Charles II criticizes the religious persecution taking place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In a letter to Gov. Simon Bradstreet, the king decries the persecution of those who did not agree with the Congregational way, and reminds Bradstreet that the colony had been founded to promote liberty of conscience. Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker later writes, “It must be reiterated that the Puritans in leaving England fled not so much from persecution as from error.”