CCD HISTORY 201 - History of United States 1
The king's reaction to Bacon's Rebellion fit a larger pattern of asserting more authority over America. New England, with its independent ways, was an obvious target. Back in the mid-1660s royal commissioners had visited Massachusetts and seen Dutch merchant vessels trading in Boston harbor in violation of the Navigation Acts. Puritan leaders were surly about the matter. "The laws of England . . . do not reach [to] America," they declared. Once back in England, the angry commissioners urged the Crown to take over the colony, but nothing happened—at least not for a few years.
Then in 1675 King Charles, seeking more effective control over the colonies, designated certain Privy Council members to serve as the Lords of Trade and Plantations. The lords, in turn, sent agents and customs officials to America. The most notorious was Edward Randolph, a grim, dedicated bureaucrat who never met a Puritan he liked. Soon he was bombarding the lords with negative reports. In response to Randolph's accusations the lords began legal proceedings and got the Bay Colony charter revoked in 1684.
Randolph was not solely responsible for voiding the charter. The Lords of Trade had developed plans for setting up two or three large administrative territories in North America. New England made a natural unit, based on geographic cohesion and forms of economic production. Charles thought the scheme too radical, but when James became king in 1685, the lords gained permission to set up the Dominion of New England, which stretched from Nova Scotia to the Delaware River.
James II liked the Dominion concept not only because it favored
the Church of England but also because it centralized political power in the
hands of a governor and a large advisory council made up of Crown appointees.
Local representative assemblies would likewise cease to exist. James gladly
wrote New York's local leaders and informed them that they would now exist under
the authority of the Dominion. As for Connecticut and Rhode Island, the lords
were working to void their charters in court.
From the outset the Dominion was a bad idea, perhaps made worse by naming as governor Sir Edmund Andros (1637-1714), a man of aristocratic bearing with impressive military credentials. Among his councilors was the despised Edward Randolph. Images of political tyranny wafted through Puritan minds when Andros debarked in Boston in late 1686 and demanded that a building be found for holding Anglican church services. It all smacked of garrison government in which the highest ranking military officer had complete authority, with no popular checks whatsoever.
Andros expected the Puritans to conform to the imperial will. He announced plans to rewrite all land deeds, none of which the General Court had awarded in the king's name and, then, to impose quitrents, which New Englanders had never paid. He announced import taxes to underwrite the expenses of his government, and he started prosecuting violators of the Navigation Acts.
Meanwhile, back in England, James II had created an uproar by pushing royal authority too far. In defiance of England's Protestant tradition, he flaunted his Roman Catholic beliefs and announced that his newborn son, now next in line for the throne, would be raised a Catholic. The thought of yet more turbulence over religious beliefs was too much for influential English leaders to bear. In December 1688 they drove James from the realm and offered the throne to his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her husband, the Dutch prince, William of Orange, as joint monarchs. As part of the Glorious Revolution, Parliament also placed strict limitations on royal prerogatives by adopting the Declaration of Rights (1689), which at long last assured Parliament an equal, if not dominant, voice in Britain's political affairs.
When news of the Glorious Revolution reached Boston, local Puritan leaders went into action. They believed wild rumors about James, who had fled to France, conspiring with Andros, French Canadians, and Indians to seize New England and turn it into a new bastion of Roman Catholicism. They seized the governor on April 18, 1689, threw him in jail, and then shipped him back to England. They did so, they insisted, to end Andros's arbitrary rule, and they asked William and Mary to restore their original corporate charter.
The coup in Massachusetts helped spark a rebellion in New York, where a volatile mix of ethnic and class tensions resulted in a violent upheaval. Francis Nicholson served in New York City as the Dominion's lieutenant governor. Wealthy Dutch and English landholders and merchants cooperated with his rule, which bred resentment among poorer Dutch and English settlers, such as the Puritans on Long Island. Jacob Leisler, a combative local merchant of German origin, also hated the favored families. They had snubbed him socially, despite his marriage to a wealthy Dutch widow. Even worse, from his point of view, they cared little about securing popular political rights.
When reports of the rumored "popish" plot and the Massachusetts coup reached New York, Leisler exhorted the anti-Nicholson settlers to rise up and defend themselves. He organized 500 of them into a military force, and on May 31 they captured Fort James which guarded New York harbor. Within a few days, Nicholson fled to England. Leisler set up an interim government and waited for advice from England, hoping that the new monarchs would make a permanent grant of a popularly based assembly. In addition, Leisler made no attempt to stop mobs from harassing and robbing wealthy families.
The third colony jolted by a revolt in 1689 was Maryland, where quarrels between Roman Catholics and Protestants remained a perpetual source of tension. The proprietary governor, William Joseph, tried to contain the popish conspiracy rumors, but John Coode, an anxious local planter, organized the Protestant Association to defend Marylanders from the impending slaughter. Rumormongers soon were whispering that the Catholic proprietor and his local governor were in on the plot. That was all Coode needed. He led 250 followers to St. Mary's, where in July 1689 they removed Joseph from office, called their own assembly, and then sent representatives to England to plead for royal government.
In a chain reaction, three political uprisings had occurred in the American colonies in just four months. Although each had its own individual character, the common issue, besides the rumored Catholic conspiracy, was the question of how extensive colonial rights would be in the face of tightening imperial administration. All the colonists could do now was wait to hear from the new monarchs—and hope for the best.
From America and Its Peoples.