appointees. The drafts
of the commission and instructions, when completed, were sent to the
Secretary of State, by whom corrections might be made, then conveyed to
the Privy Council, where the documents were frequently referred to the
attorney general for his advice on legal points, and sometimes to the
Committee of the Council, which at this time, as well as afterward, felt
itself fully empowered to make any alterations it pleased. Thus many
hands may have had a share in shaping these important papers before they
were finally engrossed, although it is probable that in the majority of
instances the draft of the Council was accepted unchanged by the King.

The Council was also beginning to exercise another important function
in receiving from the Privy Council copies of laws passed in the
colonies upon the character of which its opinion was desired, and in
being called upon by the Privy Council or the Secretary of State to
make recommendations as to fit persons to hold colonial offices. In
this particular, the most responsible task of the Council lay in the
selection and instruction of special commissioners, who in accordance
with many earlier precedents were vested with authority to go to the
colonies for the settlement of difficult questions there. Three such
commissions were set on foot by the Council of Plantations: that
appointed to bring to an end the dispute with the French at St.
Christopher; that appointed to treat with the Dutch regarding the
English subjects at Surinam; and that designed for New England, which
was to be openly commissioned to settle boundary disputes, but to be
secretly instructed to inform the Council of the condition of the New
England colonies, "and whether they were of such power as to be able
to resist his Majesty and declare for themselves as independent of the
Crown." No commissioners were, however, sent until the time of Edward
Randolph.[8]

A large amount of time was consumed by the Council in considering the
petitions and memorials of private persons, who had some grounds of
complaint against one or other of the colonial governments. Among these
the charges of Mason and Gorges against Massachusetts hold prominent
place, but other complainants were none the less insistent; Capt.
Archibald Henderson, of Antigua, who had been imprisoned by Governor
Wheeler for alleged seditious practices; the owners of the ship _James_,
of Belfast, which had been seized by Wheeler as a "stranger-built