rter which authorized them
"to ordain and establish all manner of wholesome and reasonable orders,
laws, statutes, and ordinances," they speedily took to themselves
everything but the name of independence. They instituted courts for all
purposes, set up their legislative government, raised their own taxes,
whether general or local, and perfected that wonderful instrument of
resistance to oppression, New England town government. They even coined
money. And, different from most of the other colonies, they chose their
governor from among their own number.

Distance and home difficulties--for the Stuart kings usually had their
hands full of trouble with their subjects--favored the non-interference
which the colonists craved. When, however, the Stuarts had any leisure
at all, they at once devoted it to quarrelling with their subjects in
New England. Even to the easy-going Charles II the cool aloofness of the
colonists was a bit too strong; to his father and brother it was
intolerable.

The invariable methods of the colonists, when facing a demand from the
king, were evasion and delay. "Avoid or protract" were Winthrop's own
words in 1635. In 1684 the General Court wrote advising their attorney,
employed in England in defending the charter, "to spin out the case to
the uttermost."[4] Once and once only until the Revolution--in the case
of the seizing of Andros--did the men of Massachusetts proceed to
action. Their habitual policy was safe, and, on the whole, successful.
Slow communication (one voyage of commissioners from Boston to England
took three months), and the existence in England of a strong party of
friends, helped powerfully to obscure and obliterate the issues. Yet
Charles I in 1640, and James II in 1689, made preparations to reduce the
colony to proper subjection, by force if necessary.

It was doubtless well for Massachusetts that both Charles and James were
presently dethroned, for against the power of England no successful
resistance could then have been made. New England, indeed, might have
been united against the king, but it is very unlikely that the other
colonies would have given their help. Some generations more were needed
before the aristocrats of Virginia could feel themselves at one with the
Puritans of New England.

Yet it is interesting to notice the spirit of Massachusetts. On the news
of Charles's intentions the colony prepared for resistance. In James's
time it went a step further. When the n