howed no inclination to adopt a moderate policy,
advocating, on the contrary, investigation "from the whole root." The
position of a Massachusetts agent in England during these trying years
was most undesirable, and so many difficulties and discouragements did
Stoughton and Bulkeley encounter that several times they asked for
permission to return home and once, at least, had to go to the country
for their health. But whatever were the troubles of an agent in England,
they were trifling as compared with those which confronted him at home
when he failed, as he almost invariably did fail, to obtain all that the
colony expected. Cotton Mather tells us that Norton died in 1663 of
melancholy and chagrin, and that for forty years there was not one agent
but met "with some very froward entertainment among his countrymen." No
wonder it was always difficult to find men who were willing to go.

At first the Lords of Trade favored the sending of a supplemental
charter and the extending of a pardon to the colony; but as the evidence
against Massachusetts accumulated, they began to consider the revision
of the laws, the appointment of a collector of customs and a royal
governor, and even the annulment of the charter itself. In short, they
determined to bring Massachusetts "under a more palpable declaration of
obedience to his Majesty." The general court of the colony, although it
had said that "any breach in the wall would endanger the whole," was at
last frightened by the news from England and passed an order in October,
1677, that the laws of trade must be strictly observed, and later
magistrates and deputies alike took the oath of allegiance prescribed by
the Crown, promising to drop the word "Commonwealth" for the future. The
members of the assembly wrote an amazing letter, pietistic and cringing,
in which they prostrated themselves before the King, asked to be
numbered among his "poore yet humble and loyal subjects," and begged for
a renewal of all their privileges. At best such a letter could have done
little in England to increase respect for the colony, but any good
results expected from it were completely destroyed by the serious
blunder which the colony made at this time in purchasing from the Gorges
claimants the title to the province of Maine, which with New Hampshire
had recently been declared by the chief justices of the King's Bench and
Common Pleas to lie outside of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. This
attempt to ob