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| MORR 9557 |
While the Dominion of New England existed for a short period between 1686 and 1689, the English Lords of Trade had planned to enforce a new government on the New England colonies since the reign of King Charles II.⁴ In 1675, proprietors or companies owned and administered two thirds of English colonies in the New World.⁵ Because the New England colonies had the “most numerous infractions of the navigation laws,[and] the most blatant repudiation of royal authority,” it was thought that reducing their independence might improve the Crown’s control over colonial policy.⁶ But in order to restrain the independent operations of these colonies, the Lords of Trade, with the support of the Stuart monarchy, sought to challenge the legal basis of colonial charters granted to private companies or proprietary owners. The Lords of Trade began the process of challenging the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1681. But after the successful prosecution of the Bermuda Company in 1684, the English Crown issued a writ of scire facias against the Massachusetts Bay Company revoking its charter.⁷
The charter of Massachusetts Bay granted the company self-government in its executive,
legislative and judicial affairs. Issued in 1629 by King Charles I the charter established a government for Massachusetts consisting of a governor, deputy governor, and council “to be from tyme to tyme constituted, elected and chosen out of the Freemen” of the colony.⁸ Each year, those “free of the… Company and Body” assembled in the “Generall Court” were to elect the governor, deputy governor, and members of the council called “Assistants.”⁹ In addition to electing the chief officers of the government, the King authorized the General Court “to make Lawes and Ordinances for the Good and Welfare of the… Company” provided that they “be not contrarie or repugnant to the Lawes and Statutes of this our Realme of England.”¹⁰ But the right to self-government in its domestic affairs led to Massachusetts Bay becoming a center of resistance to royal regulations, “set[ting] a tone of independence which affected to a greater or lesser degree, all the English settlements east of the Hudson River.”¹¹ By reconstituting the New England settlements as royal colonies, the Lords of Trade intended to render them more dependent on the Crown. But the establishment of the Dominion of New England and the appointment of a royal governor not only curtailed the independence of the colonies, but almost entirely repealed their legislative rights.
In 1686, King James II appointed Sir Edmund Andros the governor of the Dominion of New England and granted him extensive powers over executive, legislative, and judicial government in the colony.¹² As governor of the formerly separate colonies of Massachusetts, New Plymouth, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire Andros ruled at the head of an unelected executive council.¹³ The King permitted Sir Edmund Andros and his council to “make constitute and ordine Laws statutes and ordinances for” the Dominion of New England “as conveniently may be agreeable to the Laws and statutes” of England.¹⁴ While the former charter of Massachusetts established an elected government that executed the laws of the General Court, Andros and his council were not responsible to any legislature. In addition to the right to “Impose” any “such rates and Taxes” that Andros and his council found “necessary,” the King also “require[d]” the new colonial government “to continue such taxes and imposition as are now layed and Imposed on” the colonists until they would “agree & settle such other taxes as shall be sufficient for the support of our Government” in New England.¹⁵ While this left room for taxes to be reduced, it did not guarantee that they would not be raised. Instead it gave Sir Edmund license to raise taxes as he or the King saw fit without the consent of the inhabitants of New England. Because Andros and the council also controlled the judiciary, they had effective control of the entire colony without responsibility to its citizens.¹⁶ As governor, Andros was also authorized to “Levy Arme muster command or imploy all persons whatsoever residing within” the colony “to transferr from one place to another for resisting...all Enemies Pirates and Rebells” threatening New England.¹⁷ By 1688, New York, East Jersey, and West Jersey had been absorbed into the Dominion of New England, only further empowering the governor.¹⁸ Sir Edmund Andros’s appointment rendered New England dependent on the Crown, revoking the rights of self-government that the inhabitants of New England had enjoyed.
While Sir Edmund Andros’s infringement of these rights angered colonists, the New England
elite were unwilling to oppose his administration until after learning of the overthrow of King James II. By early August, the inhabitants of Boston received news of William of Orange’s invasion of England and the overthrow of the unpopular James II in the Glorious Revolution.¹⁹ With the monarch who had appointed him governor deposed, Sir Edmund recognized that news of the Glorious Revolution imperilled his administration. Though he sought to prevent the reports of the events in England from becoming widespread, the success of the revolt in England had become common knowledge to the public of Boston.²⁰ While the New England elite had been acquiescent to the administration of Governor Andros -- not wishing to directly oppose the King -- the change in circumstances led them to consider a revolt.²¹ Writing in the decade after the revolt about a clandestine meeting of Boston elite that April, Cotton Mather indicated that the gentlemen of New England intended to discourage revolutionary sentiments “in daily Hopes of Orders from England” that might dismiss Andros.²² However, “if the Country People by any violent Motions push’d the Matter on so far, as to make a Revolution unavoidable” it was resolved that “some of the Gentlemen” of Boston “should appear at the Head of the Action with a Declaration accordingly prepared” in order to prevent “the shedding of Blood by an ungoverned” mob and to justify their actions.²³ Because Cotton Mather had traveled to London in order to seek redress from King James II for the actions of Andros, his depiction of the level-headedness of the New England elite was certainly not impartial.²⁴ But the careful planning of a revolt by the elite of Boston and the preparation of a declaration in advance does indicate that there were concerns that the legality of their actions might be called into question. While Governor Andros was connected to the deposed James II, he had been appointed governor by an English monarch. By portraying the “Revolution” in New England as a response to the tyranny of Governor Andros, the leaders of the revolt intended to demonstrate to William of Orange that their actions were equivalent to his own against James II.
By April 18,1689, the leaders of the revolt had prepared a declaration justifying their conduct and local militia occupied Boston demanding the surrender of Governor Andros. In his letter to friends in London, Nathanael Byfield reported that 1,500 men from Boston and the surrounding country had occupied Boston. With the “People in Arms,” the orchestrators of the revolt arrested those loyal to the governor, who had sought refuge in a local fort.²⁵ The leaders of the revolt, Waite Winthrop, Simon Bradstreet, William Stoughton, Samuel Shrimpton, Bartholomew Gidney, William Brown, Thomas Danforth, John Richards, Elisha Cook, Isaac Addington, John Nelson, Adam Winthrop, Peter Sergeant, John Foster, and David Waterhouse, dispatched a letter to Sir Edmund requesting his surrender.²⁶ Claiming that they had been “surprised with the Peoples sudden taking of Arms… whereof we were wholly ignorant,” the revolutionaries recommended that Andros “surrender and deliver up the Government and Fortification to be preserved and disposed according to Order and Direction from the Crown of England.”²⁷ In a veiled threat, the gentlemen promised “all security from violence” for himself and his officers if he surrendered.²⁸ If he refused, the writers informed him -- without acknowledging their own part in the rebellion -- that there was little they could to dissuade the mob from “the taking of the Fortification by Storm.”²⁹ With Boston in the hands of the rebels, Sir Edmund surrendered and was placed under arrest.³⁰
With Sir Edmund Andros in confinement and the militia in control of Boston, the leaders sought to justify their actions. In “The Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants of Boston, and the Country Adjacent,” the orchestrators of the revolt presented a careful argument against the legal basis of the Dominion of New England and Sir Edmund Andros’s infringements of the natural liberties of the inhabitants of New England.³¹ The establishment of the Dominion of New England, the writers claimed, was part of the “Popish Plot” facilitated by the Catholic King James II to “crush and break a Countrey so entirely and signally made up of Reformed Churches.”³² Furthermore, the legal basis for the revocation of the charter of Massachusetts Bay was predicated upon a “most injurious Pretence [and scarce that] of Law” without the chance to appeal.³³ This pretence was used to “put [the inhabitants of New England] under a President and Council, without any liberty for an Assembly, which the other American Plantations have, by a Commission from His Majesty.”³⁴ Though the dissolution of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the establishment of the Dominion of New England was illegal, the revolutionaries insisted that they refused to resist in order to prove that they were “dutiful and loyal to our King.”³⁵ But their acquiescence became more difficult when their government became “more Absolute and Arbitrary” with the arrival of Sir Edmund Andros.³⁶ Governor Andros and his council made laws and raised taxes with impunity, levied and dispatched troops when he wanted, and even brought troops from England to impose his arbitrary government upon New England.³⁷ In effect, Sir Edmund Andros’s administration declared that the King’s subjects in New England “must not think the Priviledges of English-men would follow us to the end of the World.”³⁸ Having been “treated with multiplied contradictions to Magna Carta, the rights of which we laid claim unto” the people of New England had justification enough to overthrow Andros.³⁹ But the New Englanders remained complacent until they learned of the Glorious Revolution and the overthrow of James II. Although Andros had “taken all imaginable care to keep [New England] ignorant… [of] the noble undertaking of the Prince of Orange,” the New Englanders decided to “follow the Patterns which the Nobility, Gentry and Commonalty” of England had taken against James II and they overthrew the tyrannical government of Sir Edmund Andros.⁴⁰
With the “Revolution in New-England,” the inhabitants of Boston asserted their rights as
Englishmen to representative government against the arbitrary whims of the Crown and its officers. With the establishment of the Dominion of New England and the appointment of Sir Edmund Andros as governor of the new colony, the English Lords of Trades sought to implement the Stuart policy of centralizing control of the colonies and increasing their dependence on the Crown. But the commission of Sir Edmund Andros completely transformed the government of the New England colonies, which had traditionally enjoyed representative government and a significant degree of autonomy from the Crown. Having been deprived of the rights that the colonists had retained since their arrival in the New
World, the inhabitants of New England sought to return to their previous form of government. With the deposition of James II in the Glorious Revolution, the people of New England initiated preparations to overthrow the governor. The arrest of Sir Edmund Andros and the declaration against the excesses of his government allowed the revolutionaries to claim English liberties for themselves in an attempt to extend the principles of the Glorious Revolution to the American colonies.
Notes
1.
Nathanael Byfield, An Account of the Late Revolution in New-England Together with the Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants of Boston, and the Country Adjacent (London: Rose and Crown, 1689), p. 19. Collection of the Morristown National Historical Park.
2.
Ibid., pp. 1-20.
3.
Ian K Steele,"Origins of Boston's Revolutionary Declaration of 18 April 1689,” The New England Quarterly 62, no. 1 (1989), p. 78.
4.
Philip S. Haffenden,"The Crown and the Colonial Charters, 1675-1688: Part I," The William and Mary Quarterly 15, no. 3 (1958), pp. 298-299.
5.
Ibid., p. 299.
6.
Ibid.
7.
Ibid.,pp. 304-307: “The King had the right to repeal a patent by scire facias where he was deceived in his grant or it was to the injury of the subject.”
8.
Charter of Massachusetts Bay, (Teaching American History), https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/charter-of-massachusetts-bay/?_sf_s=Massachusetts+Bay.
9.
Ibid.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Haffenden, "The Crown and the Colonial Charters, 1675-1688: Part I,” pp. 299-300.
12.
Commission of King James the Second to Sir Edmund Andros: June 3, 1689, (Sabin Americana), http://galenet.galegroup.com.libproxy.wustl.edu/servlet/Sabin?dd=0&locID=sain79627&d1=SABCPY7002900&srchtp=a&c=1&an=SABCPY7002900&df=f&d2=1&docNum=CY3806870025&h2=1&af=RN&d6=1&d3=1&ste=10&stp=Author&d4=0.33&d5=d6&ae=CY106870025, pp. 3-14.
13.
Ibid., p. 3.
14.
Ibid., p. 5.
15.
Ibid.
16.
Ibid., pp. 6-7.
17.
Ibid., pp. 8-9.
18.
Philip S. Haffenden, "The Crown and the Colonial Charters, 1675-1688: Part II," The William and Mary Quarterly 15, no. 4 (1958), pp. 459-461.
19.
Steele, "Origins of Boston's Revolutionary Declaration of 18 April 1689,” p. 77.
20.
Ibid.
21.
Ibid., p. 78.
22.
Ibid.
23.
Ibid.
24.
Byfield, An Account of the Late Revolution in New-England Together with the Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants of Boston, and the Country Adjacent,
p. 16.
25.
Ibid., p. 4.
26.
Ibid. 20.
27.
Ibid.
28.
Ibid.
29.
Ibid.
30.
Ibid., pp. 4-5.
31.
Ibid., pp. 7-19.
32.
Ibid., pp. 7-8.
33.
Ibid., p. 8.
34.
Ibid.
35.
Ibid., p. 9.
36.
Ibid.
37.
Ibid.
38.
Ibid., p. 12.
39.
Ibid.
40.
Ibid., p. 18.
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