tain, without the royal consent, a territory which the
legal advisers of the Crown had decided Massachusetts could not have,
only strengthened the determination of the authorities in England to
bring the colony into the King's hand by the appointment of a royal
governor. For the moment, however, the uprising of Bacon in Virginia and
the Popish Plot in England so distracted the Government that it was
obliged to slight or to postpone much of its business. It did succeed in
settling the perplexing question of New Hampshire, for, having obtained
from Mason a renunciation of all his claims to the Government, though
leaving him with full title to the soil, it organized that territory as
a colony under the control of the Crown.

With these matters out of the way or less exigent, the Lords of Trade
returned to the affairs of New England. They wished, before proceeding
to extremes, to give Massachusetts another chance to be heard; so, in
dismissing the agents in the autumn of 1679, they instructed the colony
to send over within six months others fully prepared "to answer the
misdemeanors imputed against them." They also decided to send Randolph
back as collector and surveyor of customs, with letters to all the New
England colonies, ordering them to enforce the acts of trade, and
another to Massachusetts requiring that she provide a minister for those
in Boston who wished an Anglican church. Randolph, who left for New
England for the second time, in December, 1679, has the distinction of
being the first royal official appointed for any of the northern
colonies. Almost his first task was to settle the province of New
Hampshire under royal authority, with a government consisting of a
president, a council, and an assembly. Thus British control in New
England was making progress, and the worst fears of the "old faction" in
Massachusetts were being realized.

It is difficult to understand the attitude of Massachusetts. Her leaders
probably thought that with the settlement of the Mason and Gorges claims
the most serious source of trouble with England was disposed of. They
believed, honestly enough, though the wish was father to the thought,
that the colony lay beyond the reach of Parliament and that the laws of
England were bounded by the four seas and did not reach America. Hence
they deemed the navigation acts an invasion of their liberties and could
not bring themselves to obey them. As to England's new colonial policy,
it is doubt