ts Bay in their determining to resist
the appointment of a general officer to which no other British colony
had, or has, ever objected.[65] The decision in their behalf by the
King in Council, in regard to the complaints made against them in 1632,
deserved their gratitude; the assurance in the recorded Minutes of the
Privy Council, that the King had never intended to impose upon them
those Church ceremonies which they had objected to in England, and the
liberty of not observing which they went to New England to enjoy, should
have produced corresponding feelings and conduct on their part. In their
perfect liberty of worship in New England, there was no difference
between them and their Sovereign. In the meeting of the Privy Council
where the Royal declaration is recorded that liberty of worship, without
interference or restriction, should be enjoyed by all the settlers in
New England, Laud (then Bishop of London) is reported as present.
Whatever were the sins of King Charles and Laud in creating by their
ceremonies, and then punishing, nonconformists in England, they were not
justly liable to the charge of any such sins in their conduct towards
the Puritans of New England. Throughout the whole reign of either
Charles the First or Second, there is no act or intimation of their
interfering, or intending or desiring to interfere, with the worship
which the Puritans had chosen, or might choose, in New England. In
Plymouth the Congregational worship was adopted in 1620, and was never
molested; nor would there have been any interference with its adoption
nine years afterwards at Massachusetts Bay, had the Puritans there gone
no further than their brethren at Plymouth had gone, or their brethren
afterwards in Rhode Island and Connecticut. But the Puritans at
Massachusetts Bay assumed not merely the liberty of worship for
themselves, but _the liberty of prohibiting any other form of worship,
and of proscribing and banishing all who would not join in their
worship_; that is, doing in Massachusetts what they complained so loudly
of the King and Laud doing in England. This was the cause and subject of
the whole contest between the Corporation of Massachusetts Bay and the
authorities in England. If it were intolerance and tyranny for the King
and Laud to impose and enforce one form of worship upon all the people
of England, it was equal intolerance and tyranny for the Government of
Massachusetts Bay to impose and enforce one form of w