ings against the Company, there was now a good opportunity of
showing it. Had he been disposed to act the despot towards them, he
might at once, on a less plausible pretext than that now afforded him,
have cancelled his Charter and taken the affairs of the colony into his
own hands.

It is a singular concurrence of circumstances, and on which I leave the
reader to make his own comments, that while the representatives of the
Company were avowing to the King the good faith in which their clients
were carrying out his Majesty's royal intentions in granting the
Charter, they at that very time were not allowing a single Planter to
worship as the King worshipped, and not one who desired so to worship to
enjoy the privilege of a British subject, either to vote or even to
remain in the colony. As Mr. Bancroft says in the American, but not in
the English edition of his History, men "were banished because they were
Churchmen. Thus was Episcopacy first professed in Massachusetts, and
thus was it exiled. The blessings of the promised land were to be kept
for Puritan dissenters."

But while the King and Privy Council were showering kindness and offers
of further help, if needed, to advance the Plantation, believing their
statements "that things were carried there as was pretended when the
patents were granted," complaints could not fail to reach England of the
persecution of members of the Church of England, and of the
disfranchisement of all Planters who would not join the Congregational
Church, in spite of the efforts of the dominant party in Massachusetts
to intercept and stifle them; and it at length came to the knowledge of
the King and Privy Council that the Charter itself had been, as it was
expressed, "surreptitiously" carried from England to Massachusetts, new
councillors appointed, and the whole government set up at Massachusetts
Bay instead of being administered in England, as had been intended when
the Charter was granted. This had been kept a profound secret for nearly
four years; but now came to light in 1634.

It has been contended that this transfer of the Charter was lawful, and
was done in accordance with the legal opinion of an able lawyer, Mr.
John White, one of the party to the transfer. I enter not into the legal
question; the more important question is, Was it honourable? Was it
loyal? Was it according to the intention of the King in granting it? Was
there any precedent, and has there ever been one to this d