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VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND

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incompetence and explosion arose largely from the appointment of a planter governor, such as the people of other colonies were fond of demanding; for an outsider of detached views would hardly have allowed things to go so far.

While it is true that the local leaders in Virginia, as in other colonies of the period, were by no means examples of civic virtue, it is fair to add that the actions of the Home Government were not such as to improve the tone of political life. Charles II, in pursuance of the policy of making powerful subjects responsible for colonial development, granted to courtiers the right to dispose of unoccupied lands in the colony. If the purpose was to ensure the speedy population of waste areas there was something to be said for it, although even then the existing colonists were entitled to some voice in the matter. But the grant to Lords Arlington and Culpeper in 1673 went further and accorded to the patentees the greater part of the patronage of the colony. With good reason the Virginians protested, and negotiations were on foot for the incorporation of the inhabitants as joint owners of the land rights when the rebellion of 1676 put an end to the matter.1 Berkeley's successors, Culpeper (1679-84) and Lord Howard of Effingham (1684-9), were accused of extortion and were guilty of. the bad practice of allowing colonial offices to be held in England and performed on the spot by deputy. These abuses, imperial and local, were typical of the age, and were rampant in the colonies of France, Spain and Portugal as well as of England.

Maryland had on the whole a less troubled record under the Restoration. In the process of imperial development it played its part as the only proprietary colony of the early foundations still retaining that status. The Lords Baltimore continued the cautious and sensible policy which had brought them through the vicissitudes of the Interregnum, and the secret of Maryland's tranquillity is to be found in the personal residence of the ruling family in the colony. Charles Calvert, son of the second proprietor, governed Maryland from 1661 to 1675, and when in the latter year he succeeded to the proprietorship, he continued to live among his subjects until State business called him to England in 1684. During this period the principal topic of controversy was the evasion and enforcement of the laws of trade; Maryland tobacco found its chief markets in Holland and Germany, and the enumeration clause that forced it to travel to its destination by way of England was keenly resented. In general it may be said that the chartered and proprietary colonists experienced less interference with their local autonomy than did those directly under the Crown, and that they took advantage of the looser control to infringe the Navigation Acts much more extensively.

The individualist tendencies observable in most of the colonies during this period were nowhere more strongly marked than in New

CHBEI

1 Channing, Hist. of U.S. 11, 63-4.

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England. It was natural that this should be so, for a social and political environment of a unique character was established there, the contacts with the mother country were slight-there was very little trade and virtually no emigration—and, above all, the New England merchants aspired to the position of exploiters rather than subordinate members of the Empire. The Plantation trade was their opportunity of wealth, for they had no rich products of their own, and they were determined to carry Plantation goods to continental Europe and manufactures from it, whatever the Navigation Acts might say. It followed from this that, autonomous as they desired to be, they had no thought of secession from the Empire. Apart from the question of defence, they would have been economically lost had they passed outside the imperial system. The time had not yet come, as Scotland was to find, when a minor State could independently enjoy a share of oceanic trade.

Of the five Puritan colonies, Massachusetts was the only one which in 1660 had any royal authority for its constitutional system; in its case the charter granted to the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629 was still valid. Rhode Island had obtained during the Civil War a parliamentary charter that was now worthless. Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven had never had any formal authority for their establishment. Clarendon's policy, as already explained, was to favour agricultural Connecticut as against Massachusetts, whose mercantile activity was a threat to the imperial system then in course of consolidation. Connecticut therefore received a royal charter in 1662 which recognised its constitution and allowed it to absorb New Haven. Rhode Island received a similar grant in 1663, and Plymouth could have had one on certain conditions which it preferred to refuse. Plymouth thus continued a precarious separate existence, liable at any moment to be cut short; but as an imperial unit the colony was now unimportant, for its expansion was blocked by the position of its neighbours, it had no good port, and it had already attained the limits of development possible in its existing area. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island formed a group known as the charter colonies. Each elected its own governor as well as its Assembly and other State officials, the terms of office were short, and the administration was therefore well under the control of the electorate. Had the franchise been liberal, democracy would have existed. But Massachusetts, and to some extent Connecticut, still contrived to make church membership the qualification for the right to vote, and the result was an oligarchy. Orders from England, it is true, required the abandonment of the religious test, but they were disregarded. Just as the Dutch War of 1664-7 was breaking out, Clarendon sent commissioners to Massachusetts to enquire into its political practices and enforce obedience; but the war diverted their attention, and before its close Clarendon's rule was coming to an end.

INFRACTION OF THE LAWS OF TRADE

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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.

1

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, 2 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. vII, pt п, pp. 141-2.

THE REVOLUTION IN NEW YORK

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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.

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