The Act also required making specific declarations concerning royal allegiance and succession, profession of the Christian faith, and the payment of two shillings.

[8] The act endowed colonial courts with the responsibility of deciding when alien petitioners had fulfilled the statutory requirements for imperial citizenship.

However, by delegating authority to colonial officials, naturalization became subject to the pressure of the same local interest groups that increasingly defied the governor's efforts to implement royal and proprietary instructions on other issues.

This situation was initially accepted as positive and workable in England, but proved to be too inconsistent with and broader imperial intentions as time passed.

Colonial implementation both before and after the Plantation Act tended to ignore, evade, and reshape English regulations, thus vitiating many policy decisions and generating a chaotic array of citizenship procedures.