Their "lameness" and "ineptness" and "impotence" plainly arose from disinclination alone.

It is amusing to hear them speak of themselves as "exanimated outcasts," hoping to be animated by the breath of Royal favour.

Their "script" was no doubt "the transcript of their loyal hearts" when they supplicated the continuance of the Royal Charter, the first intentions and essential provisions of which they had violated so many years.
Secondly.

But what is most suspicious in this address is their denial of having taken any part in the civil war in England--professing that their lot had been the good old nonconformists',[117] "only to act a passive _part_ throughout these late vicissitudes," and ascribed to the favour of God their "exemption from the temptations of _either party_." Now, just ten years before, in their address to the Long Parliament and to Cromwell, they said: "And for our carriage and demeanour to the honourable Parliament for these ten years, since the first beginning of your differences with the late King, and the war that after ensued, we have constantly adhered to you, notwithstanding ourselves in your weakest condition and doubtfullest times, but by our fasting and prayers for your good success, and our thanksgiving after the same was attained, in days of solemnity set apart for that purpose, as also by our sending over useful men (others also going voluntarily from us to help you) who have been of good use and have done good acceptable service to the army, declaring to the world hereby that such was the duty and love we bear unto the Parliament that we were ready to rise and fall with them: for which we suffered the hatred and threats of other English colonies now in rebellion against you," etc.[118] Whether this address to Parliament (a copy of it being enclosed with an address to Cromwell) had ever at that time been made public, or whether King Charles the Second had then seen it, does not appear; but it is not easy to conceive statements and words more opposite than those addressed by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay to the Parliament in 1651, and to the King, Charles the Second, in 1661.
On the contrasts of acts themselves, the reader will make his own remarks and inferences.

The King received and answered their address very graciously.[119] They professed to receive it gratefully; but their consciousness of past unfaithfulness and transgressions, and their jealous suspicions, apprehended evil from the general terms of the King's reply, his reference to his Royal predecessors and religious liberty, which above all things they most dreaded, desiring religious liberty for themselves alone, but not for any Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, or Quaker.