The Puritans were far from being the fathers of American Liberty. They neither understood nor practiced the first principles of civil and religious liberty nor the rights of British subjects as then understood and practiced in the land they had left "for conscience sake." The first Charter obtained of Charles I. is still in existence, and can be seen in the Secretary's Office at the State House, Boston. A duplicate copy of this Charter was sent over in 1629 to Governor Endicott, at Salem, and is now in the Salem Athenæum. If the conditions of the Charter had been observed the colonists would have been independent indeed, and would have enjoyed extraordinary privileges for those times. They would have had the freest government in the world. They were allowed to elect their own governor and members of the General Court, and the government of the Colony was but little different from that of the State today, so far as the rights conferred by the charter were concerned. The people were subjects of the Crown in name, but in reality were masters of their own public affairs. The number of the early emigrants to New England who renounced allegiance to the mother church was exceedingly small, for the obvious reason that it was at the same time a renunciation of their allegiance to the Crown. A company of restless spirits had been got rid of, and whether they conformed to all the laws of church and state or not, they were three thousand miles away and could not be easily brought to punishment even if they deserved it, or be made to mend the laws if they broke them. The restriction of subjecting those who wished to emigrate to the oaths of allegiance and supremacy did not last long. Those who chose "disorderly to leave the Kingdom" did so, and thus what they gained in that kind of liberty is a loss to their descendants who happen to be antiquaries and genealogists.