In this colony, at the first coming of the Commissioners, were many untruths raised and sent into the colonies, as that the King had to raise L15,000 yearly for his Majesty's use, whereupon Major Hawthorne made a seditious speech at the head of his company, and the late Governor (Bellingham) another at their meeting-house at Boston, but neither of them were so much as questioned for it by any of the magistrates." ...

"But neither examples nor reasons could prevail with them to let the Commissioners hear and determine so much as those particular cases (Mr.Deane's and the Indian Sachems), which the King had commanded them to take care of and do justice in; and though the Commissioners, who never desired that they should appear as delinquents, but as _defendants_, either by themselves or by their attorneys, assured them that if they had been unjustly complained of to his Majesty, their false accusers should be severely punished, and their just dealing made known to his Majesty and all the world; yet they proclaimed by sound of trumpet that the General Court was the supremest judiciary in all the province; that the Commissioners pretending to hear appeals was a breach of the privileges granted by the King's royal father, and confirmed to them by his Majesty's own letter, and that they would not permit it; by which they have for the present silenced above thirty petitioners which desired justice from them and were lost at sea.
"To elude his Majesty's desire for admitting men of civil and competent estates to be freemen, they have an Act whereby he that is 24 years old, a housekeeper, and brings a certificate of his civil life, another of his being orthodox in matters of faith, and a third of his paying ten shillings besides head-money, at a single rate, _may then have the liberty to make his desires known to the Court_, and then it shall be put to vote.

The Commissioners examined many townships, and found that scarce three in a hundred pay ten shillings at a single rate; yet if this rate were general it would be just; but he that is _a church member, though_ he be a servant, and pay not _twopence, may be a freeman_.

They do not admit any who is not a Church member to communion, nor their children to baptism, yet they will marry their children to those whom they will not admit to baptism, if they be rich.

They did imprison and barbarously use Mr.Jourdan for baptising children, as himself complained in his petition to the Commissioners.