And could the King in Council refuse to listen to such complaints, and authorize inquiry into their truth or falsehood, without violating rights which, even at that period of despotic government, were regarded as sacred to even the humblest British subject?
And the leading complainants were men of the most respectable position in England, and who had investments in New England--not only the Messrs.

Brown, but Capt.

John Mason and Sir Ferdinand Gorges, who complained that the Massachusetts Company had encroached upon the territory held by them under Royal Charter--territory which afterwards constituted portions of New Hampshire and Maine.

Were the King and Privy Council to be precluded from inquiring into such complaints?
Yet New England historians assail the complainants for stating their grievances, and the King and Council for listening to them even so far as to order an inquiry into them.

The petitioners are held up as slanderers and enemies, and the King and Council represented as acting tyrannically and as infringing the rights of the Massachusetts Puritans, and seeking the destruction of their liberties and enterprise even by inquiring into complaints made.