Owing to the close alliance maintained between the clergy and the Magistrates, as the Assistants soon came to be called, the body of deputies grew to be considered the more popular element in the Court. It was clear that real grievances and the democratic influences at work in the town meeting were likely to develop into attacks upon the arbitrary power of the very limited body of freemen. The form that the struggle assumed was that of a contest, lasting twenty years, between the deputies and the magistrates, with the influence of the clergy constantly on the side of the latter. The freemen themselves were, indeed, not all in favor of the arbitrary exercise of power by the small oligarchical group which for so long remained in control. As early as 1631, the people of Watertown, when taxed for fortifying Newtown, declared that “it was not safe to pay moneys after that sort, for fear of bringing themselves and posterity into bondage.”[368] Although legally in the right, they accepted Winthrop's interpretation of the charter, which is interesting as showing how completely the unjustified transformation from a company into a commonwealth had already been effected in the minds of the leaders. Footnote 368: J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 84. Although the people, until well into the eighteenth century, probably had little thought of becoming independent of England, it seems clear from all the acts of the leaders, especially the transfer of the charter itself, that it was their intention, even before leaving England, to govern in as complete independence of that country as future circumstances might permit. They wished, it is true, to found a state for the glory of God and the establishment of true religion, but in which, nevertheless, they themselves should constitute the supreme power. Every encroachment upon it, from any direction, was grudgingly yielded to; and it is not unlikely that, even then, some of them dreamed of an actual political independence. “We are not a free state,” wrote Pyncheon to Winthrop, in 1646, evidently with this in mind; “neither do I think it our wisdom to be a free state; though we had our liberty, we cannot _as yet_ subsist without England.”[369] Footnote 369: _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series IV, vol. VI, p. 383. The italics are mine.