Danforth calls it treason

What happened

In February 1682 the General Court of Massachusetts heard a letter from Charles II read aloud, carried over by Edward Randolph, the customs collector. The King ordered the colony to send agents to London with power to submit to whatever changes the Crown chose to make. The Court split. Governor Simon Bradstreet, William Stoughton and Joseph Dudley were for sending them. Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth, fifty-eight years old, led the men who were not, and he did not mince words. Rothbard writes that Danforth argued at length the vital importance of taking a stand right there, that agents sent to bargain would bargain away the country's liberties, and that "almost single-handed and alone" he charged the ministers pressing for submission with treason and betrayal of their liberty (CiL, pp. 358-359). Stoughton and Bradstreet denounced him for going too far, and the room scoffed at him as an extremist. On 20 March the Court voted to send agents, Dudley and John Richards, by a close vote. They sailed without power to defend the charter. In London the Lords of Trade demanded that the colony hand over the power to revise its charter or lose it, and Rothbard says Danforth's gloomy prophecy was coming true (p. 360). The Crown moved to void the charter, exactly as the old man had warned.