Conceived in Liberty (75 page)

The fall of Sir Edmund Andros, crucial as it was, was a reflection of the fall of his far mightier sovereign, James II, who was deposed in the virtually bloodless Glorious Revolution of November-December 1688 and replaced by William and Mary of Orange. William and Mary (the Protestant daughter of the Catholic James) were crowned the sovereigns of England in February 1689. This moderate shift from James II’s despotism, as well as from his attempt to grant religious liberty to his fellow Catholics, brought an end to the seventeenth-century era of conflict and rebellion in England, Indeed, there has been nothing like a revolutionary upheaval in England since.

The news of the Glorious Revolution brought the thrill and joy of expected liberation to the northern colonies, all of which, save Pennsylvania, were groaning under the tyranny of Andros and the Dominion of New England. The example of the Glorious Revolution was all that was needed to fire the spark of revolt in the northern colonies. If the English tyrant could be overthrown, why not his American henchman?

Indeed all that was needed to spark a revolution was the news that the Glorious Revolution had begun. The news of William’s November landing in England first reached Boston on April 5, and the successful outcome was not yet known in America. Andros, who had privately heard the truth in eastern Maine many weeks before, tried to keep the news from the people by arresting the hapless young man who brought the news. When he refused to remain silent, Andros sent him to prison without bail “for bringing traitorous and treasonable libels and papers of news.” But news of this sort could not now be kept secret and preparation for a coup against Andros got quietly under way.

Wild rumors spread about the colony that Andros was a secret “papist,” that he was conspiring with the French and the Indians to take over the colony, etc. It became evident to the leaders of the colony that a popular revolution against Andros was inevitable. So the leaders determined to take charge of the revolution to keep it in channels that would be safe for themselves and “to prevent what ill-effects an unformed tumult might produce.” Not only did John Usher shift to insurrection, but even that old rogue William Stoughton managed to preserve his record of being on the winning side by joining the leaders of the impending rebellion.

The revolution was precipitated by Andros’ panicky attempt to suppress the growing opposition to his rule; specifically, an attempt at a special meeting of the Council to try Rev. Cotton Mather, eminent son of Rev. Increase Mather, for preaching sedition. The revolution broke out on the morning set for the trial, April 28. The speedy and virtually bloodless revolt was launched that morning when bands of boys and youths ran through Boston shouting falsely that the popular revolution had already begun in the other parts of town. Captain George of the naval frigate
Rose
was seized. Two hundred armed rebels of the militia gathered under the command of Capt. John Nelson. The English soldiers at the fort showed reluctance to fire on the people of Boston. Edmund Andros surrendered, and was kept in prison for a year by the revolutionaries, as were the other hated leaders of the Andros regime, including Edward Randolph, Joseph Dudley, John West, John Palmer, and Charles Lidgett. Of the twenty-four men imprisoned with Andros, twenty were English bureaucrats, military and civilian, and only four were from New England.

To justify this revolution, the leaders issued on April 18 a Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants and Inhabitants and the County Adjacent, drawn up by Cotton Mather. The Declaration set forth the rebel case, including the numerous oppressions the citizenry had suffered, and praised the Glorious Revolution in England.

The revolutionaries were now faced with the inevitable problem of what to do next. The radicals urged the frank reproclamation of the old Massachusetts Bay charter that had been vacated five years before. But the leadership was not prepared to take so drastic a step. Instead, the leaders quickly established on April 20 a thirty-seven-man revolutionary Council for the Safety of the People and Conservation of the Peace. This council was heavily weighted with Boston merchants, and included old magistrates, councillors of the Dominion, and former private citizens. This self-constituted council now named the cautious and venerable ex-governor Simon Bradstreet as president and Wait Winthrop as commander of the militia. The Council for Safety then summoned a popular convention to meet on May 9. To unite the people of Massachusetts,
the council took the highly significant step of suggesting that the towns extend the right to vote from Puritan church members to all freeholders. Most of the Massachusetts towns quickly complied. Delegates were selected at meetings of the “freemen and inhabitants” of the towns (an “inhabitant” being someone over the age of twenty-four, with an estate of eighty pounds or more). At the convention that met on May 9 were sixty-six delegates from forty-four towns of the colony.

The relatively radical convention wanted the old charter reproclaimed and it appealed to the old pre-Dudley Council of Magistrates—the last under the old charter—to resume its functions and to reconstitute a General Court with the convention delegates as the House of Deputies. The more conservative magistrates, however, refused, and the Council for Safety continued to exercise rule until the next enlarged convention met on May 22.

The second convention represented fifty-four towns, of which forty-two had instructed their delegates to insist on resumption of the old charter. Once again, the majority of the more timid and conservative magistrates opposed the plan. Finally, however, the popular will prevailed with forty-four towns voting for restoration of the charter government, and nine for continuing temporary rule by the Council for Safety while awaiting the final royal decision.

The last charter governor, Simon Bradstreet, as well as the charter magistrates, now jointly agreed to reconstitute the old General Court and to resume the charter government. The convention further overruled the governor and magistrates by insisting that the Council for Safety
not
continue as ruling magistrate body of the colony. With good reason, the delegates distrusted the revolutionary fervor of such council members as Wait Winthrop and the notorious William Stoughton. This action of the convention removed them from their posts of power. However, within a week the convention decided to compromise slightly by naming Winthrop, Samuel Shrimpton, and three other opportunists to vacancies in the old Council of Magistrates. By the end of May this arrangement had been completed, and the general joy was at this moment redoubled by news of the coronation of William and Mary. A great celebration ensued in Boston, with pomp and banquets, and wine literally flowing in the streets.

But celebration was not enough to secure the fruits of victory. Caution was the watchword of the new monarch, and one of his first actions in January was to order all previous arrangements continued in force until further notice; specifically, Sir Edmund Andros was to continue his rule over New England. Fortunately, however. Rev. Increase Mather, who had fled to England to plead Massachusetts case against Andros, was able to block transmission of the king’s order to New England. Indeed, Mather went further and, with his old friend and parishioner
Sir William Phips—a native of eastern Maine—petitioned the king to restore all the New England charters. The cautious Crown would not go that far, but it did agree to remove Andros immediately and to call him “unto an account for his maladministration.” The king also agreed to draft for Massachusetts a new charter that was to grant at least some of the colony’s demands. Mather even succeeded in introducing into Parliament a bill to restore the Massachusetts charter. The bill passed the House of Commons, but was blocked by the House of Lords. The old guard of the royal bureaucracy politicked for this roadblock. Sir Robert Southwell of the Plantation Office warned a colleague that the bill would “so confound the present settlement in those parts and their dependence on England, that, ’tis hard to say where the mischief will stop or how far the Act of Navigation will be overthrown thereby.”

While Mather’s valiant efforts failed to win resumption of the old charter, he did succeed in winning temporary royal recognition of the revolutionary government. This news too was received with great joy, as if the old charter was as good as renewed; for on June 5 the old political institutions of Massachusetts had been reconstituted, including a General Court and a newly elected House of Deputies.

Along with the temporary recognition of the Massachusetts regime, the king ordered Andros and the other prisoners sent back to England. Many radicals wanted to ignore the order and keep the hated oppressors in jail. But after many weeks of delay, the prisoners were shipped back to England in February 1690.

The citizens of Massachusetts realized that the first order of the day was to convince the Crown of the justice of the grievances against Andros and the need to restore the old charter. Right after the two-day revolution, local committees busily gathered evidence of grievance against the Andros regime. By the end of 1689 a central committee was organized in Boston to collect the testimony. Numerous pamphlets on the Andros regime were published in Massachusetts to try to win the minds of the Crown. And on May 20, 1689, as soon as Massachusetts heard the news of the proclamation of William and Mary, the colony explained to the sovereign that the people had risen “as one man” in emulation of the “late glorious enterprise” and were able to accomplish the victory “without the least bloodshed or plunder.”

In England during 1690, Massachusetts and the Andros-Randolph party argued their respective cases, their charges and countercharges, before the Committee for Trade and Plantations. Massachusetts sent over two agents, Thomas Oates and Elisha Cooke, to aid Mather. The committee, headed by the former Earl of Danby—now the Marquis of Carmarthen—showed obvious partiality to the Andros side in the hearings. Quickly the committee cleared Andros and Randolph of charges against them; Carmarthen
did not even give Massachusetts the chance to present its case. Also powerful on the pro-Andros side were the two prominent royal bureaucrats, Robert Southwell and William Blathwayt. Edward Randolph helped turn the hearings into an attack on Massachusetts by open testimony and by publishing anonymous tracts against the colony, concentrating on its failure to enforce the navigation laws. In the meanwhile, Parliament tried to pass a bill prohibiting the voiding of any corporate charters. This would have restored the old Massachusetts charter; but the bill took too much power away from the Crown for William Ill’s comfort, and King William defeated the bill by dissolving Parliament in February 1690. It was becoming clear that Massachusetts would have to settle for a new charter granting far less independence than the old.

At home, the Massachusetts regime made halting last-minute attempts to gain support among non-Puritan church members. By the end of May 1689 the towns had pledged “enlargement of the freemen,” but nothing had been done for a year. After a petition for enlargement was sent to the General Court in 1690, the court finally repealed the restrictive clauses, and voted to admit to freemanship anyone able to pay four shillings and the poll tax, or whose income from land was six pounds. In the spring of 1690 seven hundred new freemen were admitted, of whom nearly two-thirds were nonchurch members. But Puritans were still favored in the new regulations, for church members were specially exempt from the property qualifications.

As might be expected, the electrifying news of the overthrow and arrest of Andros in Boston galvanized the other colonies under Andros’ sway. In Plymouth the people seized Andros’ main henchman, the councillor Nathaniel Clarke, and reestablished the old Plymouth government under former governor Thomas Hinckley. Clarke was sent to England along with Andros and the others, hopefully to answer for his “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Plymouth, always charterless, and anxious to obtain a proper charter, naively thanked Increase Mather for supposedly presenting Plymouth’s case at court. But on arriving in England, Plymouth’s agent, Rev. Ichabod Wiswall, soon discovered that Massachusetts was trying to absorb Plymouth in its
own
charter—in short, to play the same game by which Connecticut had seized New Haven three decades before. Mather, indeed, had already managed to incorporate Plymouth when Wiswall arrived and was able to strike out the clause, an act for which Mather dubbed Wiswall “the weasel.”

But Mather had an enormous advantage for winning his way: money. Mather was supplied with the very large sum of 1,700 pounds, which he was able to use for the purpose intended: to spread about in the right places. Plymouth, on the other hand, was a poor colony and had little money to supply; Wiswall had virtually nothing to bestow for
favors. When in February 1691 the Plymouth General Court in desperation asked the towns to subscribe 500 pounds “to keep their independence,” the sum could not be raised. Plymouth’s future was fading fast.

When New Hampshire heard the glorious news of Andros’ arrest, it did not, like the other New England colonies, have a recent self-governing past to look back upon. Instead, it had been strictly a royally controlled colony, and before that, for decades part of Massachusetts.

The four New Hampshire towns first attempted to draw up a self-governing constitution to frame a government. The constitutional convention met at Portsmouth on January 24, 1690, and included twenty-two of the leading men of the colony. It included also the rehabilitated revolutionary hero, Edward Gove of Hampton, as well as Major William Vaughan and Major Richard Waldron from Portsmouth. The convention agreed to a brief constitution providing for election of a president, to be head of the province’s militia, and a Council of Ten representing the people of the four towns. The president and Council were also to call an assembly of representatives from each town.

This was the first constitution in American history to be drawn up by popular convention and then submitted to the people for ratification. But the town of Hampton, worried about too much power accruing to Portsmouth under this arrangement, refused to elect representatives, and so the constitution fell through.