Many of the more active soon wished to have some voice in the management of their own affairs; and at the October meeting of the General Court, one hundred and eight, including Conant, Maverick, and Blackstone among the old planters, requested that they be made freemen.[342] It became evident to the dozen or so men who alone possessed the governing power, that some extension of the franchise would be necessary if the leading spirits among their two thousand subjects were not to emigrate again to other colonies, or to foment trouble at home. On the other hand, the extension of the franchise was, in their minds, fraught with the perils already indicated. The decision to extend the franchise, but to limit its powers, and to violate the terms of the charter by placing the election of the governor and deputy in the hands of the Assistants instead of the freemen, was probably the result of an effort to solve this problem. Before the next meeting of the General Court in the following May, at which the new freemen were to be admitted, further thought had evidently been devoted to the question, and another solution arrived at. Winthrop was chosen Governor, not by the Assistants, as voted at the preceding meeting, but by “the general consent of the Court, according to the meaning of the patent”; and the momentous resolution was adopted that “noe man shall be admitted to the freedome of this body polliticke, but such as are members of some of the churches within the lymitts of the same.”[343] The first attempt on the part of its unenfranchised subjects to secure a larger share of political liberty had resulted merely in establishing, more firmly than before, the theocratical and oligarchical nature of the government. Footnote 342: _Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, pp. 79, 80. Footnote 343: _Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 87. CHAPTER VII AN ENGLISH OPPOSITION BECOMES A NEW ENGLAND OLIGARCHY