This they themselves had done.

Remaining in England, they acknowledged the obligatory force of established laws.

Because those laws were intolerable, they had emigrated to a new world, where they could organize their government, as many of them originally did, on the basis of natural rights and of perfect independence.
As the establishment of a commission with discretionary powers was not specially sanctioned by their charter, they resolved to resist the orders of the king and nullify his commission.

While the fleet sent from England was engaged in reducing New York, Massachusetts, on September 10th, 1664, published an order prohibiting complaints to the commissioners, and at the same time issued a remonstrance, not against deeds of tyranny, but the menace of tyranny, not against actual wrong, but against the principle of wrong.

On the twenty-fifth of October it thus addressed a letter to King Charles II.: "DREAD SOVEREIGN:--The first undertakers of this plantation did obtain a patent, wherein is granted full and absolute power of governing all the people of this place, by men chosen from among themselves, and according to such laws as they should see meet to establish.