At the Restoration Massachusetts had grown arrogant from long impunity.
She thought the time of reckoning would never come, and even in trivial
matters seemed to take a pride in slighting Great Britain and in vaunting
her independence. Laws were enacted in the name of the Commonwealth, the
king's name was not in the writs, nor were the royal arms upon the public
buildings; even the oath of allegiance was rejected, though it was
unobjectionable in form. She had grown to believe that were offence taken
she had only to invent pretexts for delay, to have her fault forgotten in
some new revolution. General Denison, at the Quaker trials, put the
popular belief in a nut-shell: "This year ye will go to complain to the
Parliament, and the next year they will send to see how it is; and the
third year the government is changed." [Footnote: Sewel, p. 280.]
But, beside these irritating domestic questions, the corporation was
bitterly embroiled with its neighbors. Samuel Gorton and his friends were
inhabitants of Rhode Island, and were, no doubt, troublesome to deal with;
but their particular offence was ecclesiastical. An armed force was sent
over the border and they were seized. They were brought to Boston and
tried on the charge of being "blasphemous enemies of the true religion of
our Lord Jesus Christ, and of all his holy ordinances, and likewise of all
civil government among his people, and particularly within this
jurisdiction.
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