promote his own interests. Himself a party in suits to be commenced, he was authorized to select the person to be appointed governor. He found a fit agent in Edward Cranfield, a man who had no object in banishing himself to America but to wrest a fortune from the sawyers and lumber-dealers of New Hampshire. By a deed enrolled in chancery, Mason, in January, 1682, surrendered one fifth part of all quit-rents to the king for the support of the governor, and gave a mortgage of the province for twenty-one years, as collateral security for the payment of his salary. Obtaining further the exclusive right to the anticipated harvest of fines and forfeitures, Cranfield relinquished a profitable employment in England, and embarked for the banks of the Piscataqua.

But the assembly which he convened, in November, 1682, dispelled his golden visions. The "rugged " legislators voted him a gratuity of two hundred and fifty pounds; but they would not yield their liberties; and in their session of January, 1683, he dissolved them. The dissolution of an assembly was, in New England, till then unheard of; a crowd of rash men raised the cry for "liberty and reformation." The leader, Edward Gove, an unlettered enthusiast, was confined in irons, condemned to death for treason, and, having been transported to England, was kept a prisoner in the Tower of London till 1686. Lawsuits about land were multiplied. Packed juries and partial judges settled questions rapidly; but Mason could neither get possession of the estates nor find a purchaser.

Repairing to Boston, in February, 1683, Cranfield wrote to the British ministry that should the duke of York survive Charles II., Massachusetts, buoyed up by the non-conformist party in England, would at once fall from their allegiance to the crown. He therefore advised for that country "a thorough regulation," and enforced the necessity of sending a frigate to Boston harbor till the government should pass "into the hands of loyal and honest gentlemen, and the faction be made incapable ever after of altering or disturbing that government."

In 1683, Cranfield, with a subservient council, began to exercise powers of legislation. When the towns privately sent an agent to England, Vaughan, who had been active in obtaining depositions for his use, was required to find securities

for good behavior. He refused, declaring that he had broken no law; and the governor immediately imprisoned him.

Cranfield, in his longing for money, stooped to falsehood, and, in January, 1684, hastily calling an assembly, on a vague rumor of an invasion, laid before them a bill granting a sudden supply. The representatives, after debate, negatived the bill.

To intimidate the clergy, he forbade the usual exercise of church discipline. In Portsmouth, Moody, the minister, replied to his threats by a sermon, and the church was inflexible. Cranfield, asserting that the ecclesiastical laws of England were in force in the colony, ordered the people to keep Christmas as a festival, and to fast on the thirtieth of January. But his capital stroke of policy was an order that all persons should be admitted to the Lord's Supper as freely as in the Episcopal or Lutheran church, and that the English liturgy should in certain cases be adopted. The order was disregarded. The governor himself appointed a day, on which he claimed to receive the elements at the hands of Moody, after the forms of the English church. Moody refused; was prosecuted, condemned, and imprisoned. Religious worship was almost entirely broken up. But the people did not yield; and Cranfield, vexed at the stubbornness of the clergy, gave information in England that, "while the clergy were allowed to preach, no true allegiance could be found." It had long been evident "there could be no quiet till the factious preachers were turned out of the province."

In 1684, an attempt was made to impose taxes by the vote of the council. That the people might the less reluctantly pay them, a report of a war with the eastern Indians was spread abroad; and Cranfield made a visit to New York, under pretence of concerting measures with the governor of that province. The committee of plantations had been warned that, "without some visible force to keep the people of New Hampshire under, it would be a difficult or impossible thing to execute his majesty's commands or the laws of trade." Associations were formed for mutual support in resisting the collection of illegal taxes. At Exeter, the sheriff was driven off with clubs, and the farmers' wives threatened to scald his officer if he should attempt to attach property in the house.

If rioters were committed, they were rescued by a new riot; when, in January, 1685, the troop of horse was ordered out, not a man obeyed the summons.

Cranfield, in despair, wrote imploringly to the government in England: "I shall esteem it the greatest happiness in the world to be allowed to remove from these unreasonable people. They cavil at the royal commission, and not at my person. No one will be accepted by them, who puts the king's commands in execution." His conduct met with approbation, and he was allowed to withdraw from the province. The character of New Hampshire remained unchanged. It was ever esteemed in England "factious in its economy, affording no exemplary precedents" to the friends of arbitrary power.

Massachusetts might, perhaps, still have defied the king, and escaped or overawed the privy council; but the merchants and manufacturers of England, fearing a rival beyond the ocean, discerned how their monopoly might be sustained, and pressed steadily toward their object. Their complaints had, in 1675, been received with favor; their selfish reasoning was heard with a willingness to be convinced.

The agents of the colony, in 1676, had brought with them no sufficient power: "They professed their willingness to pay duties to the king within the plantation, provided they might be allowed to import the necessary commodities of Europe without entering first in England." An amnesty for the past would readily have been conceded; for the future, it was resolved "to consider the whole matter from the very root," and to reduce Massachusetts to "a more palpable dependence." That this might be done with its consent, the agents were enjoined to procure larger powers; but no larger powers were granted.

It was against fearful odds that Massachusetts continued the struggle. All England was united. Whatever party triumphed, the mercantile interest would readily procure an enforcement of the laws of trade. "The country's neglect of the acts of navigation," wrote the agents, "has been most unhappy. Without a compliance in that matter, nothing can be expected but a total breach." "All the storms of displeasure" would be let loose.

It was not, therefore, a surprise when, in April, 1678, the committee of plantations directed the attorney and solicitorgeneral to report whether the original charter had any legal entity, what was the effect of the quo warranto brought against it in 1635, and, lastly, whether the corporation had forfeited their charter by maladministration of its powers. In the following month the opinion of the crown lawyers, Jones and Winnington, was given, that the charter, if originally good, had not been dissolved by any quo warranto or judgment, but that the misdemeanors objected against the corporation were sufficient to avoid their patent. The committee immediately decided that a quo warranto should be brought against the charter of Massachusetts, and "new laws framed instead of such as were repugnant to the laws of England;" and Randolph was at once appointed "collector of his majesty's customs in New England." Many of the committee were confirmed in their belief that a general governor and a colonial judicature of the king's appointment were become "altogether necessary."

In Massachusetts a synod of all the churches was convened, to inquire into the causes of the dangers to New England liberty, and the mode of removing the evils. The general court, in 1678 and 1679, enacted laws, partially removing the grounds of complaint. High treason was made a capital offence; the oath of allegiance was required of every male above sixteen years in the colony; the king's arms were "carved by an able artist and erected in the court-house." The colony was unwilling to forfeit its charter and its religious liberties on a pecuniary question, and yet to acknowledge its readiness to submit to an act of parliament would be a surrender of the privilege of independent legislation. It therefore declared that "the acts of navigation were an invasion of the rights and privileges of the subjects of his majesty in the colony, they not being represented in parliament." "The laws of England," it added, "do not reach America." The general court then gave validity to the laws of navigation by an act of its own. "We would not," so they wrote to their agents, "that by any concessions of ours, or of yours in our behalf, any the least stone should be put out of the wall, and we hope that his majesty's favor will be as the north wind to scatter the clouds."

The committee of plantations proposed, as measures to be immediately adopted, that the bishop of London should appoint a minister to reside in Boston, and that conformists to the church of England should be admitted to all freedoms and privileges of the colony. The settlement of weightier matters was postponed till the charter should be set aside by a court of law.

In December, 1679, the agents, Stoughton and Bulkeley, arrived in Boston. About the same time came Randolph, whose patent as collector was recognised and enrolled, but who as yet received no help in the administration of his office. The commands of the king, that other agents should be sent over with unlimited powers, were not followed. Twice did Charles II. remonstrate against the disobedience of his subjects; twice did Randolph cross the Atlantic and return to England, to assist in directing measures against Massachusetts. The commonwealth continued its system of procrastination. But the extravagances and crimes of the anti-popery party in England soon brought about a reaction, and the king, dissolving parliament and making use of subservient courts, was left the undisputed master in his kingdom. A letter from him to Massachusetts announced categorically that agents must be sent over with full powers, or measures would be taken "whereby their charter might be legally evicted and made void." Moved by the nearness of the danger, the general court, in February, 1682, selected Joseph Dudley and John Richards as its agents. France had succeeded in bribing the king to betray the interests of England; Massachusetts was willing to purchase of him clemency toward its liberties.

The commission of the deputies was condemned by the privy council as insufficient, because they were expressly enjoined to consent to nothing that should infringe the privileges of the government established under the charter. In September, 1682, they were ordered to obtain full powers for the entire regulation of the government, or the method of a judicial process would be adopted. The agents represented the condition of the colony as desperate. Was it not safest for the colony to decline a contest, and throw itself upon the favor or forbearance of the king? Such was the theme of universal