INFRACTION OF THE LAWS OF TRADE 259 Massachusetts therefore escaped with an empty verbal submission and a contribution of timber to the Navy. From the foregoing it will be realised that a change of tone was taking place in New England. Puritanism was still a vital force, but it was no longer the dominant motive of the leaders' policy; trade and territorial expansion were taking a more prominent place. Connecticut swallowed New Haven and obtained an extension of its frontier westward at the expense of New York, although it surrendered to the latter its pioneers in Long Island. Massachusetts was able by virtue of its autonomy to continue its illegal trade, and it sought persistently to extend its jurisdiction northwards in the direction of the Bay of Fundy. Here the proprietary rights of Gorges and Mason, two members of the former New England Council, stood in the way. Massachusetts bought the claim to Maine in 1678 and took control of that region. New Hampshire, on the other hand, was converted into a royal colony in the following year. Rhode Island had, like Plymouth, an enclosed hinterland, and devoted itself to ocean trade. Its irregularities were as flagrant as those of Boston, but on a smaller scale. 2 In the last ten years of Charles II the Imperial Government awoke to the contempt shown by New England for the laws of trade. The details of the infraction and the measures for the enforcement of the laws are described later, but the political consequences belong to this chapter. In 1676 the Lords of Trade sent out Edward Randolph to investigate. He reported that wholesale breaches of the law were going on. In 1678 he was appointed collector of customs in Massachusetts and strove manfully to fulfil his task. But the colonial officials were unsympathetic, juries refused to convict the persons he denounced, and it soon appeared that the whole community was bent on passive resistance. That resistance was bound to be effective so long as the community governed itself, and the remedy was to extinguish self-government. Other considerations pointed in the same direction. Massachusetts was not the only mercantile offender, and control would be easier if the several administrations could be united. The frontier rivalry with the French on the upper Hudson was growing serious, and military efforts in the threatened war would be infinitely more efficient if New England and New York could be consolidated under a single chief. At home in England these years witnessed a steady attack upon popular liberty, national and local. Autocracy was in the air, and if in England it was a manifestation of sheer tyranny, in America it was to some extent warranted by the unhappy results of liberty misused and by the superior defence it promised in the event of war. The Crown was certainly not over-hasty. Randolph complained for eight years without evoking more than a warning to the offenders, * See Toppan, R. N., Edward Randolph. 1 Vide infra, chapter IX. but at last the Government struck. In 1684 Massachusetts was charged with violating the terms of its own charter, and that instrument was declared forfeit. The accession of the Duke of York to the throne in the following year facilitated the ensuing steps. Connecticut lost its charter in 1686, and Rhode Island in 1687. The Plymouth constitution, never having been sanctioned, needed no legal process for its suppression. New Hampshire, as a royal colony, was already bound to receive a royal governor, whilst Maine was a possession of Massachusetts. All these units were consolidated by James II into the Dominion of New England, and the experienced Sir Edmund Andros was sent out to take control. Andros suppressed the representative Assemblies, but ruled with the aid of a council containing colonial nominees. Religious toleration was the longestablished policy of his master, and he therefore instituted Anglican services at Boston. There was no compulsion to attend, but the existence of surplice and prayer book in Winthrop's promised land were in themselves an outrage to the stiff-necked Puritan oligarchy. Yet there was no resistance, as there would have been in Winthrop's day. Temporal motives predominated; the Empire provided defence and trade, both impossible without its bounds; and New England sat still and bided its time. In 1688 Andros received commissions for New York and New Jersey, with which his dominion reached its fullest extent. Boston was his peace-time headquarters, as New York would have been had his rule endured until the French war. That struggle had been long in prospect to colonial eyes, but might yet have been long delayed had affairs continued their course in Europe. In 1686 James II signed a treaty with France for neutrality and the maintenance of existing conditions in America,1 which, though it made little difference to the activities of the frontier leaders, did indicate that the two Crowns desired to avoid hostilities. So things stood in America when the spring of 1689 brought momentous news. The Revolution of 1688-9 must be considered under two heads: first, its spontaneous process in the colonies; and second, the settlement subsequently imposed by William III. Rumours of the impending fall of James II reached New England before the close of 1688, but definite news arrived only in March of the following year. The popular leaders in Massachusetts at once determined to strike at Andros, and in April he was arrested and imprisoned at Boston by a rising as bloodless as that which had taken place at home. He had a handful of troops and a warship in the port, but the blow was so sudden that he was a prisoner before a shot had been fired; and the knowledge that his royal master was an exile rendered it useless for his adherents to attempt a rescue. Public opinion was in favour of resuming the constitution provided by the late charter, as if that 1 Dumont, Corps universel diplomatique, vol. ví, pt п, pp. 141–2. THE REVOLUTION IN NEW YORK 261 instrument had been wrongfully annulled, but the leading men thought it more statesmanlike to negotiate with the new King and perhaps obtain an even better settlement. In Rhode Island and Connecticut there was no need for revolutionary action. They had been governed from Boston under Andros, and when he fell they quietly resumed the direction of their own affairs.1 The events at New York are unintelligible without allowance for the cosmopolitan nature of the population, the presence of Catholic officials, and the menace of the French on the frontier. These things gave rise to fears and suspicions which may have been unfounded, and led to the formation of two factions which sought each other's blood although both were in favour of the Revolution. When the flight of James II to France became known, a suspicion gained ground at New York that the acting governor, Nicholson, who had attended Catholic services, meant to call in the French and hand over the colony to their keeping in trust for James. There is no evidence that there was such a plot. But New York contained many French residents, and these, with Irish Catholics, New Englanders, Dutchmen and Germans, formed a mixture which had not yet combined into a homogeneous community. A popular party, Protestant and revolutionary, took the initiative, and under the leadership of Jacob Leisler, a German, seized the fort and proclaimed William III. An aristocratic party under Nicholas Bayard viewed the proceeding with dislike; they also were in favour of William and Protestantism, but they regarded Leisler as a demagogue seeking to make capital out of popular suspicions. Nicholson and the Catholic officials escaped to England, leaving their opponents to fight among themselves. At the close of 1689 a letter of recognition arrived from the Home Government instructing the persons in power at New York to continue to rule until further orders. Both parties claimed the letter, and Leisler secured it and so consolidated his power for two years to come. But his opponents, whom he branded as rogues and papists, were yet lying in wait to ruin him. In the remaining American colonies and in the West Indies, the Revolution caused little disturbance. There was a period of rumour and uncertainty amid which interested persons sought to overthrow proprietary rights, but in general the outcome was that the colonies looked to the Home Government for a settlement. This was because the Revolution raised no question of principle in any quarter but the New England Dominion. There were disputed questions, but it cut across them, and the new monarchy was not likely to take up an attitude radically different from the old. Even at New York the trouble had been chiefly due to local dissensions. It was unfortunate that the English Revolution entailed rebellions in Ireland and Scotland and a great war with France, for these things 1 Guttridge, G. H., Colonial Policy of William III, pp. 25-6. not only delayed the imperial settlement but caused it to be piecemeal and unsatisfactory. William III, enmeshed in party politics and campaigning in Ireland and Flanders, had no time to apply his statesmanship to the colonies, and he found among his ministers no one whom he could really trust for the purpose. For two years all was hand-to-mouth and provisional, like the recognition of Leisler, but in 1691 the Government was able to spare some attention for the business. At the end of that year William approved a new charter for Massachusetts. It differed from the old in two important respects: the governor and his deputy were appointed by the Crown, and the Assembly was to be elected by the freeholders and not, as formerly, by the freemen of the Massachusetts Bay Company, a large distinction which transferred the franchise from the narrow circle of church membership to the mass of the property owners. The old oligarchy was dissatisfied, but it is evident that a considerable section of the population was pleased with the change; for in the seventeenth century the word "liberty" had been capable of strange interpretations. Maine was placed once more under the control of Massachusetts, and Plymouth was absorbed in that colony, after having vainly sought to resume its self-government on the fall of Andros. New Hampshire became a separate royal colony, whilst Rhode Island and Connecticut had their Restoration charters restored unaltered and therefore remained as the most completely autonomous units in the Empire.1 Meanwhile New York had been dealt with. The Home Government, in spite of Leisler's enthusiasm on its behalf, had behaved coldly towards him and had accorded him no personal recognition. In the colony his faction lost ground owing to his lack of success in resisting French and Indian raids. When, therefore, a new governor, Colonel Henry Sloughter, arrived in 1691 with a commission entirely ignoring his predecessor's status, Leisler was in so desperate a position that he was tempted to resist. He was overcome, tried by his opponents, and executed for treason in May 1691. Like the greater tragedy of Glencoe, it was a miscarriage of justice in which a faction took their revenge under cover of the authority of a distant King whose preoccupations compelled him to entrust his good name to unworthy keeping. The constitutional settlement made New York a royal government with an elected Assembly and institutions similar to those of Virginia. Of the proprietary colonies, Maryland was placed in an intermediate position. Lord Baltimore, as a Catholic, had his rights suspended but not annulled, and the Crown appointed the governor until 1715, when a new and Protestant Lord Baltimore recovered the proprietorship. New Jersey returned to the control of its proprietors after its brief membership of the New England Dominion, and the 1 Guttridge, pp. 24-6. THE REVOLUTIONARY SETTLEMENT 263 Carolinas remained under the authority of their proprietary partnership, an authority more nominal than real for reasons already explained. William Penn, as a notorious friend of James II, also temporarily lost his right of control, but recovered it earlier than did the Calverts; but his authority was hardly effective, and Pennsylvania long remained in an unsatisfactory condition. In 1702 the Delaware region spontaneously separated from it and was allowed to continue as a distinct colony under the same nominal authority. In Virginia and the West Indian islands the revolutionary settlement involved no constitutional changes, and the appointment of new governors met the needs of the situation.1 The revolutionary settlement was completed in 1696 with the establishment of the Board of Trade and the passing of the Navigation Act of that year—matters which are dealt with later. From the colonial point of view they represent, together with the decisions already recorded, a confirmation of the imperial system outlined at the Restoration and an attempt to make it more effective. The alternative, the constructive policy of 1684-8, of consolidation into dominions and centralisation of government within their bounds, was discarded. Could it have been pushed to success, it would have strengthened the Empire and improved its tone. On the other hand, the failure of the policy, of which the chances were considerable, would probably have hastened American separation by providing a ready-made mechanism of revolt. All really depended upon the persons engaged in the task, and whether they would have proved strong, wise and lucky enough to tide over the period during which the new institutions were taking root. The advisers of William III avoided the venture and played for safety; and we knowing, as they could not, the history of the following century, can only regard their proceedings as an opportunity missed. The history of the colonies from the Revolution to the Treaty of Utrecht is overshadowed by the French wars, whose general course is related elsewhere.3 To statesmen in all the belligerent countries the military interest lay in Europe, with the colonies in the background as counters for the peace negotiations. The wars thus produced no comprehensively planned campaigns across the ocean like those of the elder Pitt. Instead there occurred a series of little separate wars for limited objects, not taken seriously because all but the local men realised that the ultimate decisions depended upon the fate of battles in Flanders, the Channel and the Mediterranean. This ineffectiveness of the colonial war was not inevitable, as Pitt was to prove; the ocean was a decisive field for the negotiators and could have been made one for the commanders. But the occasion did not find the man; the Home Government was hampered by slow communications and the |