ministration that appointed the Governor-General and
those Commissioners; and whether the Government of England were a
monarchy or republic, it was clear that the pretensions to independence
of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay must be checked, and their local
tyranny restrained. For this purpose the Long Parliament adopted the
same policy in 1650 that King Charles had done in 1637; demanded the
surrender of the Charter; for that Parliament sent a summons to the
local Government ordering it to transmit the Charter to England, to
receive a new patent from the Parliament in all its acts and processes.

This order of Parliament to Massachusetts Bay Colony to surrender its
Charter was accompanied by a proclamation prohibiting trade with
Virginia, Barbadoes, Bermuda, and Antigua, because these colonies
continued to recognize royal authority, and to administer their laws in
the name of the King. This duplicate order from the Long Parliament was
a double blow to the colony of Massachusetts Bay, and produced general
consternation; but the dexterity and diplomacy of the colony were equal
to the occasion. It showed its devotion to the cause of the Long
Parliament by passing an Act prohibiting trade with the loyal, but by
them termed rebel colonies;[88] and it avoided surrendering the Charter
by repeating its policy of delay and petition, which it had adopted on a
similar occasion in 1638 to King Charles; and its professions of
loyalty to Charles, and prayers for the Royal Family, and the success of
the Privy Council, it now repeated for the Long Parliament and its
leaders, supporting its petition by an appeal to its ten years' services
of prayers and of men to the cause of the Long Parliament against the
King. I will, in the first place, give in a note Mr. Bancroft's own
account of what was claimed and ordered by the Long Parliament, and the
pretensions and proceedings of the Legislature of Massachusetts Bay, and
then will give the principal parts of their petition to the Long
Parliament in their own words. The words and statements of Mr. Bancroft
involve several things worthy of notice and remembrance: 1. The
Congregational Church rulers of Massachusetts Bay denied being British
subjects, admitting no other allegiance to England than the Hanse Towns
of Northern Germany to the Empire of Austria, or the Normandy ducal
kings of England to the King of France; or, as Mr. Palfrey says, "the
relations which Burgundy and Flanders hold to