fect settlement. In the meantime, we doubt not but the bearers
thereof, who have demeaned themselves, during their attendance, with
good care and discretion, will, from their _own observations_, acquaint
you with many important things which may be of such use and
advertisement to you, that we might well hope to be prevented, by your
applications, in what is expected or desired by us. So much it is your
interest to propose and intercede for the same; for we are graciously
inclined to have all past errors and mistakes forgotten, and that your
condition might be so amended as that neither your settlement, or the
minds of our good subjects there, should be liable to be shaken and
disquieted upon every complaint. We have heard with satisfaction of the
great readiness wherewith our good subjects there have lately offered
themselves to the taking of the oath of allegiance, which is a clear
manifestation to us that the unanswerable defect in that particular was
but the fault of a very few in power, who for so long a time obstructed
what the Charter and our express commands obliged them unto, as will
appear in our gracious letter of the 28th of June (1662), in the
fourteenth year of our reign; and we shall henceforth expect that there
will be a suitable obedience in other particulars of the said letter,
as, namely, in respect of freedom and liberty of conscience, so as those
that desire to serve God in the way of the Church of England be not
thereby made obnoxious or discountenanced from their sharing in the
government, much less that they or any other of our good subjects (not
being Papists) who do not agree in the Congregational way, be by law
subjected to fines or forfeitures, or other incapacities for the same,
which is a severity to be the more wondered at, whereas liberty of
conscience was made one principal motive for your first transportation
into those parts; nor do we think it fit that any other distinction be
observed in the making of freemen than that they be men of competent
estates, rateable at ten shillings,[162] according to the rules of the
place, and that such in their turns be also capable of the magistracy,
and all laws made void that obstruct the same. And because we have not
observed any fruits or advantage by the dispensation granted by us in
our said letter of June, in the fourteenth year of our reign, whereby
the number of assistants, settled by our Charter to be eighteen, might
be reduced unto the number