They seem, however, to have been surprised at the kindness of the King's answer, considering their former conduct towards him and his Royal father, and towards the colonies that loyally adhered to their King; and professed to have been excited to an ecstasy of inexpressible delight and gratitude at the gracious words of the best of kings.[120] Their address presented a curious mixture of professed self-abasement, weakness, isolation, and affliction, with fulsome adulation not surpassed by anything that could have been indited by the most devout loyalist.

But this honeymoon of adulation to the restored King was not of long duration; the order of the King, September 8, 1661, to cease persecuting the Quakers, was received and submitted to with remonstrance; and obedience to it was refused as far as sending the accused Quakers to England for trial, as that would bring the Government of Massachusetts Bay before the English tribunals.[121] But petitions and representations poured in upon the King and Council from Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, etc., from Massachusetts Bay, and their friends in England, complaining that they were denied liberty of worship, the ordinance of Baptism and the Lord's Supper to their families and themselves, that they were deprived of even the elective franchise because of their not being members of the Congregational Church, and praying for the redress of their grievances.[122] The leaders of the colony had, however, warm and influential advocates in the Council of the King: the Earl of Manchester, formerly commander of the Parliamentary army against Charles the First, until supplanted by Cromwell; Lord Say, a chief founder of Connecticut; and Mr.Morrice, Secretary--all Puritans.[123] Under these influences the King sent a letter to the colony, which had been avowedly at war in connection with Cromwell, against his royal father and himself (and by which they had justly forfeited the Charter, apart from other violations of it), pardoning the past and assuring them he would not cancel but restore and establish their Charter, provided they would fulfil certain conditions which were specified.

They joyously accepted the pardon of the past, and the promised continuance of the Charter as if unconditional, without fulfilling the conditions of it, or even mentioning them; just as their fathers had claimed the power given them in the Royal Charter by Charles the First in 1628, to make laws and regulations for order and good government of the Massachusetts Bay Plantation, concealing the Charter, claiming absolute power under it, and wholly ignoring the restrictive condition that such laws and regulations were not to be "contrary to the laws of England"-- not only concealing the Charter, but not allowing their laws and regulations to be printed until after the fall of Charles the First, and resisting all orders for the production of their proceedings, and all Commissions of Inquiry to ascertain whether they had not made laws or regulations and performed acts "contrary to the laws of England." So now, a generation afterwards, they claimed and contended that Charles the Second had restored their Charter, as if done absolutely and unconditionally without their recognising one of the five conditions included in the proviso of the King's letter.

Nothing could have been more kindly and generously conceived than the terms of the King's letter, and nothing could be more reasonable than the conditions contained in its proviso--conditions with which all the other British colonies of America readily complied, and which every province of the Dominion of Canada has assumed and acted upon as a duty and pleasure from the first establishment of their respective Governments.

Of all the colonies of the British Empire for the last three centuries, that of Massachusetts Bay is the only one that ever refused to acknowledge this allegiance to the Government from which it derived its existence and territory.