some of the best of the Massachusetts colonists imagined that it meant real toleration; Increase Mather was one of these. He had conducted the diplomatic relations of the colony during the struggle over the charter; he was well-beloved as the minister of the old North Church of Boston, and as President of Harvard College. For these reasons he was once again selected as mediator, and was deputed to plead with James on behalf of his colony, but like so many in England he found that he had come on a fruitless errand, and that genuine toleration was very far from the thoughts of the Papist King. The news of the Revolution in England in November 1688 aroused the people of Massachusetts. Sir Edmund Andros, instead of accepting the inevitable, arrested John Winslow, the bearer of the good tidings. The discontent which had long been simmering beneath the surface now broke out. The covetousness of the rulers, the ruination of trade, the oppression of the people, and that "base drudgerie" to which they had been put stirred them to a state of frenzy. Boston and Charlestown armed; Andros was unable to quell the fury, and he was captured by his subordinates, who claimed that "the exercise of Sir Edmund's commission, so contrarie to the Magna Charta, is surely enough to call him to account by his superiors."[137] In this the people of New England made a mistake, for although Andros was sent over to England with a party of his accusers, he was only examined by the Lords of the Committee for Trade and Plantations, and was almost immediately released without being finally tried. The rule of William and Mary in England was acknowledged willingly in Massachusetts. A new charter was granted to the colony, in which it was stated that the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor and Secretary were to be appointed by the Crown. The franchise was now based upon a property qualification, and the religious oligarchy was swept away. The first Council was nominated by the Crown, but in the future the members were to be selected by the General Court. The little colony that owed its origin to the Pilgrim Fathers was incorporated within the prosperous bounds of Massachusetts, which from this date to the great schism remained a Crown colony with distinct tendencies towards, and sometimes clearly expressed desires of, emancipation and independence. "It was not as though the colony complained of grievances which could be enquired into and put right; it simply adopted towards England now openly and now by equivocation an attitude of 'hands off.'"[138]