18 
A VOYAGE TO SPITZBERGEN 
London, — who were imprisoned, in 1627, for declining 
to lend the king money, — and Samuel Vassail, one of 
the first to resist the payment of tonnage and poundage, 
are found among the members of the Massachusetts 
Company: but it corresponds with the fact, that so 
many other members of the company, and their imme¬ 
diate friends, were among the most active and most 
effective workers in Parliament and in the army for 
the overthrow of the monarchy; several of them sitting 
as judges at the trial of the king. We know that 
the stirring events which engrossed the attention of the 
sovereign and his ministers were all that prevented the 
revocation of the charter of Massachusetts ; and we 
may imagine that the destinies of New England, and of 
our whole country, were materially affected by the in¬ 
fluence of the mercantile classes upon the political 
affairs of the kingdom. 8 
It is remarked, in one of the publications of the 
Hakluyt Society, that the proceedings of the Muscovy 
Company “ are highly deserving of being made the sub¬ 
ject of special investigation.” An account, not only of 
its commercial and political relations and its numerous 
enterprises, but of its leading members, and their per¬ 
sonal services in connection with that and other corpo¬ 
rations, and on private account (for there is a singular 
mixture in these transactions), would present many 
points of interest to an American. Sebastian Cabot, 
8 In a paper prefixed to a publication of the Records of the Massachusetts Com¬ 
pany, by the American Antiquarian Society, in 1850, the writer had occasion to notice 
the prominent agency of its members in the establishment of the English Common¬ 
wealth. The views there expressed have been strengthened by subsequent examina¬ 
tions of the subject. 
