Under the charter they were allowed to make laws or ordinances for the government of the plantation, which should not be repugnant to the laws of England; all subjects of King Charles were to be allowed to come here; and these emigrants and their posterity were declared "to be natural-born subjects, and entitled to the immunities of Englishmen." The time of the principal emigration was auspicious. The rise of the civil war in England gave its rulers all the work they could do at home. The accession of Oliver Cromwell to the Protectorate was regarded very favorably by the colonists, who belonged to the same political party, and they took advantage of this state of affairs to oppress all others who had opinions different from their own. The Quakers, both men and women, were persecuted, and treated with great severity; many were hung, a number of them were whipped at the cart's tail through the town, and then driven out into the wilderness; others had their ears cut off, and other cruelties were perpetrated of a character too horrible to be here related. It was in vain that these poor Quakers demanded wherein they had broken any laws of England. They were answered with additional stripes for their presumption, and not without good reason did they exclaim against "such monstrous illegality," and that such "great injustice was never heard of before." Magna Charta, they said, was trodden down and the guaranties of the Colonial Charter were utterly disregarded. The following is a striking example of the very many atrocities committed by the authorities at that time: "Nicholas Upshall, an old man, full of years, seeing their cruelty to the harmless Quakers and that they had condemned some of them to die, bothe he and Elder Wiswell, or otherwise Deacon Wiswell, members of the church in Boston, bore their testimony in publick against their brethren's horrid cruelty to said Quakers. And Upshall declared, '_That he did look at it as a sad forerunner of some heavy judgment to follow upon the country_.'... Which they took so ill at his hands that they fined him twenty pounds and three pound more at their courts, for not coming to this meeting and would not abate him one grote, but imprisoned him and then banished him on pain of death, which was done in a time of such extreme bitter weather for frost, and snow, and cold, that had not the _Heathen Indians_ in the wilderness woods taken compassion on his misery, for the winter season, he in all likelihood had perished, though he had then in Boston a good estate, in houses and land, goods and money, as also wife and children, but not suffered to come unto him, nor he to them."[4] [4] "Persecutors Maul'd With Their Own Weapons," p. 41. See also Court Records, 1662.