54
HISTORY OF THE COLONIES.
[BOOK I.
of the nation at large, and compelled them to resign, what they could scarcely maintain against the strong current of public opinion. The surrender, so far from working any evil, rather infused new life into the colonies, which sprung from it, by freeing them from all restraint and supervision by a superior power, to which they might perhaps have been held accountable.[1] Immediately after this surrender legal proceedings were instituted against the proprietors of the Massachusetts charter. Those who appeared were deprived of their franchises. But fortunately the measure was not carried into complete execution against the absent proprietors acting under the charter in America.[2]
§ 71. After the fall of the first colonial charter in 1684,[3] Massachusetts remained for some years in a very disturbed state under the arbitrary power of the crown. At length a new charter was in 1691 granted to the colony by William and Mary; and it henceforth became known as a province, and continued to act under this last charter until after the Revolution. The charter comprehended within its territorial limits all the old colony of the Massachusetts Bay, the colony of New Plymouth, the Province of Maine, the territory called Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and all the lands lying between Nova Scotia and Maine; and incorporated the whole into one Province by the name of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New-England, to be holden as of the royal manor of East Greenwich, in the county of Kent. It confirmed all prior grants made of lands to all persons,