The attitude of Massachusetts toward England during the Civil Wars was a most unsatisfactory one; it was as it were prophetic of what was to come. The contemptuous and haughty indifference shown by the colony to Cromwell was not because of any deep-seated loyalty to Charles I.; it was rather the exhibition of an independent spirit and a desire to leave England and English affairs strictly alone, if they were allowed, in turn, to live under the government of a governor and magistrates of their own choosing and under laws of their own making. This feeling does not seem to have been understood in England, and at the time of the Restoration the colony was regarded as having been Parliamentarian in its sympathies, whereas indeed it had been separatist. The Royal Commissioners in 1661 found that Massachusetts "was the last and hardest persuaded to use his Majesty's name in their forms of justice";[126] and yet in February the King was petitioned to look upon the colonists kindly and "let not the Kinge heare men's wordes: your servants are true men, fearers of God and the Kinge, not given to change, zealous of government and peaceable in Israel, we are not seditious as to the interest of Cæsar nor schismaticks as to the matters of religion."[127] The religion of Massachusetts was, at this time, of the narrowest and most bigoted type. The colonists were intolerant of any opinion save their own, and their cruel fanaticism was excited particularly against the humble and law-abiding sect of Quakers. The General Court at Boston regarded the Quakers as a positive danger to the State, and as people "who besides their absurd and blasphemous doctrines, do like rogues and vagabonds come in upon us."[128] In 1656 two Quaker women landed at Boston; they were immediately treated with extreme brutality and finally banished to the Barbadoes. This led to further definite enactments, and at the instigation of some of the most intolerant clergy of Boston, an act was passed imposing the penalty of death in cases of extreme obstinacy. So brutal were the punishments inflicted even where no extreme obstinacy was shown that it is probable that death was preferable and welcomed by the ill-treated wretches who had fallen into the hands of these fanatics. At the Restoration, Edward Burrough, an English Quaker, took up the case of his brethren in Massachusetts, and laid before Charles II. a list of brutalities that were only equalled by the horrors of the Inquisition. We read of men being whipped twenty-three times, receiving 370 stripes from a whip with three knotted cords; two unhappy wretches were cut to bits by 139 blows from pitched ropes, one being "brought near unto death, much of his body being beat like unto a jelly."[129] Others were put neck and heels in irons, or burnt deeply in the hand; some had their ears cut off by the hangman; while many other free-born subjects of the King were "sold for bondmen and bondwomen to Barbadoes, Virginia, or any of the English