In 1636 they first codified their law; in 1671 was printed their Great Fundamentals. Hubbard, in his “General History of New England from the Discovery to 1680,” writes: “The laws they intended to be governed by were the laws of England, the which they were willing to be subject unto, though in a foreign land, and have since that time continued of that mind for the general, adding only some particular municipal laws of their own, suitable to their constitution, in such cases where the common laws and statutes of England could not well reach, or afford them help in emergent difficulties of place.” They were loyal Englishmen to the bone, and in the first codification of law affirm their allegiance: “whereas John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, William Brewster, Isaac Allerton and divers others of the subjects of our late Sovereign Lord James ... did undertake a voyage into that part of America called Virginia or New England thereunto adjoining, there to erect a plantation and colony of English, intending the glory of God and the enlargement of His Majesty’s dominions, and the special good of the English nation.” Yet they never waived a jot of their rights as freemen; and in 1658, toward the end of Cromwell’s Government, they prefaced the General Laws with a note that the advisers of George III would have done well to heed: “We the Associates of New Plymouth, coming hither as freeborn subjects of the State of England, endowed with all and singular the privileges belonging to such, being assembled, do ordain, constitute and enact that no act, imposition, law or ordinance be made or imposed on us at present or to come, but such as shall be made and imposed by consent of the body of the associates or their representatives legally assembled, which is according to the free liberty of the State of England.” At the Restoration they gave allegiance to Charles; in 1689, bridging the chasm of revolution, to William and Mary: the significant point that they held themselves loyal to England, whatever its government might be. And it is interesting, in their address to William and Mary, that they felt entirely free to pass judgment upon the hated Royal Governor, Andros: “We, the loyal subjects of the Crown of England, are left in an unsettled state, destitute of government and exposed to the ill consequences thereof; and having heretofore enjoyed a quiet settlement of government in this their Majesties’ colony of New Plymouth for more than three score and six years ... notwithstanding our late unjust interruption and suspension therefrom by the illegal arbitrary power of Sir Edmond Andros, now ceased, ... do therefore hereby resume and declare their reassuming of their said former way of government.” But that, to their great disappointment, was not to be, and the royal charter of William and Mary united definitely the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay.