Of that famous league, Massachusetts assumed control because of her greater population and her superiority as a "perfect republic." It remained in force more than forty years, during which period the government of England was changed three times. When trouble arose between King Charles I. and Parliament, the New Englanders, being Puritans, were in sympathy with the roundheads. In 1649 King Charles lost his throne and life, and England for a brief time became a commonwealth. Unlike the Virginians, the New Englanders sympathized with the English republicans, and found in Oliver Cromwell, the ruler of England next to the beheaded Charles I., a sincere friend and protector. The growth of the colony of Massachusetts was particularly healthy. A profitable commerce between the colony and the West Indies, now that the obnoxious navigation laws were a dead letter, was created. That trade brought bullion, or uncoined gold and silver, into the colony, which led, in 1652, to the exercise of an act of sovereignty on the part of the authorities of Massachusetts by the establishment of a mint. It was authorized by the general assembly, in 1651, and the following year "silver coins of the denomination of threepence, sixpence and twelvepence, or shilling, were struck. This was the first coinage within the territory of the United States." There lived in Boston at this time a family named Stevens. The head of the family was a white-haired old man named Mathew, whose dark eyes and complexion indicated southern blood. He was a foster-son of the Pilgrim Father, Mr. Robinson, and had come to New England in the _Mayflower_ when she made her first memorable voyage to Plymouth, thirty-two years before.