It was impossible for the Connecticut Republicans to realize the profound horror which the execution of Charles had caused, and the depth of the feeling of hatred and repugnance which the perpetrators of that audacious act had inspired. Even after William and Mary were on the throne, and James II. was an exile, it was found that a regicide, of the character and position of Ludlow, dared not show himself in England; and during the Restoration period the feeling was intense. The act was regarded by the majority of Englishmen as sacrilege, as well as murder, for it had destroyed not only what was called the sacred majesty of the king, but the sacred majesty of the legal government. To Andros the news that Goffe and Whalley were escaping justice by the connivance of the authorities was horrible, and must have suggested doubts, if he had not found them already, of the policy of allowing men who would have been excluded from all office in England to rule the king’s colonies in America. A more serious difficulty arose with Massachusetts, whose authorities had ventured to send commissioners to the Mohawks to treat directly with them as an independent nation--an act at utter variance with the policy of the Dutch and English, who regarded them as under their authority, and which, therefore, was liable to plunge the colony in war.[118] The ostentatious assumption of independence by the colony of Massachusetts, its claim to be free from the laws of England, and the spirit displayed by many of its leaders, which must have seemed seditious to the legal mind of Andros, made it necessary for him to watch very carefully any affairs in which they were concerned. His attitude brought upon him the hostility of the colony, and its authorities asserted, and constantly reiterated, the charge that it was at Albany, by his connivance, that Philip’s Indians had procured supplies of arms.[119]