ty to those
other American colonies which would not renounce their allegiance to the
Throne, and avow allegiance to the usurper.

It was not till the Government of Massachusetts Bay saw that their
silence could no longer be persisted in with safety, and that a Royal
Commission was inevitable,[130] that they even published the King's
letter, and then, as a means of further procrastination and delay, they
appended their order that the conditions prescribed in the Royal letter,
which "had influence upon the Churches as well as the civil state,
should be suspended until the Court should take action thereon"--thus
subordinating the orders of the King to the action of the Massachusetts
Bay Court.

From the Restoration, reports were most industriously circulated in the
Bay Colony, designed to excite popular suspicion and hostility against
the Royal Government, such as that their constitution and Church
privileges were to be suppressed, and superseded by a Royal Governor and
the Episcopal hierarchy, etc.; and before the arrival of the Royal
Commissioners the object of their appointment was misrepresented and
their character assailed; it was pretended their commission was a bogus
one, prepared "under an old hedge,"[131] and all this preparatory to the
intended resistance of the Commissioners by the Governor and Council of
Massachusetts Bay.

The five conditions of continuing the Charter, specified in the King's
letter of the 28th of June, 1662, the publication of which was
suppressed by the Massachusetts Bay Court for nearly two years, and the
intolerance and proscription which it was intended to redress being
still practised, were doubtless among the causes which led to the
appointment of the Royal Commissioners; but that Commission had
reference to other colonies as well as Massachusetts Bay, and to other
subjects than the intolerant proscriptions of that colony.[132]

All the New England colonies except that of Massachusetts Bay
respectfully and cordially received the Royal Commissioners, and gave
entire satisfaction in the matters which the Commissioners were intended
to investigate.[133] The Congregational rulers of Massachusetts Bay
alone rejected the Royal Commissioners, denied their authority, and
assailed their character. In the early history of Upper Canada, when one
Church claimed to be established above every other, and the local
Government sustained its pretensions as if authorized by law, it is
known with what