st, but
continue to them their privileges, as they desired and promised they
would act with loyalty and tolerance in the future.[127]

The King's promised oblivion of the past and recognition of the Charter
was hailed and assumed as _unconditional_, while the King's conditions
were ignored and remained a dead letter. The elective franchise and
eligibility for office were still, _as_ heretofore, the exclusive
prerogative of Congregational Church members; the government of the
colony was still in the hands alone of Congregational ministers and
magistrates, and which they cleaved to as for life; their persecutions
of those who did not worship as they did, continued without abatement;
they persisted in their theocratic independence, and pretended to do all
this under a Royal Charter which forbade their making laws or
regulations contrary to the laws of England, acting also in the face of
the King's conditions of pardoning their past offences, and perpetuating
their Charter privileges.

The King's letter was dated the 28th of June, 1662, and was presented by
Mr. Bradstreet and Mr. Norton to the Governor and General Court at
Boston, 8th of October, 1662;[128] but it was not until a General Court
called in August, 1664, that "the said letter was communicated to the
whole assembly, according to his Majesty's command, and copies thereof
spread abroad."[129] In the meantime they boasted of their Charter being
recognised by the King, according, of course, to their own
interpretation of it, while for _twenty-two months_ they withheld the
King's letter, against his orders, from being published; concealing from
the victims of their proscription and persecution the toleration which
the King had announced as the conditions of his perpetuating the
Charter.

It is not surprising that those proscribed and persecuted parties in
Massachusetts Bay Colony should complain to the King's Government that
the local Government had denied them every privilege which his Majesty
had assured to them through their friends in England, and by alleged
orders to the Government of Massachusetts Bay, and therefore that the
King's Government should determine to appoint Commissioners to proceed
to the New England colonies to investigate the complaints made, and to
regulate the affairs of the colonies after the disorders of the then
recent civil war, during which the Massachusetts Bay Government had
wholly identified itself with Cromwell, and acted in hostili