In the matter of property, land titles, quit-rents, and fees, the colonists had warrant for their criticism and their displeasure. Many of those whom Andros associated with himself were New Yorkers who had served with considerable success in their former positions, but who had all the characteristics of typical royal officials. To the average English officeholder of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, office was considered not merely an opportunity for service but also an opportunity for profit. Hitherto Massachusetts had been free from men of this class, common enough elsewhere and destined to become more common as the royal colonies increased in number. Palmer, the judge, Graham, the attorney-general, and West, the secretary, hardly deserve the stigma of placemen, for they possessed ability and did their duty as they saw it, but their standards of duty were different from those held in Massachusetts. People in England did not at this time view public office as a public trust, which is a modern idea. Appointments under the Crown went by purchase or favor, and, once obtained, were a source of income, a form of investment. Massachusetts and other New England colonies were far ahead of their time in giving shape to the principle that a public official was the servant of those who elected him, but to such men as Randolph and West and the whole office-holding world of this period, such an idea was unthinkable. They served the King and for their service were to receive their reward, and such men in America looked on fees and grants of land as legitimate perquisites. In New York they had been able to gratify their needs, but in Massachusetts such a view of office ran counter to the traditions and customs of the place, and attempts to apply it caused resentment and indignation. The efforts of these men, among whom Randolph was the prince of beggars, to obtain grants of land, to destroy the validity of existing titles, to levy quit-rents, and to exact heavy fees, were a menace to the prosperity of the colony; while the further attempt to destroy the political importance of the towns by prohibiting town meetings, except once a year, was an attack on one of the most fundamental parts of the whole New England system. Andros himself, though laboring to break the resisting power of the colony, never used his office for purposes of gain.