This happy principle of provincial administration was not yet developed in the seventeenth century, which was a season of preparation for the stupendous blunder of the eighteenth, perpetrated by a head-strong despot without the sympathy of his own home people or a large part of Parliament. The root of the trouble then was taxation without representation, and England learned a valuable lesson after quite an awkward experience. But regal antagonism found its provincial object in religious dissent as early as 1634, when a warrant was issued to stay several vessels about to sail for America. In King Charles' reign, three ships were assigned to convey a governor and bishops to the west. Massachusetts was greatly stirred up in regard to this, forts were ordered built, and resistance was meditated. The program of absolutism lagged. Nevertheless it looked like a critical juncture, before the tension was relieved by the rise of revolution in Scotland, which resulted in the monarch's dethronement and decapitation. The lords accepted the colonists' petition, and gave forth that they did not intend to curtail their liberties. The New England Federation was an unprofessed Declaration of Independence. Their virtual assertion of popular sovereignty was temporarily smothered by imported tyranny in the shape of Sir Edmund Andros. Yet the people's power slowly continued to grow, and the erection of Harvard College was a mighty factor in the process before a decade had passed in the Bay Colony. Thither Plymouth sent her youth of promise. The claim is presumably warranted, that the unsought but unchanging popular choice of the chief executive, this cordial will of the Plymouth people as a body, occasioned the later departure of individuals or small groups of citizens who might wish to give exercise to political aspirations, where fresh settlements offered more room for choice without a solid constituency for any one favorite. The Plymouth voters were the more ardent for their man, because he returned the patent which, if strictly interpreted by the old English law, would make him Lord of the Manor and the colonists his tenants. In the essential democracy of the American community, he would be the last person to use the anciently established privilege; but evidently because of the technical possibility the Court finally requested him to surrender his charter, and then, pleased at his ready compliance, as promptly restored it. They knew him beyond all doubt, after that transaction of 1640 if not before.