A bold protest, boldly made; the Chronicler, to our regret, is silent as to the fate of the protester. Soon after the Restoration, Charles II., “judging it necessary that so many remote Colonies should be brought under uniform inspection for their future regulation, security and improvement,” signed a Commission appointing thirty-five members of Privy Council, the nobility, gentry and merchants, a Council for Foreign Plantations. (_Calendar of State Papers Colonial_). Wide powers were vested in this Council, any five members were empowered to “inform themselves of the condition of Plantations and of the Commissions by which they were governed as well as to require from any Governor an exact account of the constitution of his laws and government, number of inhabitants and any information he was able to give.” The Commissioners were also “to provide learned and orthodox ministers to reform debaucheries of planters and servants and instruct natives and slaves in the Christian faith.” The first meeting was held 7th of January, 1661, when Committees were appointed for the several Plantations; attention was first directed to the New England Colonies, and information, petitions and relations of those who had been sufferers were laid before the Council. At a subsequent meeting held on 11th of March, 1661, Captain Thomas Breedon, who had returned from New England in 1660, appeared and reported as to conditions in Massachusetts Colony. He presented a book of the Laws of the Colony which were stated to be by patent from the King, but he had never seen the patent and did not know whether they acted in accordance with the same. “Distinctions between freemen and non-freemen, members and non-members, is as famous as Cavaliers and Roundheads was in England, and will shortly become as odious. The grievances of the non-members who are really for the King, and also some of the members, are very many.” In Breedon’s report, too, we have symptoms of discontent and disaffection—heralds of the storm which a hundred years later broke, and severed for ever the American Colonies from the mother-land. He continues: They look on themselves as a free state, they sat in Council December last, a week before they could agree in writing to His Majesty, there being so many against owning the king or having any dependence on England. Has not seen their petition but questions their allegiance to the King, because they have not proclaimed him, they do not act in his name, and they do not give the act [? oath] of allegiance, but force an oath of fidelity to themselves and their Governor as in the Book of Laws.