How far they invaded the "undoubted right" of others, "in the sight of God and man," and exceeded their own lawful powers, is shown on the highest legal authority in the 6th and 7th chapters of this volume.] [Footnote 140: These references are acknowledgments on the part of the Massachusetts Bay Court, that they had been kindly and liberally treated by both Charles the First and Charles the Second.] [Footnote 141: They here limit their compliance with the six conditions on which the King proposed to continue the Charter which they had violated, to their "conscience" and "the just liberties and privileges of their patent." But according to their interpretation of these, they could not in "conscience" grant the "toleration" required by the King, or give up the sectarian basis of franchise and eligibility to office, or admit of appeals from their tribunals to the higher courts or the King himself in England.

They seize upon and claim the promise of the King to continue the Charter, but evade and deny the fulfilment of the conditions on which he made that promise.] [Footnote 142: But they rejected the King's commission of inquiry, refused the information required; and they modestly pray the King to accept as proof of their innocence and right doings their own professions and statements against the complaints made of their proscriptions and oppressions.] [Footnote 143: The threat at the beginning of this, and also in the following paragraph, is characteristic; it was tried, but without effect, on other occasions.

The insinuations and special pleading throughout these paragraphs are amply answered in the letters of Lord Clarendon and the Hon.

R.Boyle, which follow this extraordinary address, which abounds alternately and successively in affected helplessness and lofty assumptions, in calumnious statements and professed charity, in abject flattery and offensive insinuations and threats, in pretended poverty amidst known growing wealth, in appeals to heaven and professed humility and loyalty, to avoid the scrutiny of their acts and to reclaim the usurpation of absolute power.] [Footnote 144: Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol.
VIII., Second Series, pp.

49-51.] [Footnote 145: Collections of Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol.
VIII., Second Series, pp.