And to the end that the former planters there may have noe just occasion of excepcion, as being excluded out of the priviledges of the Company, this Court are content, and doe order, by ereccion of hands, that such of the said former planters as are willing to live within the lymitts of our plantacion shalbe enabled, and are hereby authorized, to make choice of 2 such as they shall thinke fitt, to supply and make upp the nomber of 12 of the said councell, one of which 12 is, by the Governor and councell, or the major part of them, to bee chosen Deputie to the Governor for the tyme being....
It is further concluded on and ordered by this Court, that the said Governor, Deputie, and councell, before named, soe chosen and established in their severall places, shall continue and bee confirmed therin for the space of one whole yeare from and after the taking the oath, or untill such time as this Court shall thinke fitt to make choice of any others to succeed in the place or places of them or any of them....
And it is further agreed on and ordered, that the Governor for the tyme beeing shall have power, and is heereby authorized, to call courts and meetings in places and at tymes convenyent, as to his discrecion shall seeme meete, which power is also conferred upon the Deputie in the absence of the said Governor; and the said Governor or Deputie, togeather with the said councell, being chosen and assembled as aforesaid, and having taken their oaths respectively to their severall places, they, or the greater nomber of them, whereof the Governor or Deputie to bee always one, are authorized by this act, grounded on the power derived from his majestys charter, to make, ordaine, and establish all manner of wholsome and reasonable lawes, orders, ordinances and constitucions, (soe as the same bee noe way repugnant or contrary to the lawes of the realme of England) for the administring of justice upon malefactors, and inflicting condigne punishment upon all other offendors, and for the furtherance and propagating of the said plantacion, and the more decent and orderly government of the inhabitants resydent there.
[This establishment of a subordinate government in Massachusetts corresponds to the government in Virginia in 1614, perhaps,—before the Virginia Company granted self-government to the settlement. There is no hint, here, be it noted, that this arrangement was soon to be superseded by the transfer of the English Company itself to America. Ten meetings are recorded between the one when these orders were taken and the one (next given here) in which that suggestion first appears.]
FOOTNOTES:
[32] White gets the order of events wrong here. Endicott came before the charter was secured.
[33] This grant included the territory granted by the New England Council to Gorges in 1623. This was due, no doubt, to geographical ignorance. Ferdinando Gorges ("Briefe Narration," in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Third Series, V, 80), after explaining how the new Company came to ask for a grant from the New England Council, adds: "to which it pleased the thrice honored Lord of Warwick to write to me [from London], then at Plymouth, to condescend that a Patent might be granted. ... Whereupon I gave my approbation so far forth as it might not be prejudicial to my son Robert Gorges' interests, whereof he had a patent." Gorges always felt that the grant to the Massachusetts Bay Company had worked a great injustice to his family. Cf. American History and Government, §§ 57, note, 61.