In July, 1664, commissioners arrived in Boston with full authority to investigate the administration of the New England charters. Such a procedure not being provided for in the Massachusetts document, the General Court, backed by the citizens almost to a man, successfully prevented complainants from appearing before the commission. The commissioners having summoned the colony as defendant in a certain case, a herald trumpeted proclamation through the streets, on the morning set for the trial, inhibiting all from aiding their designs. The trial collapsed, and the gentlemen who had ordered it, baffled and disgusted, moved on to New Hampshire, there also to be balked by a decree of the Massachusetts Governor and Council forbidding the towns so much as to meet at their behest. [1668] Vengeance for such defiance was delayed by Charles II.'s very vices. Clarendon's fall had left him surrounded by profligate aides, too timid and too indolent to face the resolute men of Massachusetts. They often discussed the contumacy of the colony, but went no further than words. Massachusetts was even encouraged, in 1668, forcibly to reassert its authority in Maine, against rule either by the king or by Sir Ferdinanda Gorges's heir as proprietary. Its charter had assigned to the colony land to a point three miles north of the Merrimac. Bold in the favor of the Commonwealth, the authorities measured from the head-waters of that river. But Plymouth had originally claimed all the territory west of the Kennebec, and had sold it to Gorges. Charles II. favored the Gorges heirs against Massachusetts, and for some years previous to 1668 Massachusetts' power over Maine had been in abeyance. Ten years later, in 1678, to make assurance doubly sure, Massachusetts bought off the Gorges claimants, at the round price of twelve hundred and fifty pounds sterling. [1673] From 1641 Massachusetts had borne sway in New Hampshire as well, ignoring John Mason's claim under Charles I.'s charters of 1629 and 1635, still urged by one of Mason's grandsons, backed by Charles II. Here Massachusetts was beaten. In July, 1679, New Hampshire was permanently separated from her, and erected into a royal province, of a nature to be explained in a subsequent chapter, being the earliest government of this kind in New England. [1662]