was not much of a business monarch.

His thoughts were mainly of pleasure, and, despite his merciless pursuit of the men who put his father to death, he was good-natured.
Though the colonists of Massachusetts had levied two hundred men for the expected war with the Dutch, they wished to maintain their spirit of independence, and the two hundred were only a free offering.

They regarded the commission sent by the king as a flagrant violation of chartered rights.

In the matter of obedience due to a government, the people of Massachusetts made the nice distinction between natural obedience and voluntary subjection.

They argued that the child born on the soil of England is necessarily an English subject; but they held to the original right of expatriation, that every man may withdraw from the land of his birth, and renounce all duty of allegiance with all claim to protection.