The Beginnings of New England Chapter VI - The Tyranny of Andros
by John Fiske
The beginnings of New England were made in the full daylight of modern
history. It was an age of town records, of registered deeds, of
contemporary memoirs, of diplomatic correspondence, of controversial
pamphlets, funeral sermons, political diatribes, specific instructions,
official reports, and private letters. It was not a time in which
mythical personages or incredible legends could flourish, and such
things we do find in the history of New England. There was nevertheless
a romantic side to this history, enough to envelop some of its
characters and incidents in a glamour that may mislead the modern
reader. This wholesale migration from the smiling fields of merry
England to an unexplored wilderness beyond a thousand leagues of sea was
of itself a most romantic and thrilling event, and when viewed in the
light of its historic results it becomes clothed with sublimity. The men
who undertook this work were not at all free from self-consciousness.
They believed that they were doing a wonderful thing. They felt
themselves to be instruments in accomplishing a kind of "manifest
destiny." Their exodus was that of a chosen people who were at length
to lay the everlasting foundations of God's kingdom upon earth. Such
opinions, which took a strong colour from their assiduous study of the
Old Testament, reacted and disposed them all the more to search its
pages for illustrations and precedents, and to regard it as an oracle,
almost as a talisman. In every propitious event they saw a special
providence, an act of divine intervention to deliver them from the
snares of an ever watchful Satan. This steadfast faith in an unseen
ruler and guide was to them a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by
night. It was of great moral value. It gave them clearness of purpose
and concentration of strength, and contributed toward making them,
like the children of Israel, a people of indestructible vitality and
aggressive energy. At the same time, in the hands of the Puritan
writers, this feeling was apt to warp their estimates of events and
throw such a romantic haze about things as seriously to interfere with a
true historical perspective. [Sidenote: Romantic features in the early
history of New England]
Among such writings that which perhaps best epitomizes the Puritan
philosophy is "The Wonder-working Providence of Zion's Saviour in New
England," by Captain Edward Johnson, one of the principal founders of
Woburn. It is an extremely valuable history of New England from 1628 to
1651, and every page is alive with the virile energy of that stirring
time. With narrative, argument, and apologue, abounding in honesty
of purpose, sublimity of trust, and grotesqueness of fancy, wherein
touching tenderness is often alternated with sternness most grim and
merciless, yet now and then relieved by a sudden gleam of humour,--and
all in a style that is usually uncouth and harsh, but sometimes bursts
forth in eloquence worthy of Bunyan,--we are told how the founders of
New England are soldiers of Christ enlisted in a holy war, and how they
must "march manfully on till all opposers of Christ's kingly power be
abolished." "And as for you who are called to sound forth his silver
trumpets, blow loud and shrill to this chiefest treble tune--for the
armies of the great Jehovah are at hand." "He standeth not as an idle
spectator beholding his people's ruth and their enemies' rage, but as an
actor in all actions, to bring to naught the desires of the wicked, ...
having also the ordering of every weapon in its first produce, guiding
every shaft that flies, leading each bullet to his place of settling,
and weapon to the wound it makes." To men engaged in such a crusade
against the powers of evil, nothing could seem insignificant or trivial;
for, as Johnson continues, in truly prophetic phrase, "the Lord Christ
intends to achieve greater matters by this little handful than the world
is aware of." [Sidenote: Edward Johnson]
The general sentiment of the early New England writers was like that
of the "Wonder-working Providence," though it did not always find such
rhapsodic expression. It has left its impress upon the minds of their
children's children down to our own time, and has affected the opinions
held about them by other people. It has had something to do with a
certain tacit assumption of superiority on the part of New Englanders,
upon which the men and women of other communities have been heard
to comment in resentful and carping tones. There has probably never
existed, in any age or at any spot on the earth's surface, a group of
people that did not take for granted its own preeminent excellence. Upon
some such assumption, as upon an incontrovertible axiom, all historical
narratives, from the chronicles of a parish to the annals of an empire,
alike proceed. But in New England it assumed a form especially apt to
provoke challenge. One of its unintentional effects was the setting up
of an unreal and impossible standard by which to judge the acts and
motives of the Puritans of the seventeenth century. We come upon
instances of harshness and cruelty, of narrow-minded bigotry, and
superstitious frenzy; and feel, perhaps, a little surprised that
these men had so much in common with their contemporaries. Hence the
interminable discussion which has been called forth by the history of
the Puritans, in which the conclusions of the writer have generally been
determined by circumstances of birth or creed, or perhaps of reaction
against creed. One critic points to the Boston of 1659 or the Salem of
1692 with such gleeful satisfaction as used to stir the heart of Thomas
Paine when he alighted upon an inconsistency in some text of the Bible;
while another, in the firm conviction that Puritans could do no wrong,
plays fast and loose with arguments that might be made to justify the
deeds of a Torquemada. [Sidenote: Acts of the Puritans often judged by a
wrong standard]
From such methods of criticism it is the duty of historians as far as
possible to free themselves. If we consider the Puritans in the light
of their surroundings as Englishmen of the seventeenth century and
inaugurators of a political movement that was gradually to change for
the better the aspect of things all over the earth, we cannot fail to
discern the value of that sacred enthusiasm which led them to regard
themselves as chosen soldiers of Christ. It was the spirit of the
"Wonder-working Providence" that hurled the tyrant from his throne at
Whitehall and prepared the way for the emancipation of modern Europe. No
spirit less intense, no spirit nurtured in the contemplation of things
terrestrial, could ever have done it. The political philosophy of a Vane
or a Sidney could never have done it. The passion for liberty as felt
by a Jefferson or an Adams, abstracted and generalized from the love
of particular liberties, was something scarcely intelligible to the
seventeenth century. The ideas of absolute freedom of thought and
speech, which we breathe in from childhood, were to the men of that age
strange and questionable. They groped and floundered among them, very
much as modern wool growers in Ohio or iron-smelters in Pennsylvania
flounder and grope among the elementary truths of political economy. But
the spirit in which the Hebrew prophet rebuked and humbled an idolatrous
king was a spirit they could comprehend. Such a spirit was sure to
manifest itself in narrow cramping measures and in ugly acts of
persecution; but it is none the less to the fortunate alliance of
that fervid religious enthusiasm with the Englishman's love of
self-government that our modern freedom owes its existence. [Sidenote:
Spirit of the Wonder-working Providence]
The history of New England under Charles II. yields abundant proof that
political liberty is no less indebted in the New World than in the Old
to the spirit of the "Wonder-working Providence." The theocratic ideal
which the Puritan sought to put into practice in Massachusetts and
Connecticut was a sacred institution in faults of the defence of
which all his faculties were kept perpetually alert. Much as he loved
self-government he would never have been so swift to detect and so
stubborn to resist every slightest encroachment on the part of the crown
had not the loss of self-government involved the imminent danger that
the ark of the Lord might be abandoned to the worshippers of Dagon.
It was in Massachusetts, where the theocracy was strongest, that the
resistance to Charles II. was most dogged and did most to prepare the
way for the work of achieving political independence a century later.
Naturally it was in Massachusetts at the same time that the faults
of the theocracy were most conspicuous. It was there that priestly
authority most clearly asserted itself in such oppressive acts as are
always witnessed when too much power is left in the hands of men whose
primary allegiance is to a kingdom not of this world. Much as we owe to
the theocracy for warding off the encroachments of the crown, we cannot
be sorry that it was itself crushed in the process. It was well that
it did not survive its day of usefulness, and that the outcome of
the struggle was what has been aptly termed "the emancipation of
Massachusetts." [Sidenote: Merits and faults of the theocracy]
The basis of the theocratic constitution of this commonwealth was the
provision by which the exercise of the franchise was made an incident of
church-membership. Unless a man could take part in the Lord's Supper, as
administered in the churches of the colony, he could not vote or
hold office. Church and state, parish and town, were thus virtually
identified. Here, as in some other aspects of early New England, one is
reminded of the ancient Greek cities, where the freeman who could
vote in the market-place or serve his turn as magistrate was the man
qualified to perform sacrifices to the tutelar deities of the tribe;
other men might dwell in the city but had no share in making or
executing its laws. The limitation of civil rights by religious tests is
indeed one of those common inheritances from the old Aryan world that
we find again and again cropping out, even down to the exclusion of
Catholics from the House of Commons from 1562 to 1829. The obvious
purpose of this policy in England was self-protection; and in like
manner the restriction of the suffrage in Massachusetts was designed
to protect the colony against aggressive episcopacy and to maintain
unimpaired the uniformity of purpose which had brought the settlers
across the ocean. Under the circumstances there was something to be
said in behalf of such a measure of self-protection, and the principle
required but slight extension to cover such cases as the banishment of
Roger Williams and the Antinomians. There was another side to the case,
however. From the very outset this exclusive policy was in some ways
a source of weakness to Massachusetts, though we have seen that the
indirect effect was to diversify and enrich the political life of New
England as a whole. [Sidenote: Restriction of the suffrage to church
members]
At first it led to the departure of the men who founded Connecticut,
and thereafter the way was certainly open for those who preferred the
Connecticut policy to go where it prevailed. Some such segregation was
no doubt effected, but it could not be complete and thorough. Men who
preferred Boston without the franchise to Hartford with it would remain
in Massachusetts; and thus the elder colony soon came to possess a
discontented class of people, always ready to join hand in glove with
dissenters or mischief-makers, or even with emissaries of the crown. It
afforded a suggestive commentary upon all attempts to suppress human
nature by depriving it of a share in political life; instead of keeping
it inside where you can try conclusions with it fairly, you thrust it
out to plot mischief in the dark. Within twenty years from the founding
of Boston the disfranchisement of such citizens as could not participate
in church-communion had begun to be regarded as a serious political
grievance. These men were obliged to pay taxes and were liable to be
called upon for military service against the Indians; and they naturally
felt that they ought to have a voice in the management of public
affairs. [Sidenote: It was a source of political discontent]
Besides this fundamental ground of complaint, there were derivative
grievances. Under the influence of the clergy justice was administered
in somewhat inquisitorial fashion, there was an uncertainty as to just
what the law was, a strong disposition to confuse questions of law with
questions of ethics, and great laxity in the admission and estimation of
evidence. As early as 1639 people had begun to complain that too much
power was rested in the discretion of the magistrate, and they clamoured
for a code of laws; but as Winthrop says, the magistrates and ministers
were "not very forward in this matter," for they preferred to supplement
the common law of England by decisions based on the Old Testament rather
than by a body of statutes. It was not until 1649, after a persistent
struggle, that the deputies won a decisive victory over the assistants
and secured for Massachusetts a definite code of laws. In the New Haven
colony similar theocratic notions led the settlers to dispense with
trial by jury because they could find no precedent for it in the laws of
Moses. Here, as in Massachusetts, the inquisitorial administration of
justice combined with partial disfranchisement to awaken discontent, and
it was partly for this reason that New Haven fell so easily under the
sway of Connecticut. [Sidenote: Inquisitorial administration of justice]
In Massachusetts after 1650 the opinion rapidly gained ground that all
baptized persons of upright and decorous lives ought to be considered,
for practical purposes, as members of the church, and therefore entitled
to the exercise of political rights, even though unqualified for
participation in the Lord's Supper. This theory of church-membership,
based on what was at that time stigmatized as the "Halfway Covenant,"
aroused intense opposition. It was the great question of the day. In
1657 a council was held in Boston, which approved the principle of the
Halfway Covenant; and as this decision was far from satisfying the
churches, a synod of all the clergymen in Massachusetts was held five
years later, to reconsider the great question. The decision of the synod
substantially confirmed the decision of the council, but there were some
dissenting voices. Foremost among the dissenters, who wished to retain
the old theocratic regime in all its strictness, was Charles Chauncey,
the president of Harvard College, and Increase Mather agreed with him
at the time, though he afterward saw reason to change his opinion, and
published two tracts in favour of the Halfway Covenant. Most bitter of
all toward the new theory of church-membership was, naturally enough,
Mr. Davenport of New Haven. [Sidenote: The "Halfway Covenant"]
This burning question was the source of angry contentions in the First
Church of Boston. Its teacher, the learned and melancholy Norton, died
in 1663, and four years later the aged pastor, John Wilson, followed
him. In choosing a successor to Wilson the church decided to declare
itself in opposition to the liberal decision of the synod, and in token
thereof invited Davenport to come from New Haven to take charge of it.
Davenport, who was then seventy years old, was disgusted at the recent
annexation of his colony to Connecticut. He accepted the invitation
and came to Boston, against the wishes of nearly half of the Boston
congregation who did not like the illiberal principle which he
represented. In little more than a year his ministry at Boston was ended
by death; but the opposition to his call had already proceeded so far
that a secession from the old church had become inevitable. In 1669
the advocates of the Halfway Covenant organized themselves into a new
society under the title of the "Third Church in Boston." A wooden
meeting-house was built on a lot which had once belonged to the late
governor Winthrop, in what was then the south part of the town, so that
the society and its meeting-house became known as the South Church; and
after a new church founded in Summer Street in 1717 took the name of the
New South, the church of 1669 came to be further distinguished as the
Old South. As this church represented a liberal idea which was growing
in favour with the people, it soon became the most flourishing church
in America. After sixty years its numbers had increased so that the old
meeting-house could not contain them; and in 1729 the famous building
which still stands was erected on the same spot,--a building with a
grander history than any other on the American continent, unless it be
that other plain brick building in Philadelphia where the Declaration of
Independence was adopted and the Federal Constitution framed. [Sidenote:
Founding of the Old South Church, 1669]
The wrath of the First Church at this secession from its ranks was
deep and bitter, and for thirteen years it refused to entertain
ecclesiastical intercourse with the South Church. But by 1682 it had
become apparent that the king and his friends were meditating an attack
upon the Puritan theocracy in New England. It had even been suggested,
in the council for the colonies, that the Church of England should be
established in Massachusetts, and that none but duly ordained Episcopal
clergymen should be allowed to solemnize marriages. Such alarming
suggestions began to impress the various Puritan churches with the
importance of uniting their forces against the common enemy; and
accordingly in 1682 the quarrel between the two Boston societies came to
an end. There was urgent need of all the sympathy and good feeling that
the community could muster, whereby to cheer itself in the crisis that
was coming. The four years from 1684 to 1688 were the darkest years in
the history of New England. Massachusetts, though not lacking in the
spirit, had not the power to beard the tyrant as she did eighty years
later. Her attitude toward the Stuarts--as we have seen--had been
sometimes openly haughty and defiant, sometimes silent and sullen, but
always independent. At the accession of Charles II. the colonists had
thought it worth while to send commissioners to England to confer with
the king and avoid a quarrel. Charles promised to respect their charter,
but insisted that in return they must take an oath of allegiance to the
crown, must administer justice in the king's name, and must repeal their
laws restricting the right of suffrage to church members and prohibiting
the Episcopal form of worship. [Sidenote: Founding of the Old South
Church, 1669] [Sidenote: Demands of Charles II.]
When the people of Massachusetts received this message they consented to
administer justice in the king's name, but all the other matters were
referred for consideration to a committee, and so they dropped out of
sight. When the royal commissioners came to Boston in 1664, they were
especially instructed to ascertain whether Massachusetts had complied
with the king's demands; but upon this point the legislature stubbornly
withheld any definite answer, while it frittered away the time in
trivial altercations with the royal commissioners. The war with Holland
and the turbulent state of English politics operated for several years
in favour of this independent attitude of the colonists, though during
all this time their enemies at court were busy with intrigues and
accusations. Apart from mere slanders the real grounds of complaint
were the restriction of the suffrage, whereby members of the Church of
England were shut out; the claims of the eastern proprietors, heirs
of Mason and Gorges, whose territory Massachusetts had absorbed;
the infraction of the navigation laws; and the coinage of pine-tree
shillings. The last named measure had been forced upon the colonists by
the scarcity of a circulating medium. Until 1661 Indian wampum had been
a legal tender, and far into the eighteenth century it remained current
in small transactions. "In 1693 the ferriage from New York to Brooklyn
was eight stivers in wampum or a silver twopence." [35] As early as
1652 Massachusetts had sought to supply the deficiency by the issue of
shillings and sixpences. It was an affair of convenience and probably
had no political purpose. The infraction of the navigation laws was a
more serious matter. "Ships from France, Spain, and the Canaries traded
directly with Boston, and brought in goods which had never paid duty in
any English port." [36] The effect of this was to excite the jealousy
of the merchants in London and other English cities and to deprive
Massachusetts of the sympathy of that already numerous and powerful
class of people. [Sidenote: Complaints against Massachusetts]
In 1675, the first year of King Philip's War, the British government
made up its mind to attend more closely to the affairs of its American
colonies. It had got the Dutch war off its hands, and could give heed to
other things. The general supervision of the colonies was assigned to
a standing committee of the privy council, styled the "Lords of the
Committee of Trade and Plantations," and henceforth familiarly known
as the "Lords of Trade." Next year the Lords of Trade sent an agent to
Boston, with a letter to Governor Leverett about the Mason and Gorges
claims. Under cover of this errand the messenger was to go about and
ascertain the sentiments which people in the Kennebec and Piscataqua
towns, as well as in Boston, entertained for the government of
Massachusetts. The person to whom this work was entrusted was Edward
Randolph, a cousin of Robert Mason who inherited the property claim to
the Piscataqua county. To these men had old John Mason bequeathed his
deadly feud with Massachusetts, and the fourteen years which Randolph
now spent in New England were busily devoted to sowing the seeds of
strife. In 1678 the king appointed him collector and surveyor of customs
at the port of Boston, with instructions to enforce the navigation laws.
Randolph was not the man to do unpopular things in such a way as to dull
the edge of the infliction; he took delight in adding insult to injury.
He was at once harsh and treacherous. His one virtue was pecuniary
integrity; he was inaccessible to bribes and did not pick and steal from
the receipts at the custom-house. In the other relations of life he
was disencumbered of scruples. His abilities were not great, but his
industry was untiring, and he pursued his enemies with the tenacity of a
sleuth-hound. As an excellent British historian observes, "he was one of
those men who, once enlisted as partisans, lose every other feeling in
the passion which is engendered of strife." [37] [Sidenote: The Lords of
Trade] [Sidenote: Edward Randolph]
The arrival of such a man boded no good to Massachusetts. His reception
at the town-house was a cold one. Leverett liked neither his looks nor
his message, and kept his peaked hat on while he read the letter; when
he came to the signature of the king's chief secretary of state, he
asked, with careless contempt, "Who is this Henry Coventry?" Randolph's
choking rage found vent in a letter to the king, taking pains to remind
him that the governor of Massachusetts had once been an officer in
Cromwell's army. As we read this and think with what ghoulish glee the
writer would have betrayed Colonel Goffe into the hands of the headsman,
had any clue been given him, we can quite understand why Hubbard and
Mather had nothing to say about the mysterious stranger at Hadley.
Everything that Randolph could think of that would goad and irritate the
king, he reported in full to London; his letters were specimens of that
worst sort of lie that is based upon distorted half-truths; and his
malicious pen but seldom lay idle.
While waiting for the effects of these reports to ripen, Randolph was
busily intriguing with some of the leading men in Boston who were
dissatisfied with the policy of the dominant party, and under his
careful handling a party was soon brought into existence which was ready
to counsel submission to the royal will. Such was the birth of Toryism
in New England. The leader of this party was Joseph Dudley, son of
the grim verse-maker who had come over as lieutenant to Winthrop. The
younger Dudley was graduated at Harvard in 1665, and proceeded to study
theology, but soon turned his attention entirely to politics. In 1673 he
was a deputy from Roxbury in the General Court; in 1675 he took part in
the storming of the Narragansett fort; in 1677 and the three following
years he was one of the Federal Commissioners. In character and temper
he differed greatly from his father. Like the proverbial minister's son
whose feet are swift toward folly, Joseph Dudley seems to have learned
in stern bleak years of childhood to rebel against the Puritan theory of
life. Much of the abuse that has been heaped upon him, as a renegade and
traitor, is probably undeserved. It does not appear that he ever made
any pretence of love for the Puritan commonwealth, and there were many
like him who had as lief be ruled by king as by clergy. But it cannot be
denied that his suppleness and sagacity went along with a moral nature
that was weak and vulgar. Joseph Dudley was essentially a self-seeking
politician and courtier, like his famous kinsman of the previous
century, Robert, Earl of Leicester. His party in Massachusetts was
largely made up of men who had come to the colony for commercial
reasons, and had little or no sympathy with the objects for which it was
founded. Among them were Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Baptists, who
were allowed no chance for public worship, as well as many others who,
like Gallio, cared for none of these things. Their numbers, moreover,
must have been large, for Boston had grown to be a town of 5000
inhabitants, the population of Massachusetts was approaching 30,000,
and, according to Hutchinson, scarcely one grown man in five was a
church-member qualified to vote or hold office. Such a fact speaks
volumes as to the change which was coming over the Puritan world. No
wonder that the clergy had begun to preach about the weeds and tares
that were overrunning Christ's pleasant garden. No wonder that the
spirit of revolt against the disfranchising policy of the theocracy was
ripe. [Sidenote: Joseph Dudley]
It was in 1679, when this weakness of the body politic had been duly
studied and reported by Randolph, and when all New England was groaning
under the bereavements and burdens entailed by Philip's war, that the
Stuart government began its final series of assaults upon Massachusetts.
The claims of the eastern proprietors, the heirs of Mason and Gorges,
furnished the occasion. Since 1643 the four Piscataqua towns--Hampton,
Exeter, Dover, and Portsmouth--had remained under the jurisdiction of
Massachusetts. After the Restoration the Mason claim had been revived,
and in 1677 was referred to the chief-justices North and Rainsford.
Their decision was that Mason's claim had always been worthless as based
on a grant in which the old Plymouth Company had exceeded its powers.
They also decided that Massachusetts had no valid claim since the
charter assigned her a boundary just north of the Merrimack. This
decision left the four towns subject to none but the king, who forthwith
in 1679 proceeded to erect them into the royal province of New
Hampshire, with president and council appointed by the crown, and an
assembly chosen by the people, but endowed with little authority,--a
tricksome counterfeit of popular government. Within three years an
arrogant and thieving ruler, Edward Cranfield, had goaded New Hampshire
to acts of insurrection. [Sidenote: Royal province of New Hampshire]
To the decisions of the chief-justices Massachusetts must needs submit.
The Gorges claim led to more serious results. Under Cromwell's rule in
1652--the same year in which she began coining money--Massachusetts
had extended her sway over Maine. In 1665 Colonel Nichols and his
commissioners, acting upon the express instructions of Charles II.,
took it away from her. In 1668, after the commissioners had gone home,
Massachusetts coolly took possession again. In 1677 the chief-justices
decided that the claim of the Gorges family, being based on a grant from
James I., was valid. Then the young Ferdinando Gorges, grandson of the
first proprietor, offered to sell the province to the king, who had now
taken it into his head that he would like to bestow it upon the Duke
of Monmouth, his favourite son by Lucy Walters. Before Charles had
responded, Governor Leverett had struck a bargain with Gorges, who ceded
to Massachusetts all his rights over Maine for L1250 in hard cash. When
the king heard of this transaction he was furious. He sent a letter to
Boston, commanding the General Court to surrender the province again on
repayment of this sum of L1250, and expressing his indignation that
the people should thus dare to dispose of an important claim off-hand
without consulting his wishes. In the same letter the colony was
enjoined to put in force the royal orders of seventeen years before,
concerning the oath of allegiance, the restriction of the suffrage, and
the prohibition of the Episcopal form of worship. [Sidenote: The Gorges
claim]
This peremptory message reached Boston about Christmas, 1679. Leverett,
the sturdy Ironsides, had died six months before, and his place
was filled by Simon Bradstreet, a man of moderate powers but great
integrity, and held in peculiar reverence as the last survivor of those
that had been chosen to office before leaving England by the leaders of
the great Puritan exodus. Born in a Lincolnshire village in 1603, he was
now seventy-six years old. He had taken his degree at Emmanuel College,
Cambridge, had served as secretary to the Earl of Warwick, and in 1629
had been appointed member of the board of assistants for the colony
about to be established on Massachusetts bay. In this position he had
remained with honour for half a century, while he had also served as
Federal Commissioner and as agent for the colony in London. His wife,
who died in 1672, was a woman of quaint learning and quainter verses,
which her contemporaries admired beyond measure. One of her books was
republished in London, with the title: "The Tenth Muse, lately sprung up
in America." John Norton once said that if Virgil could only have heard
the seraphic poems of Anne Bradstreet, he would have thrown his heathen
doggerel into the fire. She was sister of Joseph Dudley, and evidently
inherited this rhyming talent, such as it was, from her father. Governor
Bradstreet belonged to the moderate party who would have been glad to
extend the franchise, but he did not go with his brother-in-law in
subservience to the king. [Sidenote: Simon Bradstreet and his wife]
When the General Court assembled, in May, 1680, the full number of
eighteen assistants appeared, for the first time in the history of the
colony, and in accordance with an expressed wish of the king. They
were ready to yield in trifles, but not in essentials. After wearisome
discussion, the answer to the royal letter was decided on. It stated in
vague and unsatisfactory terms that the royal orders of 1662 either had
been carried out already or would be in good time, while to the demand
for the surrender of Maine no reply whatever was made, save that "they
were heartily sorry that any actings of theirs should be displeasing
to his Majesty." After this, when Randolph wrote home that the king's
letters were of no more account in Massachusetts than an old London
Gazette, he can hardly be accused of stretching the truth. Randolph kept
busily at work, and seems to have persuaded the Bishop of London that
if the charter could be annulled, episcopacy might be established in
Massachusetts as in England. In February, 1682, a letter came from the
king demanding submission and threatening legal proceedings against the
charter. Dudley was then sent as agent to London, and with him was sent
a Mr. Richards, of the extreme clerical party, to watch him. [Sidenote:
Massachusetts answers the king]
Meanwhile the king's position at home had been changing. He had made
up his mind to follow his father's example and try the experiment of
setting his people at defiance and governing without a parliament. This
could not be done without a great supply of money. Louis XIV. had
plenty of money, for there was no constitution in France to prevent his
squeezing what he wanted out of the pockets of an oppressed people.
France was thriving greatly now, for Colbert had introduced a
comparatively free system of trade between the provinces and inaugurated
an era of prosperity soon to be cut short by the expulsion of the
Huguenots. Louis could get money enough for the asking, and would be
delighted to foment civil disturbances in England, so as to tie the
hands of the only power which at that moment could interfere with his
seizing Alsace and Lorraine and invading Flanders. The pretty Louise de
Keroualle Duchess of Portsmouth, with her innocent baby face and heart
as cold as any reptile's, was the French Delilah chosen to shear the
locks of the British Samson. By such means and from such motives a
secret treaty was made in February, 1681, by which Louis agreed to pay
Charles 2,000,000 livres down, and 500,000 more in each of the next two
years, on condition that he should summon no more parliaments within
that time. This bargain for securing the means of overthrowing the laws
and liberties of England was, on the part of Charles II., an act no less
reprehensible than some of those for which his father had gone to the
block. But Charles could now afford for a while to wreak his evil will.
He had already summoned a parliament for the 21st of March, to meet at
Oxford within the precincts of the subservient university, and out of
reach of the high-spirited freemen of London. He now forced a quarrel
with the new parliament and dissolved it within a week. A joiner named
Stephen College, who had spoken his mind too freely in the taverns at
Oxford with regard to these proceedings, was drawn and quartered. The
Whig leader Lord Shaftesbury was obliged to flee to Holland. In the
absence of a parliament the only power of organized resistance to the
king's tyranny resided in the corporate governments of the chartered
towns. The charter of London was accordingly attacked by a writ of
quo warranto, and in June, 1683, the time-serving judges declared it
confiscated. George Jeffreys, a low drunken fellow whom Charles had made
Lord Chief Justice, went on a circuit through the country; and, as Roger
North says, "made all the charters, like the walls of Jericho, fall down
before him, and returned laden with surrenders, the spoils of towns."
At the same time a terrible blow was dealt at two of the greatest Whig
families in England. Lord William Russell, son of the Earl of Bedford,
and Algernon Sidney, younger son of the Earl of Leicester, two of the
purest patriots and ablest liberal leaders of the day, were tried on a
false charge of treason and beheaded. [Sidenote: Secret treaty between
Charles II. and Louis XIV] [Sidenote: Shameful proceedings in England]
By this quick succession of high-handed measures, the friends of law and
liberty were for a moment disconcerted and paralyzed. In the frightful
abasement of the courts of justice which these events so clearly showed,
the freedom of Englishmen seemed threatened in its last stronghold. The
doctrine of passive obedience to monarchs was preached in the pulpits
and inculcated by the university of Oxford, which ordered the works of
John Milton to be publicly burned. Sir Robert Filmer wrote that "not
only in human laws, but even in divine, a thing may by the king be
commanded contrary to law, and yet obedience to such a command is
necessary." Charles felt so strong that in 1684 he flatly refused to
summon a parliament.
It was not long before the effects of all this were felt in New England.
The mission of Dudley and his colleague was fruitless. They returned to
Boston, and Randolph, who had followed them to London, now followed them
back, armed with a writ of quo warranto which he was instructed not to
serve until he should have given Massachusetts one more chance to humble
herself in the dust. Should she modify her constitution to please a
tyrant or see it trampled under foot? Recent events in England served
for a solemn warning; for the moment the Tories were silenced; perhaps
after all, the absolute rule of a king was hardly to be preferred to the
sway of the Puritan clergy; the day when the House of Commons sat still
and wept seemed to have returned. A great town-meeting was held in the
Old South Meeting-House, and the moderator requested all who were for
surrendering the charter to hold up their hands. Not a hand was lifted,
and out from the throng a solitary voice exclaimed, with deep-drawn
breath, "The Lord be praised!" Then arose Increase Mather, president
of Harvard College, and reminded them how their fathers did win this
charter, and should they deliver it up unto the spoiler who demanded it
"even as Ahab required Naboth's vineyard, Oh! their children would be
bound to curse them." Such was the attitude of Massachusetts, and when
it was known in London, the blow was struck. For technical reasons
Randolph's writ was not served; but on the 21st of June a decree in
chancery annulled the charter of Massachusetts. [Sidenote: Massachusetts
refuses to surrender her charter] [Sidenote: It is annulled by degree of
chancery, June 21, 1684]
To appreciate the force of this blow we must pause for a moment and
consider what it involved. The right to the soil of North America had
been hitherto regarded in England, on the strength of the discoveries of
the Cabots, as an appurtenance to the crown of Henry VII.,--as something
which descended from father to son like the palace at Hampton Court or
the castle at Windsor, but which the sovereign might alienate by his
voluntary act just as he might sell or give away a piece of his royal
domain in England. Over this vast territory it was doubtful how far
Parliament was entitled to exercise authority, and the rights of
Englishmen settled there had theoretically no security save in the
provisions of the various charters by which the crown had delegated its
authority to individual proprietors or to private companies. It was thus
on the charter granted by Charles I. to the Company of Massachusetts Bay
that not only the cherished political and ecclesiastical institutions
of the colony, but even the titles of individuals to their lands and
houses, were supposed to be founded. By the abrogation of the charter,
all rights and immunities that had been based upon it were at once swept
away, and every rood of the soil of Massachusetts became the personal
property of the Stuart king, who might, if he should possess the will
and the power, turn out all the present occupants or otherwise deal with
them as trespassers. Such at least was the theory of Charles II., and
to show that he meant to wreak his vengeance with no gentle hand, he
appointed as his viceroy the brutal Percy Kirke,--a man who would have
no scruples about hanging a few citizens without trial, should occasion
require it. [Sidenote: Effect of annulling the charter]
But in February, 1685, just as Charles seemed to be getting everything
arranged to his mind, a stroke of apoplexy carried him off the scene,
and his brother ascended the throne. Monmouth's rebellion, and the
horrible cruelties that followed, kept Colonel Kirke busy in England
through the summer, and left the new king scant leisure to think about
America. Late in the autumn, having made up his mind that he could not
spare such an exemplary knave as Kirke, James II. sent over Sir Edmund
Andros. In the mean time the government of Massachusetts had been
administered by Dudley, who showed himself willing to profit by the
misfortunes of his country. Andros had long been one of James's
favourites. He was the dull and dogged English officer such as one often
meets, honest enough and faithful to his master, neither cruel nor
rapacious, but coarse in fibre and wanting in tact. Some years
before, when governor of New York, he had a territorial dispute with
Connecticut, and now cherished a grudge against the people of New
England, so that, from James's point of view, he was well fitted to be
their governor. James wished to abolish all the local governments
in America, and unite them, as far as possible, under a single
administration. With Plymouth there could be no trouble; she had never
had a charter, but had existed on sufferance from the outset. In 1687
the charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut were rescinded, but the
decrees were not executed in due form. In October of that year Andros
went to Hartford, to seize the Connecticut charter but it was not
surrendered. While Sir Edmund was bandying threats with stout Robert
Treat, the queller of Indians and now governor of Connecticut, in the
course of their evening conference the candles were suddenly blown out,
and when after some scraping of tinder they were lighted again the
document was nowhere to be found, for Captain Wadsworth had carried
it away and hidden it in the hollow trunk of a mighty oak tree.
Nevertheless for the moment the colony was obliged to submit to the
tyrant. Next day the secretary John Allyn wrote "Finis" on the colonial
records and shut up the book. Within another twelvemonth New York and
New Jersey were added to the viceroyalty of Andros; so that all the
northern colonies from the forests of Maine to the Delaware river were
thus brought under the arbitrary rule of one man, who was responsible to
no one but the king for whatever he might take it into his head to do.
[Sidenote: Sir Edmund Andros] [Sidenote: The Charter Oak]
The vexatious character of the new government was most strongly felt at
Boston where Andros had his headquarters. Measures were at once taken
for the erection of an Episcopal church, and meantime the royal order
was that one of the principal meeting-houses should be seized for the
use of the Church of England. This was an ominous beginning. In the
eyes of the people it was much more than a mere question of disturbing
Puritan prejudices. They had before them the experience of Scotland
during the past ten years, the savage times of "Old Mortality," the
times which had seen the tyrannical prelate, on the lonely moor, begging
in vain for his life, the times of Drumclog and Bothwell Brigg, of
Claverhouse and his flinty-hearted troopers, of helpless women tied to
stakes on the Solway shore and drowned by inches in the rising tide.
What had happened in one part of the world might happen in another, for
the Stuart policy was the same. It aimed not at securing toleration but
at asserting unchecked supremacy. Its demand for an inch was the prelude
to its seizing an ell, and so our forefathers understood it. Sir
Edmund's formal demand for the Old South Meeting-House was flatly
refused, but on Good Friday, 1687, the sexton was frightened into
opening it, and thenceforward Episcopal services were held there
alternately with the regular services until the overthrow of Andros. The
pastor, Samuel Willard, was son of the gallant veteran who had rescued
the beleaguered people of Brookfield in King Philip's war. Amusing
passages occurred between him and Sir Edmund, who relished the
pleasantry of keeping minister and congregation waiting an hour or
two in the street on Sundays before yielding to them the use of their
meeting-house. More kindly memories of the unpopular governor are
associated with the building of the first King's Chapel on the spot
where its venerable successor now stands. The church was not finished
until after Sir Edmund had taken his departure, but Lady Andros, who
died in February, 1688, lies in the burying-ground hard by. Her gentle
manners had won all hearts. For the moment, we are told, one touch of
nature made enemies kin, and as Sir Edmund walked to the townhouse
"many a head was bared to the bereaved husband that before had remained
stubbornly covered to the exalted governor." [38] [Sidenote: Episcopal
services in Boston] [Sidenote: Founding of the King's Chapel, 1689]
The despotic rule of Andros was felt in more serious ways than in the
seizing upon a meetinghouse. Arbitrary taxes were imposed, encroachments
were made upon common lands as in older manorial times, and the writ of
habeas corpus was suspended. Dudley was appointed censor of the press,
and nothing was allowed to be printed without his permission. All the
public records of the late New England governments were ordered to be
brought to Boston, whither it thus became necessary to make a tedious
journey in order to consult them. All deeds and wills were required
to be registered in Boston, and excessive fees were charged for the
registry. It was proclaimed that all private titles to land were to be
ransacked, and that whoever wished to have his title confirmed must pay
a heavy quit-rent, which under the circumstances amounted to blackmail.
The General Court was abolished. The power of taxation was taken from
the town-meetings and lodged with the governor. Against this crowning
iniquity the town of Ipswich, led by its sturdy pastor, John Wise, made
protest. In response Mr. Wise was thrown into prison, fined £50, and
suspended from the ministry. A notable and powerful character was this
John Wise. One of the broadest thinkers and most lucid writers of his
time, he seems like a forerunner of the liberal Unitarian divines of
the nineteenth century. His "Vindication of the Government of the New
England Churches," published in 1717, was a masterly exposition of the
principles of civil government, and became "a text book of liberty for
our Revolutionary fathers, containing some of the notable expressions
that are used in the Declaration of Independence." [Sidenote: Tyranny]
[Sidenote: John Wise of Ipswich]
It was on the trial of Mr. Wise in October, 1687, that Dudley openly
declared that the people of New England had now no further privileges
left them than not to be sold for slaves. Such a state of things in the
valley of the Euphrates would not have attracted comment; the peasantry
of central Europe would have endured it until better instructed; but in
an English community it could not last long. If James II. had remained
upon the throne, New England would surely have soon risen in rebellion
against Andros. But the mother country had by this time come to repent
the fresh lease of life which she had granted to the Stuart dynasty
after Cromwell's death. Tired of the disgraceful subservience of her
Court to the schemes of Louis XIV., tired of fictitious plots and
judicial murders, tired of bloody assizes and declarations of indulgence
and all the strange devices of Stuart tyranny, England endured the
arrogance of James but three years, and then drove him across the
Channel, to get such consolation as he might from his French paymaster
and patron. On the 4th of April, 1689, the youthful John Winslow brought
to Boston the news of the landing of the Prince of Orange in England.
For the space of two weeks there was quiet and earnest deliberation
among the citizens, as the success of the Prince's enterprise was not
yet regarded as assured. But all at once, on the morning of the 18th,
the drums beat to arms, the signal-fire was lighted on Beacon Hill, a
meeting was held at the Town-House, militia began to pour in from the
country, and Andros, summoned to surrender, was fain to beseech Mr.
Willard and the other ministers to intercede for him. But the ministers
refused. Next day the Castle was surrendered, the Rose frigate riding in
the harbour was seized and dismantled, and Andros was arrested as he was
trying to effect his escape disguised in woman's clothes. Dudley and the
other agents of tyranny were also imprisoned, and thus the revolution
was accomplished. It marks the importance which the New England colonies
were beginning to attain, that, before the Prince of Orange had fully
secured the throne, he issued a letter instructing the people of Boston
to preserve decorum and acquiesce yet a little longer in the government
of Andros, until more satisfactory arrangements could be made. But
Increase Mather, who was then in London on a mission in behalf of New
England, judiciously prevented this letter of instructions from being
sent. The zeal of the people outstripped the cautious policy of the
new sovereign, and provisional governments, in accordance with the old
charters, were at once set up in the colonies lately ruled by Andros.
Bradstreet now in his eighty-seventh year was reinstated as governor of
Massachusetts. Five weeks after this revolution in Boston the order to
proclaim King William and Queen Mary was received, amid such rejoicings
as had never before been seen in that quiet town, for it was believed
that self-government would now be guaranteed to New England. [Sidenote:
Fall of James II.] [Sidenote: Insurrection in Boston, and overthrow of
Andros, April 18, 1689]
This hope was at least so far realized that from the most formidable
dangers which had threatened it, New England was henceforth secured.
The struggle with the Stuarts was ended, and by this second revolution
within half a century the crown had received a check from which it never
recovered. There were troubles yet in store for England, but no more
such outrages as the judicial murders of Russell and Sidney. New England
had still a stern ordeal to go through, but never again was she to be
so trodden down and insulted as in the days of Andros. The efforts of
George III. to rule Englishmen despotically were weak as compared with
those of the Stuarts. In his time England had waxed strong enough to
curb the tyrant, America had waxed strong enough to defy and disown him.
After 1689 the Puritan no longer felt that his religion was in danger,
and there was a reasonable prospect that charters solemnly granted him
would be held sacred. William III. was a sovereign of modern type, from
whom freedom of thought and worship had nothing to fear. In his theology
he agreed, as a Dutch Calvinist, more nearly with the Puritans than with
the Church of England. At the same time he had no great liking for so
much independence of thought and action as New England had exhibited. In
the negotiations which now definitely settled the affairs of this part
of the world, the intractable behaviour of Massachusetts was borne in
mind and contrasted with the somewhat less irritating attitude of
the smaller colonies. It happened that the decree which annulled the
charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut had not yet been formally
enrolled. It was accordingly treated as void, and the old charters were
allowed to remain in force. They were so liberal that no change in
them was needed at the time of the Revolution, so that Connecticut was
governed under its old charter until 1818, and Rhode Island until 1842.
[Sidenote: Effects of the Revolution of 1689]
There was at this time a disposition on the part of the British
government to unite all the northern colonies under a single
administration. The French in Canada were fast becoming rivals to be
feared; and the wonderful explorations of La Salle, bringing the St.
Lawrence into political connection with the Mississippi, had at length
foreshadowed a New France in the rear of all the English colonies,
aiming at the control of the centre of the continent and eager to
confine the English to the sea-board. Already the relations of position
which led to the great Seven Years' War were beginning to shape
themselves; and the conflict between France and England actually broke
out in 1689, as soon as Louis XIV.'s hired servant, James II., was
superseded by William III. as king of England and head of a Protestant
league. [Sidenote: Need for union among all the northern colonies]
In view of this new state of affairs, it was thought desirable to unite
the northern English colonies under one head, so far as possible, in
order to secure unity of military action. But natural prejudices had to
be considered. The policy of James II. had aroused such bitter feeling
in America that William must needs move with caution. Accordingly he did
not seek to unite New York with New England, and he did not think it
worth while to carry out the attack which James had only begun upon
Connecticut and Rhode Island. As for New Hampshire, he seems to have
been restrained by what in the language of modern politics would be
called "pressure," brought to bear by certain local interests. [39]
But in the case of the little colony founded by the Pilgrims of the
Mayflower there was no obstacle. She was now annexed to Massachusetts,
which also received not only Maine but even Acadia, just won from the
French; so that, save for the short break at Portsmouth, the coast of
Massachusetts now reached all the way from Martha's Vineyard to the Gulf
of St. Lawrence. [Sidenote: Plymouth, Maine, and Acadia, annexed to
Massachusetts]
But along with this great territorial extension there went some
curtailment of the political privileges of the colony. By the new
charter of 1692 the right of the people to be governed by a legislature
of their own choosing was expressly confirmed. The exclusive right of
this legislature to impose taxes was also confirmed. But henceforth no
qualification of church-membership, but only a property qualification,
was to be required of voters; the governor was to be appointed by the
crown instead of being elected by the people; and all laws passed by
the legislature were to be sent to England for royal approval. These
features of the new charter,--the extension, or if I may so call it, the
secularization of the franchise, the appointment of the governor
by the crown, and the power of veto which the crown expressly
reserved,--were grave restrictions upon the independence which
Massachusetts had hitherto enjoyed. Henceforth her position was to be
like that of the other colonies with royal governors. But her history
did not thereby lose its interest or significance, though it became,
like the history of most of the colonies, a dismal record of
irrepressible bickerings between the governor appointed by the crown and
the legislature elected by the people. In the period that began in 1692
and ended in 1776, the movements of Massachusetts, while restricted
and hampered, were at the same time forced into a wider orbit. She was
brought into political sympathy with Virginia. While two generations
of men were passing across the scene, the political problems of
Massachusetts were assimilated to those of Virginia. In spite of all
the other differences, great as they were, there was a likeness in the
struggles between the popular legislature and the royal governor which
subordinated them all. It was this similarity of experience, during
the eighteenth century, that brought these two foremost colonies into
cordial alliance during the struggle against George III., and thus made
it possible to cement all the colonies together in the mighty nation
whose very name is fraught with so high and earnest a lesson to
mankind,--the UNITED STATES! [Sidenote: Massachusetts becomes a royal
province]
For such a far-reaching result, the temporary humiliation of
Massachusetts was a small price to pay. But it was not until long after
the accession of William III. that things could be seen in these grand
outlines. With his coronation began the struggle of seventy years
between France and England, far grander than the struggle between Rome
and Carthage, two thousand years earlier, for primacy in the world,
for the prerogative of determining the future career of mankind. That
warfare, so fraught with meaning, was waged as much upon American as
upon European ground; and while it continued, it was plainly for the
interest of the British government to pursue a conciliatory policy
toward its American colonies, for without their wholehearted assistance
it could have no hope of success. As soon as the struggle was ended, and
the French power in the colonial world finally overthrown, the perpetual
quarrels between the popular legislatures and the royal governors led
immediately to the Stamp Act and the other measures of the British
government that brought about the American revolution. People sometimes
argue about that revolution as if it had no past behind it and was
simply the result of a discussion over abstract principles. [Sidenote:
Seeds of the American Revolution already sown]
We can now see that while the dispute involved an abstract principle of
fundamental importance to mankind, it was at the same time for Americans
illustrated by memories sufficiently concrete and real. James Otis
in his prime was no further distant from the tyranny of Andros than
middle-aged men of to-day are distant from the Missouri Compromise. The
sons of men cast into jail along with John Wise may have stood silent in
the moonlight on Griffin's Wharf and looked on while the contents of the
tea-chests were hurled into Boston harbour. In the events we have here
passed in review, it may be seen, so plainly that he who runs may read,
how the spirit of 1776 was foreshadowed in 1689.
