3/22 Attacks on Massachusetts .-- The new government was especially displeased by the independent spirit shown by Massachusetts. Only good Puritans could vote in that colony, and members of the Church of England could not even worship as they wished. The Massachusetts people paid no heed whatever to the navigation laws and asserted that acts of Parliament had no force in the colony. It chanced that at this time Massachusetts had placed herself clearly in the wrong by hanging four persons for no other reason than that they were Quakers. |