Trials were by juries, as usual.

Dudley considered himself as appointed to preserve the affairs of the colony from confusion until a Governor arrived and a rule of administration should be more fully settled.[196] The administration of Dudley was only of seven months' duration.

Dudley was superseded by Sir Edmund Andros, who arrived at Boston on the 20th of December (1686), with a commission from King James for the government of New England.[197] He was instructed to appoint no one of the Council to any offices but those of the least estates and characters, and to displace none without sufficient cause; to continue the former laws of the country, as far as they were not inconsistent with his commission or instructions, until other regulations were established by the Governor and Council; to allow no printing press; to give universal toleration in religion, but encouragement to the Church of England; to execute the laws of trade, and prevent frauds in Customs.[198] But Andros had other instructions of a more despotic and stringent character; and being, like King James himself, of an arbitrary disposition, he fulfilled his instructions to the letter.

And when his Royal master was dethroned for his unconstitutional and tyrannical conduct, Andros was seized at Boston and sent prisoner to England, to answer for his conduct; but he was acquitted by the new Government, not for his policy in New England, but because he had acted according to his instructions, which he pleaded as his justification.[199] It is singular that _toleration_ in Massachusetts should have been proclaimed by the arbitrary James, in a declaration above and contrary to the law for which he received the thanks of the ministers in that colony, but which resulted in his loss of his Crown in England.
"James's Declaration of Indulgence was proclaimed (1687), and now, for the first time, Quakers, Baptists, and Episcopalians enjoyed toleration in Massachusetts.

That system of religious tyranny, coeval with the settlement of New England, thus unexpectedly received its death-blow from a Catholic bigot, who professed a willingness to allow religious freedom to others as a means of securing it for himself." ...