The most inquisitorial and vigilant efforts of the Local Government to suppress the transmission of information to England, and punish complainants, could not prevent the grievances of the proscribed and oppressed being wafted to England, and commanding attention, and especially in connection with the startling fact now first discovered, that the Royal Charter had been removed from England, and a government under its authority set up at Massachusetts Bay.
Mr.Bancroft ascribes the complaints on these subjects as originating in "revenge," and calls them "the clamours of the malignant," and as amounting to nothing but "marriages celebrated by civil magistrates," and "the system of Colonial Church discipline;" confined, as he himself says elsewhere, "the elective franchise to a small proportion of the whole population," and "established the reign of the [Congregational] Church." Mr.Bancroft proceeds: "But the greater apprehensions were raised by a requisition that the Letters Patent of the Company should be produced in England--a requisition to which the emigrants returned no reply." "Still more menacing," says Mr.Bancroft, "was the appointment of an arbitrary Special Commission [April 10, 1634] for all the colonies.[64] "The news of this Commission soon reached Boston [Sept.

19, 1634;] and it was at the same time rumoured that a Governor-General was on his way.
The intelligence awakened the most intense interest in the whole colony, and led to the boldest measures.

Poor as the new settlements were, six hundred pounds were raised towards fortifications; 'and the assistants and the deputies discovered their minds to one another,' and the fortifications were hastened.

All the ministers assembled in Boston [Jan.

19, 1635]; it marks the age, that their opinions were consulted; it marks the age still more, that _they unanimously declared against the reception of a General Governor_.