the
governor and a majority of the assistants, "upon a serious consideration
of his Majesty's intimation that his purpose is only to regulate our
charter, in such a manner as shall be for his service and the good of
this his colony," announced themselves willing to surrender the bulwark
of the Puritan liberties. But the House of Deputies voted to "adhere to
their former bills," preferring with the clergy rather to "die by the
hand of others, than by their own."

The event reveals the opposition of the material and the ideal interests
which was a prime cause in the defeat of the great Puritan experiment.
The assistants were "men of the best estates," says Randolph, while the
deputies were "mostly an inferior sort of planters." Randolph was a
prejudiced observer; but it is undoubtedly true that the upper chamber
spoke for the shipbuilders and traders of Boston. Forty years earlier,
when Laud was preparing to annul the charter, both magistrates and
clergy made ready for forcible resistance. It was no longer possible.
Massachusetts had ceased to be a wilderness community cut off from
contact with the outside world. Her rapidly growing trade depended upon
English markets. The base of the fisheries was shifting northward, and a
French company at Nova Scotia was already seizing New England ships.
Without English protection trade would be ruined and the colony itself
fall a prey to France. Forcible resistance was therefore not to be
thought of. The material interests of Massachusetts bound her to the
home Government, and practical men were apt to think that even the
spiritual City of God would suffer less under Anglican than under
Catholic control.

The recall of the charter but opened free passage to the latent forces
that were already beginning to transform the life and thought of New
England. The theocratic ideal had so far lost its hold that the event to
which the clergy and a remnant of the magistrates looked forward as to a
cosmic catastrophe was accepted with resignation or indifference by the
mass of the people. Neither disaster nor serious disturbance accompanied
the inauguration of the new regime. The extension of the suffrage to the
freeholders removed more discontent than it created. A government
controlled by property interests approved itself as well as one directed
by religious ideas. The colony was no more distracted by the
introduction of the Anglican service than by the erection of the second
Boston Church;