The colonists of Massachusetts Bay voted hearty thanks to the House of Commons for this resolution, and ordered it to be entered on their public records as a proof to posterity of the gracious favour of Parliament.[75] The Massachusetts General Court did not then complain of the Parliament invading their Charter privileges, in assuming its right to tax or not tax their imports and exports; but rebelled against Great Britain a hundred and thirty years afterwards, because the Parliament asserted and applied the same principle.
The Puritan Court of Massachusetts Bay were not slow in reciprocating the kind expressions and acts of the Long Parliament, and identifying themselves completely with it against the King.

In 1644 they passed an Act, in which they allowed perfect freedom of opinion, discussion, and action on the side of Parliament, but none on the side of the King; the one party in the colony could say and act as they pleased (and many of them went to England and joined Cromwell's army or got places in public departments); no one of the other party was allowed to give expression to his opinions, either "directly or indirectly," without being "accounted as an offender of a high nature against this Commonwealth, and to be prosecuted, capitally or otherwise, according to the quality and degree of his offence."[76] The New England historians have represented the acts of Charles the First as arbitrary and tyrannical in inquiring into the affairs of Massachusetts Bay, and in the appointment of a Governor-General and Commissioners to investigate all their proceedings and regulate them; and it might be supposed that the Puritan Parliament in England and the General Court of Massachusetts Bay would be at one in regard to local independence of the colony of any control or interference on the part of the Parent State.

But the very year after the House of Commons had adopted so gracious an order to exempt the exports and imports of the colony from all taxation, both Houses of Parliament passed an Act for the appointment of a Governor-General and seventeen Commissioners--five Lords and twelve Commoners--with unlimited powers over all the American colonies.

Among the members of the House of Commons composing this Commission were Sir Harry Vane and Oliver Cromwell.

The title of this Act, in Hazard, is as follows: "An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament: whereby Robert Earl of Warwick is made Governor-in-Chief and Lord High Admiral of all those Islands and Plantations inhabited, planted, or belonging to any of his Majesty the King of England's subjects, within the bounds and upon the coasts of America, and a Committee appointed to be assisting unto him, for the better government, strengthening and preservation of the said Plantations; but chiefly for the advancement of the true Protestant religion, and further spreading of the Gospel of Christ[77] among those that yet remain there, in great and miserable blindness and ignorance."[78] This Act places all the affairs of the colonies, with the appointment of Governors and all other local officers, under the direct control of Parliament, through its general Governor and Commissioners, and shows beyond doubt that the Puritans of the Long Parliament held the same views with those of Charles the First, and George the Third, and Lord North a century afterwards, as to the authority of the British Parliament over the American colonies.