You say we have commended the word of the Lord for our rule therein, referring us to the perusal of the printed law, page 25.
We have perused that law, and find that that law doth cut off those privileges which his Majesty will have, and see that the rest of his subjects have."[151] I now resume the narrative of questions as affecting the authority of the Crown and the subjection of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

That colony was the most populous and wealthy of all the New England colonies.

Its principal founders were men of wealth and education; the twelve years' tyranny of Charles the First and Laud, during the suspension of Parliament, caused a flow of more than twenty thousand emigrants to Massachusetts Bay, with a wealth exceeding half a million sterling, and among them not less than seventy silenced clergymen.
During the subsequent twenty years of the civil war and Commonwealth in England, the rulers of that colony actively sided with the latter, and by the favour and connivance of Cromwell evaded the Navigation Law passed by the Parliament, and enriched themselves greatly at the expense of the other British colonies in America, and in violation of the law of Parliament.

In the meantime, being the stronger party, and knowing that they were the favourites of Cromwell, they assumed, on diverse grounds, possession of lands, south, east, north, and west, within the limits of the neighbouring colonies, and made their might right, by force of arms, when resisted; and denied the citizenship of freemen to all except actual members of the Congregational Churches, and punished Dissenters with fine, imprisonment, banishment, and death itself in many instances.
On the restoration of Charles the Second to the throne of his ancestors, it was natural that the various oppressed and injured parties, whether of colonies or individuals, should lay their grievances before their Sovereign and appeal to his protection; and it was not less the duty of the Sovereign to listen to their complaints, to inquire into them, and to redress them if well founded.

This the King, under the guidance of his Puritan Councillors, proceeded to do in the most conciliatory and least offensive way.