Dr.Child and his friends were punished for even asking for the administration that appointed the Governor-General and those Commissioners; and whether the Government of England were a monarchy or republic, it was clear that the pretensions to independence of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay must be checked, and their local tyranny restrained.

For this purpose the Long Parliament adopted the same policy in 1650 that King Charles had done in 1637; demanded the surrender of the Charter; for that Parliament sent a summons to the local Government ordering it to transmit the Charter to England, to receive a new patent from the Parliament in all its acts and processes.
This order of Parliament to Massachusetts Bay Colony to surrender its Charter was accompanied by a proclamation prohibiting trade with Virginia, Barbadoes, Bermuda, and Antigua, because these colonies continued to recognize royal authority, and to administer their laws in the name of the King.

This duplicate order from the Long Parliament was a double blow to the colony of Massachusetts Bay, and produced general consternation; but the dexterity and diplomacy of the colony were equal to the occasion.

It showed its devotion to the cause of the Long Parliament by passing an Act prohibiting trade with the loyal, but by them termed rebel colonies;[88] and it avoided surrendering the Charter by repeating its policy of delay and petition, which it had adopted on a similar occasion in 1638 to King Charles; and its professions of loyalty to Charles, and prayers for the Royal Family, and the success of the Privy Council, it now repeated for the Long Parliament and its leaders, supporting its petition by an appeal to its ten years' services of prayers and of men to the cause of the Long Parliament against the King.

I will, in the first place, give in a note Mr.Bancroft's own account of what was claimed and ordered by the Long Parliament, and the pretensions and proceedings of the Legislature of Massachusetts Bay, and then will give the principal parts of their petition to the Long Parliament in their own words.