[Sidenote: Conduct of Massachusetts to the royal commissioners.]
In April the commissioners arrived at Boston, and their communications with the general court commenced. The suspicions which these two bodies entertained of each other, opposed great obstacles to any cordial co-operation between them. The papers, on the part of the commissioners, display high ideas of their own authority, as the representatives of the crown, and a pre-conceived opinion that there was a disposition in the government to resist that authority. Those on the part of the general court manifest a wish to avoid a contest with the crown, and a desire to gratify his majesty, so far as professions of loyalty and submission could gratify him; but they manifest also a conviction of having done nothing improper, and a steadfast determination to make no concession incompatible with their rights. With these impressions, the correspondence soon became an altercation. The commissioners, finding their object was to be obtained neither by reasoning, nor by threats, attempted a practical assertion of their powers by summoning the parties before them, in order to hear and decide a complaint against the governor and company. The general court, with a decision which marked alike their vigour, and the high value they placed on their privileges, announced by sound of trumpet, their disapprobation of this proceeding, which they termed inconsistent with the laws and established authority; and declared that, in observance of their duty to God and to his majesty, and of the trust reposed in them by his majesty's good subjects in the colony, they could not consent to such proceedings, nor countenance those who would so act, or such as would abet them.
As a ground of compromise, the court stated their willingness to hear the case themselves in the presence of the commissioners, who would thereby be enabled to understand its merits; but this proposition was at once rejected, and every effort towards reconciliation proved unavailing.[98]
From Massachusetts, the commissioners proceeded to New Hampshire and Maine. They decided in favour of the claims of Mason and Gorges, and erected a royal government in each province, appointed justices of the peace, and exercised other acts of sovereignty; after which they returned to Boston. The general court, declaring that their proceedings to the eastward tended to the disturbance of the public peace, asked a conference on the subject, which was refused with a bitterness of expression that put an end to all farther communication between the parties. Massachusetts, soon afterwards, re-established her authority both in New Hampshire and Maine.