Conceived in Liberty (76 page)

The immediate reaction was a petition signed by hundreds of the leading men of New Hampshire, urging Massachusetts to resume, at least temporarily, government of the colony. The revolutionary Massachusetts government promptly granted the request at the end of February, and in England Mather did his best to absorb New Hampshire as well as Plymouth in his forthcoming new charter. But Massachusetts’ plans were foiled from two sides. In the first place, the independent and unbridled town of Hampton, led by Nathaniel Weare, balked at a permanent surrender to Massachusetts. And Weare was known in England as the man who had gone there from New Hampshire to lay low the hated Governor Cranfield five years before. Perhaps more important was the partial reactivation of the old Mason menace to the liberty and property of the residents of New Hampshire. Mason, who had been on the Council for New England, had sold his proprietary claim to New Hampshire to Samuel Allen, and Allen was able to persuade the king to nominate himself to be governor of the new royal colony of New Hampshire. Allen named his son-in-law, the former Dominion treasurer John Usher, to be lieutenant governor and operating head of the colony. Usher assumed his post in August 1692. New Hampshire had lost its struggle for self-government.

Usher was not only a son-in-law of the new proprietary pretender,
but had himself bought a great amount of New Hampshire land from Mason, and therefore depended on the latter’s rather dubious title. Usher’s return brought the Mason (now Allen) claims once again into the forefront of New Hampshire politics. The leading enemies of the Mason claims—Vaughan, Waldron, Weare—now banded together to oppose the Usher regime.

Connecticut too received the news of the Boston revolution with jubilation. Facing the question of what to do next, the colony confronted three alternatives: to resume the old charter government, which, unlike Massachusetts, had not been formally voided; to continue the Dominion government, which had virtually dissolved; or to follow Massachusetts’ path and establish a provincial Committee for Safety. Leading the fight for the first alternative was James Fitch, who also wanted to exclude such top Andros supporters as Fitz-John Winthrop and John Allyn from public office. Counterpressure for continuing the defunct Dominion came from Rev. Gershom Bulkeley, of Wethersfield, and Edward Palmes, both of whom had been made judges by Andros.

Connecticut had an election on May 9, 1689, and the delegates decided to reestablish the former governor Robert Treat and the General Court. One of the court’s first acts was to resume the old laws and institutions of the colony. But while the bulk of the freemen agreed with Fitch that the old Andros henchmen must be excluded, the more conservative delegates decided to reappoint the old Council of Magistrates. As a further blow to the revolutionary forces, they appointed such old Andros supporters as Fitz-John Winthrop and Samuel Willys members of the Council. The old opportunist clique, anxious to head off Fitch’s likely drive for democratic reform of the charter, had managed to outmaneuver the popular party. The decisions of the convention were submitted to the body of freemen for approval, but the freemen could only vote for or against the entire panel of officials selected by the delegates. They did not have the option of voting down such individual nominees as Allyn or Winthrop. Still battling the new dispensation, however, were such ultrareactionaries as Gershom Bulkeley and Edward Palmes, who pleaded with England to restore the old Dominion rule.

In a sense, Bulkeley was more prophetic than his more moderate colleagues. For James Fitch, councillor and the great leader of the Connecticut revolution, soon came to dominate the Council and the Connecticut government; the newly elected councillors were followers of Fitch. Fitch, an open admirer of Jacob Leisler’s revolutionary government in New York, was able by 1692 to widen the Connecticut franchise. The only requirement for freemanship was now possession of a forty-shilling freehold. Moreover, a highly democratic election system was installed: each freeman could write out a list of twenty nominees for the fourteen posts of governor, deputy governor, and magistrates.
The officials were to be elected from the top twenty names submitted by the freemen, in a second series of town meetings.

Connecticut had decided for self-government and for resuming its old charter, but the Crown had not yet spoken. Despite a lack of able agents in England, Connecticut won from the king’s lawyers in August 1690 a decision that its old charter was still valid. Connecticut was not yet wholly out of the woods, though its self-governing charter had been reconfirmed.

Rhode Island did not receive the news of Andros’ arrest with the same enthusiasm as its sister colonies. For one thing, it shared Andros’ deep antipathy to Massachusetts. For another, it was grateful for Andros’ support in the old Narragansett controversy with Connecticut. Indeed, Andros had been preparing to flee to Rhode Island before his capture. Rhode Island now determined to return to its old self-governing charter. The timorous former governor Walter Clarke, however, refused to reassume his office; it was temporarily occupied at the end of February by John Coggeshall, the previous deputy governor. At the end of April, Newport issued a summons to the other towns of Rhode Island to meet there on May 1 to plot the colony’s future course. There the delegates decided to resume operations under the old and never officially vacated charter. But once more the timid Walter Clarke refused to re-assume his post, and the permanent post of governor was granted to the Quaker Henry Bull.

Thus, on the advent of the Glorious Revolution in England, the New England colonies took the welcome opportunity to overthrow the Dominion regime. Upon the imprisonment of Andros and his henchmen, Massachusetts returned, at least temporarily, to self-government according to its old charter and institutions, and was followed by Plymouth, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire—the last temporarily placing itself under Massachusetts sovereignty.

We remember, however, that the Dominion of New England had expanded to New York and to the banks of the Delaware. These lower colonies had been left in charge of Lt. Gov. Francis Nicholson. Nicholson also learned of the Glorious Revolution in early February but kept it from the public. Finally, news of the overthrow of Andros reached New York at approximately the end of April.

Already the Dominion was in a far stronger position in New York than in New England, for when Andros and his colleagues were arrested there were no other Dominion officials in New England to continue the old regime in power. Furthermore, there were previous charters to which the colonies could conveniently return. But New York and the lower Dominion areas were still controlled by Nicholson and his subordinate officials; and there were no charters to fall back upon.

Governor Nicholson, the representative of the king’s authority in New
York and the Jerseys, was now faced with the problem of what to do at this point. His first step was to call the New York members of the Council of the Dominion together, but, prudently, they failed to appear. Nicholson was left with the appointed civil and military officials who constituted the
de facto
government under him. At the end of April, twenty-six such officials began to meet as a ruling convention or council.

The first rebellion against the Dominion in New York broke out, as might be expected, in the always turbulent Suffolk County on eastern Long Island. Led by Southold, the freeholders of Suffolk met at Southhampton on May 3, ousted all the local appointed civil and military officials, and elected their own. They also demanded the return of the tax monies that had been “extorted” from them. The Suffolk towns were soon followed by the towns of Westchester and Queens, each of which established home rule. The grievances of Queens (on western Long Island) were aggravated by the fact that drafted militiamen from that county had not been paid for their part in a military expedition Dongan had sent against French Canada. Now Nicholson decided to pay these ex-soldiers, but determined to raise the funds by ordering the collection of Queens County’s arrears for back taxes. The money was never collected from the rebellious people of Queens, and this protest of militiamen’s pay was promptly joined by Kings and Suffolk counties. On May 9 the protesting ex-soldiers gathered,
armed,
at Jamaica to demand their promised pay. Nicholson and his Council agreed. This was followed on the same day by demonstrations for back pay by the New York City militia, with similar results.

We have seen that the Catholicism of several high officials in New York had intensified the anti-Catholic hysteria in New York attendant on troubles with the French. New York was the colony closest to French Canada and the Iroquois, and conflicts with the Catholic French had grown in recent years.

By May 6 discontent had spread to New York City itself. After a vote to apply customs revenue to strengthen the fortification of New York, the charge was made that the collector of customs, Matthew Plowman, was a Catholic. So hypersensitive were New Yorkers becoming on this issue that a government official at Setauket (Brookhaven), Long Island, refused to serve as a messenger to Andros, fearing that the people, “taking him to be a papist... would raise and plunder his house, if not offer violence to his family.” Using the accusation against Plowman as a convenient excuse, the merchants of New York City now refused to pay the customs duties, asserting that they were illegal decrees of the executive.

In short, the atmosphere in New York by the end of the first week in May was becoming increasingly revolutionary. Anti-Catholic prejudice
quickly spurred a tax rebellion and an implicit call for a representative assembly with sole power to levy taxes. And meanwhile, Dominion government was caught in an increasingly aggravated “inner contradiction”: The clamor for promised back pay by the armed militia grew at the same time that refusal to pay taxes increased in scope and depth. How then could the Nicholson regime impose more taxes to pay the promised back salaries?

Nicholson’s promises were not enough to satisfy the increasingly revolutionary militia. On May 10 the militia captains of the Long Island towns of Southampton, East Hampton, and Huntington demanded that the Manhattan fort “be delivered into the hands of such persons as the country shall choose”—that is, clearly
out
of existing hands. The ruling convention of New York City officials denounced the militia action as mutinous, but the Long Island towns, joined by Hempstead, refused to send delegates to any expanded convention called by Nicholson. On May 22 the Nicholson convention ordered the signers of the various petitions to appear before it. They flatly refused.

The developing revolutionary temper of the militia was further aggravated by Nicholson’s failure to proclaim William and Mary as his sovereign. This prompted further suspicions of his allegiance to the Catholic and absolutist James II. Matters finally came to a head on May 30. Lieutenant Hendrick Cuyler of the militia directed a corporal to place a militiaman at a certain sensitive post at the fort. When the regular English soldier refused to give way to a New Yorker at the post, Cuyler took the dispute to Nicholson. Not only did the governor side with the soldier and order the militia corporal from his room at gunpoint, but he told Lieutenant Cuyler that he feared for his life and would “set the town in fire” rather than see the situation continue.

Word of Nicholson’s threats spread through New York City like wildfire, and caused an immediate revolt by the militia. The New York militia decided to ignore all commands from either Nicholson or his appointed militia commander, Col. Nicholas Bayard. Further, the militia proceeded to take over and hold the fort. The day after this revolt, the militia issued A Declaration of the Inhabitant Soldiers. The Declaration, signed by some four hundred men, avowed militia support for the new Protestant monarch, and explained the militia’s seizure of the fort by Nicholson’s threat to burn the city, and by his alleged aid to a Catholic plot to slaughter New Yorkers.

There was now no definite government in New York. The revolutionary militiamen held the fort themselves, but had not yet openly repudiated Nicholson as governor. The governor now foolishly precipitated his own ouster by ordering Colonel Bayard to take command of the militia. When Bayard ordered the militia companies to leave the neighborhood of the fort, most of them refused; they joined the company
that happened to be taking its turn occupying the fort that day, a company headed by a leading Dutch Calvinist merchant of German origin, Capt. Jacob Leisler. The militiamen had now openly repudiated the orders and the rule of the governor.

There were now two parallel governments in New York: the militia, and Governor Nicholson and his convention officials. On June 3 and 4, four of the five captains of the militia—the leading officers subordinate to the repudiated Bayard—signed a Humble Address of the militia and people of the city. This document recognized and hailed King William as liberator from “tyranny, popery and slavery,” and as the protector of “the true Protestant religion, liberty and property.” The militia also proceeded to call for a new, revolutionary governmental form: a Committee of Safety. The committee consisted of two delegates from each county and was to meet on June 26.

The Nicholson government had precipitated this revolutionary step by ordering all the New York funds, now kept at the fort, transferred to the home of Councillor Frederick Philipse, and by commanding the militia captains to appear before the convention. Both demands were refused by four of the five militia captains, with Leisler the most outspoken. With the Council denouncing the rebels, Nicholson sailed on June 24 to England for help. Before going, he angered New Yorkers still further by ordering the Catholic customs collector, Matthew Plowman, to enforce the payment of duties.

The Nicholson Council now decided, way too late, to remove Plowman and to fill his post with four collectors, including the hated Nicholas Bayard. The militiamen, however, were by now in far too rebellious a mood to accept this arrangement. They evicted the four men from the customhouse and substituted their own appointee, Peter Delanoy, a former treasurer and collector of New York City. Some of the militiamen tried to assault Bayard, but were stopped by Captain Leisler.