56. The Dominion of New England

When Sir Edmund Andros arrived at Boston at the end of December 1686 to take up his post as governor general of the Dominion of New England, the history of all the northern colonies entered a new and significant phase. James II could not have picked a better instrument for the fulfillment of his grand design to smash all self-government, all local government, in the northern colonies, and to inflict on them an absolute centralized despotism under the English Crown. So congenial was this task to him that in America the name “Andros” was for generations afterward synonymous with tyranny.

Andros lost no time in forcefully impressing upon the people of Massachusetts that the old easy days of the Dudley feast of privilege were over. Arriving with two companies of English soldiers to intimidate the colony, one of Andros’ first acts was to force South Church, one of the Puritan churches of Boston, to permit Anglicans to hold services there. Furthermore, Andros’ frankly proclaimed goal was to force the Puritan community of the colony to pay for the establishment of an Anglican church.

Andros speedily imposed despotic rule upon Dominion territory. He ran roughshod over the Council, consulting only a few of his favorites and accumulating full power in his own hands. Edward Randolph stayed on as faithful servitor and collector of customs, but he had no share in Andros’ decisions. He was, in fact, persuaded to rent the office of secretary to a friend of Andros’, John West, who proceeded to mulct the public by greatly increasing his fees to the citizenry. Moreover, all documents, deeds, wills, mortgages, etc., now had to be registered centrally with West, and for heavy fees. All government officials, furthermore, were now to hold their appointments solely from the Crown.

Andros’ tyrannical reign placed the Massachusetts economy in a crippling vise. For one thing, Andros grievously crippled the economy by strictly enforcing the Navigation Acts. Two years after Andros’ arrival, Randolph admitted, “This country is poor, the exact execution of the acts of trade hath much impoverished them [the colonists].” The economic depression was aggravated by heavy new duties imposed by James II on tobacco and sugar; these injured New England’s trade with the West Indies and the Southern colonies. Depression of trade under the Dominion was so severe that one of New England’s leading merchants, Richard Wharton, left such a debt-burdened estate when he died in early 1689 that his daughters had to open a shop to make a living.

But just when Andros’ crackdown greatly crippled the Massachusetts economy, his steeply increased expenditures burdened it even further and aggravated the depression. In short, just at the time when the ability to pay taxes in Massachusetts was sharply lowered, more taxes were imposed upon it. Ironically, part of the increased burden of government was to pay for enforcement of the very laws that were crippling the economy.

One of the biggest factors in the increased governmental burden was Andros’ own salary of 1,200 pounds, an item larger than the entire appropriation for the Dudley government during 1686. In addition, Andros built expensive and useless forts at the seaports. The largest single financial drain was the maintenance of a standard army of two companies of infantry.

The funds of the Dudley government were limited by its unwillingness to impose further taxes without an Assembly, but Andros had no such scruples. Andros decreed raises in taxes, including a doubled excise on liquor, increased import duties, and a direct tax on land. Total estimated revenue in the Dominion rose over fifty percent, from 2,500 to 3,800 pounds per annum. Furthermore, Andros barred the towns from levying their own taxes, thus reducing them to subservient instruments of the central government.

To the citizens of Massachusetts, one of Andros’ most frightening and threatening actions was ordering the reconfirmation of all private land titles, for high fees for this coerced “service.” The reconfirmation meant going on the land rolls for payment of a high quitrent of two shillings, sixpence per hundred acres on all the lands. Furthermore, most land titles had been obtained from town proprietors, and the New Englanders feared that Andros would not recognize town titles as legal, since the General Courts had not been authorized in their charters to incorporate towns. Horror at the Andros land policy united diverse groups in opposition to his regime. Only about two hundred persons in the Dominion actually applied for land titles during Andros’ administration, and these were largely government favorites or Crown officers. The general indignation at the quitrents was voiced by Rev. Increase Mather, who charged that the Massachusetts settlements were “houses which their own hands have built, and the lands which at vast charges in subduing a wilderness they have for many years had as rightful possession of, as ever any people in the world have or can have.” Another Massachusetts citizen denounced the “parcel of strangers” who proposed to come in and seize what the people and “their fathers before them had labored for.”

In the course of opposing the new aggressive theory of the Crown, the Massachusetts Puritans developed a radically libertarian theory of land titles. In a public confrontation with Governor Andros, Rev. John Higginson of Salem declared that the right to soil came not from the Crown, but from God, and God gave the land to the people who actually occupied it and brought it into use—that is, either the Indians, from whom lands could be bought by voluntary purchase, or the settlers. The Crown, in truth, had no right to ownership of the new lands. The idea that Christians had an automatic right to the land of heathens, added Higginson, was a “popish” principle and hence abhorrent. Governor Andros’ reply was characteristic: “Either you are subjects, or you are rebels!”

In mid-1688 Andros moved to force land applications by proceeding with a test case of eviction against the eminent old Puritan Samuel Sewall, who joined in Wharton’s protest and sailed to England to complain to the Crown. He also proceeded against Samuel Shrimpton, an Anglican merchant who also decided to appeal to the king. Symbolic of the drawing together of diverse groups against the Andros tyranny was the uniting of Sewall, Shrimpton, and Rev. Cotton Mather to plan strategy against the regime.

In addition, Andros engaged in enough land-grabbing for his favorites to anger the people even more. He seized 150 acres of common pasture land in Charlestown, owned jointly by James Russell and others, and gave the land to a favorite, Col. Charles Lidgett, a merchant who supplied masts to the royal navy. Russell, vehemently protesting this legalized theft, was punished by a writ of intrusion to eject him from his own farm. When the outraged citizens of Charlestown pulled up Lidgett’s stakes on the pasture land, they were imprisoned and fined. Common pasture land of several other towns, including Lynn and Cambridge, was forcibly enclosed by Andros’ edict and given to several of his friends.

Edward Randolph, characteristically, attempted to join in the plunder and to grab several tracts of land. One such tract was 500 acres of common pasture at Lynn, Massachusetts. But after vigorous protest by the citizens of Lynn, a happy solution was found: the common land was divided among several inhabitants of Lynn on a quitrent basis. Randolph also tried to seize land tracts near Cambridge and Watertown and in Rhode Island. Other Council members able to grab land for themselves were Jonathan Tyng and John Usher, who obtained an island in Casco Bay.

In Maine, disputes over land claims and titles were referred to Edward Tyng and Silvanus Davis for settlement, both of whom were personally interested in land claims there. In New Hampshire there arose bitter resistance against Andros’ enforcement of court judgments to eject settlers from their lands in order to satisfy the property claims of Robert Mason. The citizens of New Hampshire petitioned Andros to stop these confiscations, for they were “likely to be sore oppressed if not wholly ruined.” Happily, however, the king ended the grievance by purchasing Mason’s proprietary and quitrent claims in exchange for an annual pension. Moreover, the king instructed Andros to reconfirm all existing land titles in New Hampshire. The Mason threat to the people of New Hampshire was again ended.

Andros’ regime speedily alienated not only the Puritans but also the merchants, including the former opportunist supporters of Dudley. On the one hand, Andros frightened the landowners by ordering reconfirmation of all land titles and the imposition of quitrents; on the other, the merchants were alienated by strict enforcement of the Navigation Acts. The pet schemes for privileges of Dudley and the other councillors were discarded, and even the bureaucratic plums went, not to the Massachusetts opportunists, but to such old New York cronies of Andros as John West and John Palmer. Andros not only was making himself the most hated man in years, but was cutting himself off from bases of support in the colony. Of course, the naked force of the Crown and its bayonets remained to him, as did the costly English troops—whom the Massachusetts citizens were forced to support for their own suppression. In addition, he angered the people by centralizing the town militia under his direct command.

One of Andros’ better acts served especially to alienate the opportunist clique. As governor of the Dominion, Andros began as ruler of the Maine towns, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and King’s Province (the Narragansett Country). Surveying the situation, Andros decided that the powerful Atherton Company’s claim to the Narragansett lands was arbitrary and unjust. He realized that the claim was gravely restricting settlement in these fertile lands, and recommended to the Lords of Trade that all the claims of unimproved—unsettled—land be vacated. This excellent recommendation frantically drove one of the proprietors, Richard Wharton, to London to press his claim.

The sturdily independent citizens of Massachusetts did not let these hammer blows to liberty go by without vigorous protest. When Andros imposed his new taxes, he required all the towns to levy a compulsory assessment upon themselves for the required amount. Each town was ordered to choose a commissioner to assess and collect these taxes. Many towns steadfastly refused to make such appointments; among the towns were those of Essex County (north of Boston) except Salem, Newbury, and Marblehead.

Essex County resistance centered in the town of Ipswich. When Ipswich in August 1687 received the government order to choose a commissioner to assess the taxes, the leaders of the town, headed by its young liberal Puritan minister, Rev. John Wise, and the town clerk, former deputy John Appleton, met and decided that it was “not the town’s duty any way to assist that ill way of raising money without a General Assembly.” The government order was condemned as abridging their “liberty as Englishmen.” The next day the Ipswich town meeting approved this view; it refused to elect a commissioner and forbade the selectmen from imposing any taxes. The bold example set by Ipswich was followed by other Essex towns: Rowley, Haverhill, and Salisbury refused to elect commissioners, and the commissioners of Bradford and Andover refused to perform their functions.

For this resistance, Wise, Appleton, and four other leaders were imprisoned and tried, before a judicial system thoroughly reconstituted by the Andros regime. The selectmen and commissioners of the other resisting towns were also arrested; in all, twenty-eight leaders of Essex were indicted for “refusing to pay their rates... and making and publishing factious and seditious votes and writings against the same.” The mass indictment cowed most of the prisoners into submission, and most of them made humble apology and were released on large bond to insure good behavior.

The six Ipswich leaders, however, remained adamant—the Reverend Mr. Wise “asserting the privilege of Englishmen according to Magna Carta”—and were subject to special trial. Instead of a trial before a jury at the place of the crime, the prisoners were dragged to Boston and the jurors deliberately selected from among foreigners and nonfreeholders of the colony. Constituting the special court were four leading officials in the Andros administration: Edward Randolph and three of the opportunists—Joseph Dudley, William Stoughton, and John Usher, treasurer. Dudley had typically landed on his feet and had found himself appointed to the congenial new post of censor of the press. Nothing in the colony was publishable without his permission.

The four judges gloried in their power at the trial. Dudley lorded it over Reverend Mr. Wise: “Mr. Wise, you have no more privileges left you than not to be sold for slaves.” To Wise’s pleas for English liberties, Dudley sharply replied that the laws of England could not follow them to the ends of the earth. A contemporary wag aptly remarked that if the privileges of English law did not follow them to the colonies, apparently its penalties did. The convicted prisoners were imprisoned for almost a month and then heavily fined. Wise and Appleton were fined fifty pounds and placed under the enormous bond of 1,000 pounds for a year’s “good behavior.” Under the lash of the staggering sentences, the remaining resistance to the new taxes in the colony collapsed. The following year, Andros crippled local powers of resistance even further by prohibiting more than one town meeting a year.

As the Andros tyranny continued, we have noted that various protesters sailed to England to seek redress, including Samuel Sewall and Richard Wharton. But the most powerful protester and agent of the Massachusetts people was the leading Puritan divine in the colony, the Reverend Increase Mather. Mather had been earlier denounced by Thomas Danforth in General Court as a traitor to Massachusetts for his willingness to compromise with the Crown. But Mather had now had enough and was ardently in favor of independence. In October 1687 Mather won the support of his church to go to England to plead New England’s cause against Andros.

Edward Randolph now moved quickly to prevent Mather from going to England, suing him on a trumped-up charge of defamation to keep him in the colony. Mather was acquitted at the trial, but Randolph soon fabricated another charge. Mather, however, hid from the subpoena server, was spirited out of Boston in disguise, and lay in a small boat to board a ship for London. Andros sent out two boats to stop Mather’s escape but the chase failed.

The meaning of the Dominion of New England must not be confined to the internal despotism imposed on Massachusetts Bay, for the main point of the Dominion was to impose the same central and absolute rule over all the northern colonies; under Andros, law was to be administered to the colonies as one unit. The colonies were to be centralized under one yoke—that of the Crown.

The Maine towns were already a part of Massachusetts, and the Andros tax, fee, and land policies were pursued with even more vigor in Maine, where resistance was so much weaker. New Hampshire had already been part of the Dominion during the Dudley regime, and after the Cranfield troubles, potential resistance to the Andros policy was exhausted. King’s Province had also been part of the Dudley domain, but, as noted, Andros ruled against the Atherton Company’s claim to that territory.

As soon as Andros arrived in Boston, he moved to seize Plymouth, Rhode Island, Cornwall (all of Maine east of the Kennebec), and Connecticut, and to place them alongside the other colonies under his Dominion rule. Rhode Island succumbed quickly and with surprising ease, and made no protest against the Andros rule. What had happened to Rhode Island individualism and its spirit of independence? Two major reasons can be pleaded for this change in Rhode Island’s spirit. First, all the old greats of the colony, the founding fathers of the first generation—Williams, Gorton, Coddington, Easton et al.—had recently died, and inferior men had replaced them. Second, the colony was charmed by Andros’ siding with them and against the Atherton Company over the issue of the Narragansett lands.

Plymouth surrendered equally quickly, but with much greater opposition in the colony. The Judas who delivered Plymouth was Nathaniel Clarke, secretary of the colony. For his treachery he received an appointment on the Council of the Dominion, and from Andros a gift of the valuable Clarke’s Island in Plymouth harbor. Rich in salt, pasturage, and timber, the island had been set aside by the Plymouth town government for support of its minister and the poor. The Reverend Ichabod Wiswall of Duxbury and Deacon John Founce, town clerk of Plymouth, were so incensed at this gift that they began to raise funds to carry the matter into the courts. Andros immediately had them arrested on the charge of “levying taxes” without his consent, and forced them to stand trial in Boston. The sickly Wiswall almost died during the ordeal.

There was also considerable opposition in Plymouth to the arbitary increase in taxes by Andros. The town of Taunton refused to elect a commissioner, declaring that it “did not feel free to raise money for the inhabitants without their own assent by an assembly.” For daring to transmit this defiant resolution, the Taunton town clerk, Shadrach Wilbur, was imprisoned for three months by Andros and punished with a heavy fine. The town constables of Taunton were also arrested for neglect of duty, and one of the local justices was suspended for not arguing against the protest at the town meeting.

Also annexed to the new Dominion in early 1687 was eastern Maine, or Cornwall, transferred from New York. While under New York, Thomas Dongan had sent two commissioners, John West and John Palmer, to manage its affairs. West and Palmer there pioneered in the Andros technique of forcing the inhabitants to buy new confirmations for their land titles at exorbitant fees. Now Andros declared that the old Dongan-West-Palmer confirmations were invalid and that the matter must begin anew.

Connecticut, however, proved a far more difficult nut to crack. For one thing, Connecticut had bitter memories of Andros’ attempted aggression against it during King Philip’s War a dozen years before. It procrastinated for months. Its leaders, such as secretary John Allyn and Fitz-John Winthrop, were eager to sell out to Andros. Winthrop even praised the Dominion as containing “all things that will really conduce to the growth and prosperity of the people.” But the General Court stood firm, and refused to surrender to Dominion rule. Finally, at the end of October 1687, after nearly a year had elapsed, Andros went to Hartford and simply seized the government. Fitz-John Winthrop was well rewarded by being made major general—the highest military office in New England—in charge of the militia of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and King’s Province. In return Winthrop played the sycophant to the uttermost, expressing his admiration for Andros’ loving care over New England and for “those designs your excellency lays to settle a lasting happiness to the prosperity of this country.” Andros also made certain to appoint new courts, militia, and customs officers in Connecticut.

It should not be thought that his expansion of the area of Dominion brought the incidental but important advantages of a unified trade area for New England. On the contrary, Andros soon outlawed all traveling merchants and peddlers, thus narrowly confining trade to each local town and area.

In the area of religion, however, the creation of the Dominion had, willy-nilly, a libertarian impact. The Crown could not move toward the establishment of Anglicanism without disestablishing the Puritan church and providing religious liberty for non-Puritans. This problem was acute in Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut. Despite the great decline in Puritan fervor over the years, the theocracy still held sway. Especially was this true in Massachusetts, though even here it was now favored by only a minority of population of the colony, and was increasingly challenged by merchants who were not church members.

The Council of the Dominion, making laws for all New England, now had to decide whether to extend the Puritan establishment to the rest of New England (Rhode Island and Cornwall) or to end it everywhere. The Council’s committee on codification urged the former course, but the Anglicans and Quakers on the Council fought this bitterly. Walter Clarke, a Quaker and former governor of Rhode Island, pointed out that since the Puritan ministers were just as much Dissenters from the Church of England as the Quakers or any other sect, they should therefore depend on voluntary contributions in the same way as all the others. Those citizens who would not voluntarily support a Puritan minister, said Clarke, should not be forced to pay against their will. The Council defeated the Puritan attempts at expansion, the Puritan establishment lapsed, and religious liberty and separation of church and state won the day. This result was aided by news of King James’ Declaration of Indulgence of April 4, 1687, which granted liberty of conscience to all Englishmen, including Dissenters. The Quakers of Scituate (in Plymouth) promptly tested the law by refusing to pay taxes for the Puritan ministry, standing on the Declaration of Indulgence. Andros and the Council granted the Quakers’ request for return of their property seized by the constables for nonpayment. Thus the Declaration of Indulgence and the refusal of Council to continue coerced support for the Puritans jointly brought disestablishment to New England.

Since the network of government schools in Massachusetts was Puritan, the Council’s decision not to continue the Puritan establishment had the corollary libertarian effect of dissolving the government schools. Thrown back on voluntary or market support, many of the schools that had been artificially extended by relying on compulsion now had to close. Randolph would have liked to replace them with Anglican public schools, but was thwarted by lack of funds.

The crippling blow to the Puritan theocracy intensified the decline of Puritan zeal among the populace, and such ungodly customs as maypole dancing, stage plays, Sabbath breaking, and the drinking of alcohol spread more widely.

By the end of 1687 Sir Edmund Andros, as head of the Dominion of New England, was the sole and absolute ruler of all of New England from the towns of Maine to western Connecticut. But this was only the beginning of the expansion of the Dominion and of Andros’ power. In the spring of 1688 Andros received instructions from King James II to incorporate the colonies of New York and the two New Jerseys into the Dominion. The king named Andros governor of the enlarged Dominion, with his headquarters still at Boston. He was, in addition, to appoint a deputy governor at New York to administer that colony and the Jerseys. The Dominion institutions, including the new taxes, quitrents, and press and book censorship, were now to be imposed on the expanded territory.

During August Andros traveled throughout New York and the Jerseys incorporating these colonies into the giant Dominion of New England. Captain Francis Nicholson, of Andros’ footguard, was named deputy governor for New York and the Jerseys.

Governor Dongan of New York was, of course, unhappy at being replaced. For the citizens of that colony, the sudden loss of their home rule and their annexation by the Dominion of New England were additional important straws to add to their accumulating list of grievances. At first, some New Yorkers were mollified, as the Long Island towns were at long last reunited with New England, and the anti-Catholics were happy to see the departure of Dongan. But Andros’ tyrannical policy soon changed their attitudes, especially his action in seizing the bulk of New York’s public records and carrying them off to Boston. Francis Nicholson protested this seizure, and later was to note “how fatal it hath been to this city and the province of New York for to be annexed to that of Boston, which, if it had continued would have occasioned the total ruin of the inhabitants....” Furthermore, the Dutch in New York were unhappy at being joined to their old enemy, New England. Nicholson too aroused the suspicions of the frenetic and was believed by many New Yorkers to be a crypto-Catholic.

East Jersey and West Jersey were incorporated into the Dominion without much difficulty, although there was considerable protest in West New Jersey at Andros’ practice of reappointing existing public officials if they paid him a substantial fee. Some officials refused to pay for reappointment and launched public protests.

Governor Andros’ foreign policy for the expanded Dominion continued the Dongan course of aggressive pressure on New France. Andros repeated a Dongan ultimatum that the French withdraw from a fort in Seneca country. The French quickly complied. English-oriented historians like to speak of a “French menace” to the American colonies, in justifying the aggressive actions of England and the English colonies against New France. And yet, New England alone had a population in 1688 of over 100,000, as compared with 12,000 in all of New France. Furthermore, the English were firmly allied against the French with the most powerful, bloodthirsty, and aggressive of the Indian tribes—the Iroquois. The real menace was to the thinly populated French; the record of Anglo-American aggression against New France in the colonial era is ample witness to that fact.

As soon as he took over the government of New York and the Jerseys, Andros held a conference at Albany with the Iroquois, reminiscent of a similar conference a decade and a half earlier. There he cemented the long-standing Iroquois-English alliance. In eastern Maine Andros issued an order forbidding anyone to trade or settle in the territory without a license from his government. Andros then proceeded to break into the Penobscot River trading post of a French resident, the Baron de St. Castine, and to confiscate his arms, furniture, and other supplies.

While Andros was away from Boston, some Indian depredations occurred at Saco. Immediately, Captain Blackman seized twenty suspect Indians and shipped them to Boston. Their alarmed tribesmen seized a few whites at Casco Bay to hold for a prisoner exchange. The prisoner exchange was agreed upon, but, typically, the white captain refused to admit an Indian peace party and several whites were killed in the skirmish that followed. The embittered Indians now joined forces with the equally embittered Castine, who promised them aid for raids against the English. Andros quieted the situation down by sternly rebuking Colonel Tyng of Casco Bay for exceeding his instructions by making war on the Indians: “By your seizing and disturbing the Indians you have alarmed all your parts and put them in a posture of war.” Andros wisely ordered the release of all the Indians except the actual criminals. But the leaders on the spot, such as Tyng, John Hinckes, and William Stoughton, whipped up hysteria in Boston against the Indians and asked for supplies and troops. A draft of manpower ensued, and troops were sent north. The absurd hysteria over the Indians is seen in this account: “Upon receipt of news that two or three Indians had been seen skulking about along the frontier, orders were dispatched to the outlying towns... to send eight or ten armed horsemen every day to scout in search of Indians and kill any who refused to submit themselves.”

The military commander of Cornwall went to the length of implicitly accusing Andros of excessive leniency to the Indians. As if to disprove the charge of softness in the face of the (nonexistent) threat, Andros sent two companies and several ships to the frontier and ordered the Indians to release all Englishmen and surrender all murderers of Englishmen. When the Indians retaliated by burning two towns, Andros mobilized a force of several hundred and garrisoned eleven forts along the frontier. Then, before any warfare occurred, Andros, in the venerable white tradition, launched a sneak attack on the Indians, destroying their homes, canoes, and supplies. In the traditional rationale of preventive war, this was done before the “least harm of mischief was done” by the Indians.

By the end of 1688 Sir Edmund Andros stood master of all he surveyed. Virtually the absolute ruler of all English America from the Delaware River to the St. Croix River in eastern Maine, the governor of the expanded Dominion of New England stood at the pinnacle of power. Indeed, with quo warranto action brewing against the remaining proprietary colonies, new peaks of power and expansion were on the horizon. But, as often happens, pride went before the fall; Andros was only a few more months at the pinnacle before he was tumbled, unceremoniously, into the trough.