In 1683 the quo warranto was brought over by Edward Randolph, who had been appointed collector of the port of Boston in 1681, but had not been allowed to act. He was the "messenger of death" to the hopes of the colony. The deputies refused to appear in England and plead, and judgment was entered up against them at last, in 1685, and the charter was abrogated. Charles died, and the bitter and bigoted James II came to the throne in 1684. The colonists then had rumors that Colonel Kirke, the fiercest hater of the Nonconformists in England, was coming over as governor, which filled them with dread. The colony now seemed to be at the mercy of the churchmen, or, worse than that, of the papists, for such was James. Mr. Rawson, secretary of the colony, about this time wrote, "Our condition is awful." Mr. Joseph Dudley was appointed governor and acted for a short time, but was succeeded by Sir Edmund Andros, who arrived December 19, 1686, with a commission from James II, to take upon himself the absolute government of all New England. Andros was supposed to be a bigoted papist, and he certainly carried matters with a high hand; the poisoned chalice of religious despotism, which these Pilgrims had commended to the lips of Roger Williams, the Browns, Mrs. Hutchinson, Gorton, Clarke, and the Quakers, was now offered to their own lips, and the draught was bitter. First, the press was muzzled; then marriage was no longer free. The minister Moody (1684) was imprisoned six months in New Hampshire for refusing to administer the communion to Cranfield and others, according to the manner and form set forth in the _Book of Common Prayer_. The Congregational ministers were as mere laymen, and danger menaced public worship and the meeting-houses. But this last extremity was saved them by the necessity which James was under of securing the triumph of _his_ church in Protestant England, the first step toward which was the proclamation of religious toleration. This, of course, secured the colonists, and the pilgrims were saved that fearful misery of being driven out from their own cherished altars. Andros carried things with as high a hand in Massachusetts as his master did in England; absolute subjection they both insisted on. Besides the denial of political and religious rights, the practice of arbitrary taxation was asserted by Andros, and all titles to lands were questioned; in the brutal phrase of the time, it was declared that "the calf died in the cow's belly"; that is, having no rights as a state, they had none as individuals; so fees, fines, and expenditures impoverished the people and enriched the officials. All seemed lost in Massachusetts.