Mr.Bancroft designates as "usurpations of Parliament" the proceedings of the Long Parliament in appointing a Governor-General and Commissioners for the colonies, and in exercising its right to receive and decide upon appeals from the colonies; and terms the support of the Parliament in the colony "domestic treachery;" and the one member of the Legislature who had the courage to maintain the supremacy of the Mother Country is called the "faithless deputy," who was forthwith turned out of the House, which then proceeded, "with closed doors," to discuss in secret conclave its relations to England, and concluded by declaring "against any assertion of paramount authority" on the part of the English Parliament.

This was substantially a "Declaration of Independence;" not, indeed, against an arbitrary king, as was alleged sixteen years before, and a hundred and thirty years afterwards, but against a Parliament which had dethroned and beheaded their King, and abolished the House of Lords and the Episcopal Church! All this Mr.Bancroft now treats as maintaining the _Charter_, of which he himself had declared, in another place, as I have quoted above: "The Charter on which the freemen of Massachusetts succeeded in erecting a system of independent representative liberty did not secure to them a single privilege of self-government, but left them as the Virginians had been left, without any valuable franchise, at the mercy of the Corporation within the realm." Who then were the "usurpers," and had been for twenty years, of power which had not been conferred on them--the new Church and the persecuting Government of Massachusetts Bay, or the supreme authority of England, both under a King and under a professed republican commonwealth?
4.

Mr.Bancroft says: "Had the Long Parliament succeeded in revoking the patent of the Massachusetts Bay,[90] the tenor of American history would have been changed." I agree with him in this opinion, though probably not in his application of it.

I believe that the "tenor of American history" would have led to as perfect an independence of the American States as they now enjoy--as free, but a better system of government, and without their ever having made war and bloodshed against Great Britain.
The facts thus referred to show that there were _Empire Loyalists_ in America in the seventeenth, as there were afterwards in the eighteenth century; they then embraced all the colonies of New England, except the ruling party of Massachusetts Bay; they were all advocates of an equal franchise, and equal religious and civil liberty for all classes--the very reverse of the Massachusetts Government, which, while it denied any subordination to England, denied religious and civil liberty to all classes except members of the Congregational Churches.
It is a curious and significant fact, stated by Mr.Bancroft, that these intolerant and persecuting proceedings of the Massachusetts Bay Legislature were submitted to the Congregational ministers for their approval and final endorsement.

The Long Parliament in England checked and ruled the Assembly of Westminster divines; but in Massachusetts the divines, after a day's consideration, "approved the proceedings of the General Court." No wonder that such divines, supported by taxes levied by the State and rulers of the State, denounced all toleration of dissent from their Church and authority.
Before leaving this subject, I must notice the remarks of Mr.
Palfrey,--the second, if not first in authority of the historians of New England.
Mr.Palfrey ascribes what he calls "the Presbyterian Cabal" to Mr.
William Vassal, who was one of the founders and first Council of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, whose brother Samuel had shared with Hampden the honour of having refused to pay ship-money to Charles, and who was now, with the Earl of Warwick,[91] one of the Parliamentary Commissioners for the colonies.