<P> The colonial leadership was the most active in New England in the persecution of Quakers . In 1660, one of the most notable instances was English Quaker Mary Dyer who was hanged in Boston for repeatedly defying a law banning Quakers from the colony . Dyer was one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs . Executions ceased in 1661 when King Charles II explicitly forbade Massachusetts from executing anyone for professing Quakerism . </P> <P> In 1643, Massachusetts Bay joined Plymouth Colony, Connecticut Colony, and New Haven Colony in the New England Confederation, a loose coalition organized primarily to coordinate military and administrative matters among the Puritan colonies . It was most active in the 1670s during King Philip's War . (New Hampshire had not yet been organized as a separate province, and both it and Rhode Island were excluded because they were not Puritan .) </P> <P> In the early years, the colony was highly dependent on the import of staples from England and was supported by the investments of a number of wealthy immigrants . Certain businesses were quick to thrive, notably shipbuilding, fisheries, and the fur and lumber trades . As early as 1632, ships built in the colony began trading with other colonies, England, and foreign ports in Europe . By 1660, the colony's merchant fleet was estimated at 200 ships and, by the end of the century, its shipyards were estimated to turn out several hundred ships annually . In the early years, the fleet principally carried fish to destinations from the West Indies to Europe . It was common for a merchant to ship dried fish to Portugal or Spain, pick up wine and oil for transport to England, and then carry finished goods from England or elsewhere back to the colony . This and other patterns of trade became illegal following the introduction of the Navigation Acts in 1651, turning colonial merchants who continued these trading patterns into de facto smugglers . Many colonial authorities were merchants or were politically dependent on them, and they opposed being required by the crown to collect duties imposed by those acts . </P> <P> The fur trade only played a modest role in the colony's economy because its rivers did not connect its centers well with the Indians who engaged in fur trapping . Timber began to take on an increasingly important role in the economy, especially for naval purposes, after conflicts between England and the Dutch depleted England's supplies of ship masts . </P>

What commercial activities were most significant to the economy of colonial new england