 1663, their third proposition is qualified, in
substance, conformably to the Plymouth reply. (Morton's Memorial, Davis'
Ed., p. 417.)

It is thus seen that there was not the least desire on the part of King
Charles the Second, any more than there had been on the part of Charles
the First, to impose the Episcopal worship upon the colonists, or to
interfere in the least with their full liberty of worship, according to
their own preferences. All that was desired at any time was toleration
and acknowledgment of the authority of the Crown, such as the Plymouth
colony and that of Connecticut had practised from the beginning, to the
great annoyance of the Puritans of Massachusetts.

Several letters and addresses passed between Charles the Second and the
Pilgrim Government of Plymouth, and all of the most cordial character on
both sides; but what is given above supersedes the necessity of further
quotations.[15]

It was an object of special ambition with the Government of Plymouth to
have a Royal Charter like those of Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and
Rhode Island, instead of holding their land, acting under a Charter from
the Plymouth Council (England) and Charles the Second. In his last
address to Mr. Josiah Winslow, their Governor promised it to them in
most explicit te