How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [11]
Not only was Robert Tufton Mason not a Puritan; his relatives had actively opposed the overthrow of the king. One cousin had been Charles I’s master of bequests. Another cousin had been a member of the Parliament that Cromwell dissolved. That cousin fled to Virginia.
Puritan rule turned out not to be the Garden of Eden its backers had hoped. In England the Puritans closed theaters, prohibited dancing, and even banned celebration on Christmas. Less amusing than the suppression of amusement was the Puritan government’s confiscation of property from Catholics, accompanied by horrific ethnic cleansing in Ireland. After little more than a decade, England had had enough. Puritan rule ended when Charles II, son of the beheaded king, was restored to power in 1660.
Shortly after Charles II took his seat on the throne, Mason took a seat in his London attorney’s office. The time was right to petition the king. His plea hearkened to the king’s dethroned and beheaded father, who had “become a Sacrifice” of Puritan rule—the same Puritans who, it stated, “did surreptitiously … get a Confirmation of the [New Hampshire] Grant … [and] aspired to Extend their Bounds and spread into a Larger Territory than they had yet usurped.”4
Massachusetts indeed had some explaining to do. Extending its jurisdiction into New Hampshire was but one of a list of dubious actions it had taken during England’s years of Puritan rule. With the monarchy now restored, Governor John Endicott quickly wrote the new king:
Most Gracious and Dread Sovereign,
May it please your Majesty in the Day wherein you happily say you now know that you are King over your British Israel, to cast an Eye upon your poor Mephibosheth … we mean upon New England Kneeling, with the rest of your Subjects, before your Majesty as her restored King.… Touching complaints put in against us, our humble Request only is that … your Majesty would permit nothing to make an Impression upon your Royal Heart against us until we have both opportunity and leave to answer for ourselves.5
Charles II wasn’t looking to resume the conflicts from his father’s reign. He was looking for ways to reassemble the shattered authority of the throne. He embraced Massachusetts, while slipping Mason’s petition to his attorney general. Massachusetts heaved a sigh of relief. Mason held his breath in hope. And Charles II had some time to be everybody’s friend. Then his attorney general weighed in. “I am of the opinion,” he reported to the king, “that the Petitioner Robert Mason, who is Grandson & Heir to the said John Mason, hath a good & legal Right & Title to the Lands Conveyed by the name of New Hampshire.”6
Good news for Mason, followed by bad news for Mason. The king currently had more pressing concerns in America, where Holland and France, like Massachusetts, had feathered their jurisdictional nests during the turmoil in England. To regain his standing, Charles II needed the assistance of New England’s most populous and influential colony, Massachusetts.
The attorney general’s opinion was therefore filed away while the king, in 1665, sought New England’s help in ousting the Dutch authorities from what is today New York. Massachusetts grudgingly scraped together 200 men, who ended up not serving in what turned out to be a less than successful venture. The following year, the king urged his New England colonies to join forces and oust the French from the present-day province of Quebec. Massachusetts