The French were removed from their neighbourhood on the one side, and the Dutch and Swedes on the other.
Their trade was as extensive as they could wish.

_No custom-house was established._ The Acts of Parliament of the 12th-15th of King Charles the Second, for regulating the Plantation trade, _were in force_; but the _Governor, whose business it was to carry them into execution, was annually to be elected by the people, whose interest was that they should not be observed_! Some of the magistrates and principal merchants grew very rich." (History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol I., p.

269.)] [Footnote 170: On the very day, October, 1677, that they proposed, in obedience to his Majesty's command, to pass an order that "the Governor and all inferior magistrates should see to the strict observation of the Acts of Navigation and Trade," they made an order "that the law requiring all persons, as well inhabitants as strangers, that have not taken it, to take the oath of fidelity to the country, be revived and put in practice throughout the jurisdiction" (Palfrey, Vol.III., pp.
311-315)--an order intended to counteract the execution of the Acts of Navigation and Trade by the King's Collector, and of which he complained to England.
"The agents of the colony endeavoured to explain this law to the Board (of Colonial Plantations in England), and to soften their indignation against it, but without effect." (_Ib._, p.

315.) "All persons who refused to take the oath of fidelity to the country were not to have the privilege of recovering their debts in Courts of law, nor to have the protection of the Government." (Truth and Innocency Defended, etc.)] [Footnote 171: (Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Second Series, Vol.VIII., pp.

73-78.) The liberty of worship, which they declared had been the object of their emigration to Massachusetts, had never been denied them; had been assured to them by both Charles the First and Charles the Second.