Shortly afterwards an agent, Edward Winslow, was dispatched to England 
by the colony government to urge its interests and to defend its shortcomings 
before the Commissioners for Foreign Plantations. 300 Winslow carried with 
him a petition to the commissioners which strongly urged acceptance of the 
view that no appeals to Parliament lay from the determinations of the Massachusetts 
Bay authorities. 301 He also urged this doctrine in a polemic pamphlet 
directed against opponents of his principal. 302 The Earl of Warwick and the 
other commissioners by implication supported this stand on the part of the 
300 Ibid., 295, 309. 
301 After relating the attempt of Child et al. 
to appeal to Parliament the petition stated: 
"Their appeals we have not admitted, being 
assured that they cannot stand with the liberty 
and power granted us by our charter, nor will 
it be allowed by your honors, who well know 
it would be destructive to all government, both 
in the honor and also in the power of it, if it 
should be in the liberty of delinquents to evade 
the sentence of justice, and force us, by appeal, 
to follow them to England, where the evidence 
and circumstances of facts cannot be so clearly 
held forth as in their proper place, besides the 
insupportable charges we must be at in the 
prosecution thereof. These considerations are 
not new to your honors and the high court of 
parliament, the records whereof bear witness 
of the wisdom and faithfulness of our ancestors 
in that great council, who, in those times of 
darkness, when they acknowledged a supremacy 
in the bishops of Rome in all causes 
ecclesiastical, yet would not allow appeals to 
Rome, etc., to remove causes out of the courts 
of England. 
"Besides (though we shall readily admit, 
that the wisdom and experience of that great 
council, and of your honors, as a part thereof, 
are far more able to prescribe rules of government, 
and to judge of causes, than such poor 
rustics as a wilderness can breed up, yet) considering 
the vast distance between England and 
these parts, (which usually abates the virtue of 
the strongest influences), your counsels could 
neither be so well grounded, nor so seasonably 
applied, as might either be so useful to us, or 
so safe for yourselves, in your discharge, in 
the great day of account, for any miscarriage 
which might befal us, while we depended upon 
your counsel and help, which would not 
seasonably be administered to us" [ibid., 312). 
In his secret instructions Winslow was provided 
with an answer to the question why 
process was not made out in the King's name. 
The answer stated inter alia "for avoiding 
appeals, etc" (ibid., 314). 
302 In the epistle dedicatory of Hypocrisie Unmasked 
(1646; reprinted Providence, 1916), 
an answer to a pamphlet of Samuel Gorton, 
Winslow's fourth request of the Earl of Warwick 
and the other commissioners was "to take 
into your serious consideration, how destructive 
it will prove to the well-being of our Plantations 
and proceedings there, (who by Gods blessing 
are growing up into a Nation) here to answer 
to the complaints of such malignant spirits as 
shall there bee censured by Authority, It being 
three thousand miles distant, so far as will 
undoe any to come for Justice, utterly disabling 
them to prove the equity of their cause, unlesse 
their estate bee very great." 
This statement was replied to by John Child 
in New-England's Jonas Cast Up at London 
(1647) 30-31, where he writes: "See and observe 
(Reader) how he seeks to stop all appeals 
from all this unjust sentences, whatsoever they 
may be contrary to the Lawes of England. 
Secondly, he would make their Honours to be 
the instruments to stop the current of the 
greatest liberty of English subjects there; he 
would engage the Parliament in it; and what 
a desperate business this would prove, every 
wise man may easily see; For being begun at 
this Plantation, by the same rule others might 
seek it should extend to all other Plantations, 
and then why not to Ireland? and why shall 
not example, custome, and fair pretences bring 
it into Wales and Cornwal, so over England?" 
In rebuttal Winslow stated: "And for the 
matters of appeals from New-England hither, 
which is three diousand miles distant, it will 
bee found to be destructive to them that there 
live: for no country can subsist without 
government, or repaire so farre to it; nor will 
any wise man accept a place in government 
where hee shall be exposed to goe so farre to 
give account of his actions, though they be 
never so just." New-Englands Salamander