Conceived in Liberty (67 page)

The Dudley clique happily engaged in their feast of privilege. Dudley, Wharton, the Winthrops, and others banded together to secure themselves a grant to the vast “Million Acre Purchase” of the Merrimack River, a territory that included consolidation of previous arbitrary land claims and dubious Indian purchases. To facilitate the granting of governmental powers over the area, the Council formed the Merrimack land into a new Merrimack County, and these grants were secured by giving both William Blathwayt and Edward Randolph shares in the new company.

But it took only a few weeks in office for Edward Randolph to become disenchanted with the Dudley regime. For he saw, to his horror, that the opportunist clique was interested far more in using power to gain privileges for itself, than in regulating and taxing its fellow citizens to benefit the English Crown. In general, this was an easygoing regime. In his inaugural address, Dudley had promised a transition as “plain and easy as possible.”
Indeed, many of the old officeholders were reappointed by the Council; only a few men were hauled before the Council for contempt, and only one was imprisoned for voicing sedition. Some of the Puritans were scandalized at the appearance of Anglican services and the use of the Anglican Prayer Book and by the “high-handed wickedness” of non-Puritans in Boston, drinking, and talking “profanely and bawdily to the great disturbance of the town, and grief of good people.” But the Council, to Randolph’s chagrin, did not foster the Church of England actively. Randolph also grumbled about the paucity of Anglicans in high office in the Dominion. On the Council only he and Mason were Anglicans, and only a handful of the more than sixty officers of the militia were not Puritan church members. Randolph also found himself losing out in the division of the patronage spoils to the numerous relatives of the Dudley-Wharton clique.

Randolph’s chagrin was also directed to the alleged failure of this merchant ruling group to enforce the Navigation Acts with the enthusiasm that he felt was required. Dudley, however, had really proceeded auspiciously from the Randolph point of view—quickly launching the radical innovation of trying Navigation Act violations in newly constituted admiralty courts. These were royal prerogative courts that decided cases outside the safeguards of jury trial and of the features of the common law. In this way, the government could bypass the checks of jury trial. Dudley worked out the stratagem with Samuel Pepys, secretary of the Navy Board in England, and in only two weeks had condemned three ships. But the implacable Randolph was not satisfied. Writing home, he denounced Dudley as “a man of base, servile and anti-monarchial principle,” and portrayed Wharton as a smuggler and a seditionary who had criticized his, Randolph’s, appointment to the secretariat as “intended to enthrall this people in vassalage.” Actually, the root of Randolph’s carping was the fact that Dudley allowed the naval commander, as well as Randolph, to initiate actions enforcing the navigation laws, thus depriving Randolph of the financial rewards for the commander’s successful suits.

Above all, Randolph chafed at the failure of the Council to adopt his cherished goal of imposing a drastic program of despotism and plunder, run by himself, on the Dominion. Randolph wanted to replace the county officers registering land titles with one central office—his own—where everyone, for a handsome fee, would be forced to register his land title. When the Council refused this attempted grab, Randolph cried out in righteous indignation to his friends in England: “The beneficial perquisites of my office are alienated!” Randolph went on to propose a grand compulsory registry of all persons over sixteen; the forced licensing of all ministers; and the requirement that all ministers must have the approval of the governor to assume their posts—in short, a virtual Anglican establishment, and restriction of non-Anglican services in the Dominion. These proposals too were rebuffed. To Randolph this was base ingratitude by his own creatures whom he had elevated to state power. Randolph now found
that his erstwhile allies were individuals who “agree in nothing but sharing the country amongst themselves and laying out long tracts of lands,” and who believe that “this change was intended only to advantage them”—rather than Randolph or the Crown. Of all the councillors, only Usher and Stoughton now met with his approval.

One saving grace of the Dudley administration, a grace that worked to keep its power relatively weak, was scarcity of funds. Virtually its only meager sources of supply were the excise on liquors, and fees. It did not dare levy any direct taxes without having the approval of an assembly.

As partners in the Atherton Company, councillors Fitz-John and Wait Winthrop were largely interested in finally seizing control of the Narragansett Country, now incorporated into the Dominion of New England. The Council, which included several other partners of the Atherton Company, promptly moved to implement the Cranfield report of three years earlier. At the end of June, Dudley, Fitz-John Winthrop, Randolph, and Wharton traveled to Kingston in King’s Province and reorganized the whole government of the Narragansett Country. They proclaimed that absolute ownership of the land belonged to the Atherton proprietors, and announced that anyone settling on these lands without the permission of these arbitrarily decreed proprietors would have to purchase or rent the land. Rhode Island dared not contest this naked seizure of its territory, its life being under the continuing threat of
quo warranto
action. The proprietors quickly began to exploit this windfall by selling a tract of land to a group of French Huguenot refugees at twenty pounds for 100 acres.

Finally, in December 1686 the complexion of New England and the northern colonies underwent another change. Sir Edmund Andros arrived in Boston to assume the rule of an expanded, far more centralized and Crown-oriented Dominion of New England. The history of the northern colonies was entering a new and fateful phase.

Having failed to seize Connecticut in the midst of King Philip’s War, Governor Edmund Andros cemented an agreement with the Iroquois, to continue the old arrangement they had with the Dutch for the fur trade. He did this particularly because French Jesuit missionaries from Canada were beginning to dissolve some of the traditional enmity of the Iroquois toward the French. The furthest white outpost of New York was now Schenectady, a Dutch hamlet founded over a decade earlier by an agent of Rensselaerswyck, the only continuing patroonship which extended over several counties’ worth of area around Albany. To regularize Iroquois relations, Andros created a Board of Commissioners of Indian Affairs, stationed at Albany. Appointed secretary was a young Scotsman, Robert Livingston, son of an eminent Presbyterian minister and secretary of the manor of Rensselaerswyck, as well as of the town of Albany.

Albany’s vital importance for the fur trade stemmed from its locus at the junction of the Hudson and the Mohawk rivers. The Mohawk provided the opening to the west, along which the Iroquois could serve as middlemen by purchasing the furs of the Indian tribes of the middle west, and reselling them to the Dutch or English, who would transport them down the Hudson overseas. The most important citizens of Albany, even after the English reconquest, continued to be the Dutch
Handlaers,
the merchants engaged in fur trading.

The fur trade was crucial to the economy of the northern colonies in this era, and fur traders were always attempting to opt out of the shifting winds of free competition by obtaining exclusive monopoly privileges for
themselves from the government. Governor Andros proved amenable to granting monopolies. In the summer of 1678 he granted a monopoly of the fur trade to the resident merchants of Albany, reserving the monopoly of the overseas trade for the merchants of New York City. The privileged monopolists (or oligopolists) of Albany, were, of course, not happy about having to sell their furs to a similarly privileged set of oligopolists (here defined as several receivers of common grants of exclusive privilege). The twenty-odd Albany
Handlaers,
however, did manage to get rid of Timothy Cooper, an Albany agent for the manorial ruler of Springfield, Massachusetts, John Pynchon. Cooper’s private mail was purloined by the Albany magistrates, and on the strength of critical statements about the
Handlaers,
Cooper was officially expelled from Albany by the governor and the Council.

In the same year, Andros took the highly significant step of establishing a monopoly of the important export commodity, flour. By 1680 all bolting and packaging of flour was reserved exclusively to resident merchants of New York City, who also had to be freemen of that city. This flour monopoly brought in much revenue to the Crown; the monopolists payed for the privilege in the form of inspection fees, taxes, etc. But it rightly embittered the merchants outside the city, who were grievously injured, and the wheat farmers of New York, who saw their prices fall sharply as their market was greatly narrowed to a few privileged New York City merchants. The result was the crushing of the successful flour mills already established at such spots as Rensselaerswyck, Albany, and Kingston, the last town barely escaping fines to punish the vigor of its protests.

The wheat and other grain farmers were further mulcted by an absolute prohibition on the export of grain in force since 1673. This ban greatly depressed the price of wheat earned by the farmer, while privileging the New York merchants with an artifically cheap cost for the grain purchased. Grain prices were further lowered artificially by prohibiting the distilling of liquor in New York, thus shutting off an important market for local grain. This prohibition privileged the New York City merchants again by lowering the cost of grain and by choking off the effective competition of local whiskey with West India rum, which constituted one of the merchants’ major imports.

Furthermore, the Duke of York ordered Andros to set up a port monopoly for New York City. All ships bound for any port within the original territory of New Netherland were now compelled to enter their goods at the New York Customs House. This provided the Crown with assured customs revenue at a port it could easily watch, and furnished much extra income for the privileged merchants, but again at the expense of greatly crippling trade at such places as Long Island. The settlers of Suffolk County on eastern Long Island, long accustomed to exchanging their whale oil for the manufactured goods of New England, were now forced into the extra costs of
transporting these goods via the long detour of New York City and of paying there the customs duties that they could have avoided at Long Island. With all these monopolistic privileges granted to the New York City merchants by the government, it is not surprising that their profits often ranged from one hundred to several hundred percent.

The network of monopoly privilege also tightened in all the several towns of New York Province. Each town and village government laid down severe restrictions against competition from outside its locale or from nonresident visitors. Only qualified freemen of each town enjoyed the “freedom” of the town, including the right to carry on a trade or craft without hindrance or harassment. Thus the bakers of Albany pushed through an ordinance forbidding any transients to bake in the city, and a special tax was levied on seasonal visitors. And even the relatively liberal town of Huntington forbade “any person... of any other town upon this island” to whale or fish within its jurisdiction.

A particularly important urban monopoly had been granted, in the days of New Netherland, to the carters of New York City. Historians have erroneously termed the carters “workers,” in the sense of modern employees, but they were not at all proletarians. They were, rather, self-employed artisans, who sold their wares to the public; therefore, monopoly privileges made them in effect virtually medieval and mercantilistic guilds. The very creation of the monopoly introduced a conflict of interest between the privileged carters and the rest of the colony: the carters exploited their monopoly fully by working less and charging more; whereas the colony balked at the obvious shortage of carting service created by the privilege. During the Dutch reoccupation, the carters complained that non-licensed men and boys were engaging in trucking—that is, taking advantage of the attractive monopoly-won conditions, as well as of the shortage, to enter the field. The court obligingly ordered these boys not to “ride cart any more.” Negroes, free or slave, had long been prohibited from becoming carters. But in 1674 Governor Andros suspended the right to cart for one carter who refused to haul cobblestones for the governor. Two years later the city decreed minimum loads that the licensed carters would be forced to carry. In 1677 twelve New York City carters were expelled from their occupation and heavily fined, whereupon the carters submitted and promised not to disobey again. The carters thus found that a monopoly privilege could cut both ways.

In addition to imposing monopoly privileges and crippling Long Island trade, Andros also offended the Dutch citizens by partiality to Anglican practice. In 1676 Rev. Nicholas Van Rensselaer, a protégé of King Charles and the Duke of York, came to New York to take up his holdings at Rensselaerswyck, the only Dutch patroonship that had withstood the rigors of the years. Although Van Rensselaer had been ordained by an Anglican bishop and not by the ruling Classis of Amsterdam of the Dutch Reformed Church, Governor
Andros still had the effrontery to appoint Van Rensselaer to the pastoral ministry of the Dutch Reformed Church at Albany. The Reverend Mr. Van Nieuwenhuysen of New York City protested vigorously and was joined by the young Dutch Reformed merchant who had emigrated from Germany, Jacob Leisler, whose wife was related to the leading Dutch families of the colony. Leisler accused Van Rensselaer of “false preaching” but the court found for the patroon, and Leisler was forced to pay court costs and imprisoned for a time.

Soon Andros moved in to compel the virtual separation of the Dutch Reformed Church in New York from its connection with the Classis of Amsterdam. In 1678 the Dutch church in New Castle on the Delaware appointed a young minister and asked for his ordination without having to send him to Amsterdam. At this point, Andros saw his opportunity, and ordered Van Nieuwenhuysen and the other Dutch ministers to form themselves into their own classis, and then to ordain the minister if qualified. The Dutch minister complied because “it would not be safe to disobey” Andros. The Amsterdam classis approved this
fait accompli.