You shalbee truely Loyall to the present State and Goūment of England [our Sour Lord the King his heires and Successors.] You shall not speake or doe deuise or aduise Any thinge or thinges Acte or Actes directly or Indirectly by Land or Water that doth shall or may tend to the destruction or ouerthrow of these present plantations or Townshipes of the Corporation of New Plymouth neither shall you suffer the same to bee spoken or done but shall hinder oppose and discouer the same to the Gour And Assistants of the said Collonie for the time being; or some one of them; you shall faithfully submitt vnto such good and wholesome Lawes and ordinances as either are or shalbee made for the ordering and Gourment of the same; and shall Indeuor to aduance the grouth and good of the seuerall townshipes and plantations within the Lymetts of this Corporation by all due meanes and courses; All which you pmise and Sweare by the Name of the great God of heauen and earth simply truely and faithfully to pforme as you hope for healp from God who is the God of truth and the punisher of falchood. [1658.]
At the time of the 1671 revision of the Laws, Charles the Second had been firmly seated on the English throne for ten years, but his name is omitted from the superscription of the following Oath. The intensity of the feeling in the New England Colonies towards even the name of the two kings is shown in the fact that until after the middle of the next century Harvard College had only three graduates, if the three Charles Chaunceys, with whom it was a family name in England, are omitted, and Yale College only one graduate who bore the Christian name of Charles.
The Oath of a Ffreeman
You shalbee truely Loyall to our Sour Lord the Kinge his heires and Successors; you shall not doe nor speake deuise or aduise any thinge or thinges act or actes directly or Inderectly by Land or water; that shall or may tend to the destruction or ouerthrow of any of these plantations or towneshipes of the Corporation of New Plymouth; neither shall you suffer the same to bee spoken or done but shall hinder oppose and discouer the same to the Gour and Assistants of the said Collonie for the time being or some one of them; you shall faithfully submitt vnto such good and wholesome lawes and ordinances; as either are or shalbee made for the ordering and Gourment of the same; and shall endeauor to advance the good and grouth of the seuerall Towneshipes and plantations within the Lymetts of this Corporation by all due meanes and courses; all which you prmise and sweare by the Name of the great God of heauen and earth simply truely and faithfully to pforme as you hope for healpe from God whoe is the God of truth and the punisher of ffalchood. [1671.]
In Massachusetts-Bay Colony.
When on the 4th of March 1628/9, Charles, “by the grace of God, Kinge of England, Scotland, Fraunce, and Ireland, Defender of the Fayth, &c. in the fourth yeare of our raigne” did by letters patent grant unto Sir Henry Rosewell and his twenty-five associates, their heirs and assigns forever, all that certain part of the grant of New England which his “deare and royall father, Kinge James of blessed memory ... hath given and graunted vnto the Counsell established at Plymouth in the County of Devon” and which the said Council by deed dated the 19th of March, 1627/8, had “given, graunted, bargained, soulde, enfeoffed, aliened and confirmed” to Sir Henry Rosewell, Sir John Young, Knightes, Thomas Southcott, John Humphrey, John Endecott and Symon Whetcombe, their heirs and associates forever, “To be houlden of vs our heires and successors, as of our manor of Eastgreenewich, in the County of Kent, within our realme of England,” under the name of the “Governor and Company of the Mattachusetts Bay in Newe England, one bodie politique and corporate in deede, fact, and name, ... and that by that name they shall have perpetuall succession,”—may acquire lands, &c. have a common seal; and that there shall be one Governor, one Deputy Governor, and eighteen assistants to be chosen out of the freemen. He went farther, and constituted “our welbeloved Mathewe Cradocke to be the first and present Governor; Thomas Goffe to be Deputy Governor, and eighteen of the other associates to be Assistants, who before they undertake the execution of their offices and places shall respectively take their corporal oaths for the faithful performance of their duties.” The Oath for Matthew Craddock, as Governor, to be administered by a Master of the Chancery, the Governor was then empowered to administer the oaths to the Deputy Governor and Assistants nominated in the Charter. Oaths to subsequent officers being arranged: the new Governor to take the Oath before the old Deputy Governor, or two Assistants; and the new Deputy Governor, Assistants and all other officers hereafter chosen to take the oath before the Governor for the time being. They were empowered to transport any of our loving subjects, or any strangers willing to become our loving subjects, and any seven at least of their number had “full power and authoritie to choose, nominate, and appointe such and soe many others as they shall thinke fitt, and that shall be willing to accept the same, to be free of the said Company and Body, and Them into the same to admitt.” All subjects inhabiting the lands granted, and their children “which shall happen to be borne there, or on the seas in goeing thither, or retorning from thence shall have and enjoy all liberties and immunities of free and natural subjects, ... as yf they and everie of them were borne within the realme of England.” And the Governor and Deputy Governor, and any two or more of the Assistants, at any of their Courts or Assemblys shall and may at all times have full power to give the Oath of Office and Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance, or either of them, to every person who may go to New England to inhabit in the same. They were also authorized to make “the formes of such Oathes warrantable by the lawes and statutes of this our realme of England as shalbe respectivelie ministered vnto them, for the execuc̄on of the said severall offices and places ... and ministring the said oathes to the newe elected officers.”
At the end of the Charter appeared the Oath of Governor:
PRÆDICT, Matthaeus Cradocke Juratus est de Fide et Obedientiâ Regi et Successoribus suis, et de Debitâ Exequutione Officij Gubernatoris iuxta Tenorem Pr sentium, 18o Martij, 1628. Coram me, Carola Cæsare, Milite, in Cancellariâ Mr̃o.
Char. Cæsar.
By this Charter, under the privy seal of Cardinal Wolseley, was, unwittingly, planted the seed of the fairest flower that ever bloomed in the garden of colonization since Eden.