each month. They
could administer oaths of supremacy and allegiance, raise troops
for the defence of their possessions, admit new associates into the
Company, and make regulations for the management of their business,
with the vague and weak proviso that in order to be valid their
enactment must in no wise contravene the laws of England. Nothing was
said as to the place where the Company should hold its meetings, and
accordingly after a few months the Company transferred itself and
its charter to New England, in order that it might carry out its
intentions with as little interference as possible on the part of the
crown.

Whether this transfer of the charter was legally justifiable or not
is a question which has been much debated, but with which we need not
here vex ourselves. The lawyers of the Company were shrewd enough to
know that a loosely-drawn instrument may be made to admit of great
liberty of action. Under the guise of a mere trading corporation the
Puritan leaders deliberately intended to found a civil commonwealth in
accordance with their own theories of government.

[Sidenote: Government of Massachusetts; the General Court]
After their arrival in Massachusetts, their numbers increased so
rapidly that it became impossible to have a primary assembly of all
the freemen, and so a representative assembly was devised after the
model of the Old English county court. The representatives sat for
townships, and were called deputies. At first they sat in the same
chamber with the assistants, but in 1644 the legislative body was
divided into two chambers, the deputies forming the lower house, while
the upper was composed of the assistants, who were sometimes called
magistrates. In elections the candidates for the upper house were put
in nomination by the General Court and voted on by the freemen. In
general the assistants represented the common or central power of
the colony, while the deputies represented the interests of popular
self-government. The former was comparatively an aristocratic and the
latter a democratic body, and there were frequent disputes between the
two.

It is worthy of note that the governing body thus constituted was at
once a legislative and a judicial body, like the English county court
which served as its model. Inferior courts were organized at an early
date in Massachusetts, but the highest judicial tribunal was the
legislature, which was known as the General Court. It still bears this
n