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During the long struggle between the king and Parliament, the colonies were left to themselves. This was their season of growth. They assumed, of necessity, greater powers of self-government, and found that they were perfectly capable of governing themselves without any assistance from England. Massachusetts made laws as the need arose, coined money in the utter dearth of a medium of trade, and carried on an extensive commerce with European countries and the West Indies, exporting home products and the products of the other colonies in ships built at home and manned by her own sailors.

Unusual favor was shown the Puritan colonies while Cromwell was in power. He refused to listen to their enemies, and approved of the exile of Baptists and Quakers from Massachusetts. The Acts of Navigation and Trade, passed at his instigation to regulate and restrict the colonial commerce for the benefit of Eng land, were not enforced in New England during the Protectorate, an advantage which aroused the jealousy of the lessfavored colonies, and especially of the London merchants, a powerful class whose influence was steadily increasing, and who were thus added to the enemies of Massachusetts.

With the restoration began again the struggle for the preservation of the charter rights, to which Charles II. was an avowed foe. He was determined to crush out all independence in the colonies and reduce them to unquestioning obedience to the crown. A new policy was adopted. A council under the name of the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations was appointed to take charge of colonial affairs, and a system of unremitting oversight was inaugurated. Massachusetts was especially obnoxious, and measures were at once taken to bring her into subjection. Orders were sent to the governor and the General Court, requiring the oath of allegiance to be administered, all legal proceedings to run in the king's name, and the laws prohibiting the Episcopal form of worship and restricting the right of suffrage to church. members to be repealed. The people found these demands an infringement of

their liberties. They concluded to obey the first two and say nothing about the others. But the weapons of protraction and invasion, which had been so serviceable in dealing with Charles I., were of little use with his son. A commission was sent over, early in 1664, to regulate the government, discover how far the king's commands had been obeyed, and enforce obedience, to hear all complaints relating to titles, ecclesiastical discipline or undue assumption of power by the rul ers, and to administer justice at their own discretion, even if opposed to the laws of the colony. Men invested with such arbitrary powers would have been dangerous indeed to the welfare of the colony,. had they been fitted to carry out Charles's intentions. Fortunately for New England, they were not. Colonel Nicolls, whose presence was necessary for the decision of any measure, was at Manhadoes the greater part of the time. The other three, who were personally obnoxious to the people, were steadily thwarted in their attempts to stir up sedition and interfere with the government. After months were idled away they departed, leaving the people thoroughly exasperated by their encroachments and determined to resist every attempt to curtail their liberty.

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But although rid of her unwelcome guests, the colony did not settle back into her old peace which had vanished when Charles II. ascended the throne. The war with King Philip broke out, and drained New England of wealth and strength. It bore hardest on Massachusetts, and left her exhausted and impoverished. Never had there been a time of more general depression. The distress widespread. A number of towns were utterly destroyed, others so devastated that it was long before they regained their prosperity. The crops were ruined, the cattle were killed, and there was hardly a family that was not in mourning. In the midst of the gloom, the attacks on the charter were renewed. The English merchants were complaining of the injury. done to their commerce by the freedom of the colonial trade, and urging a more vigorous enforcement of the Acts of Navigation and Trade. Coming from so

influential a quarter, these complaints gained the ear of the king, and in addition to the acts already existing, restricting colonial commerce, another and a severer act was passed forbidding the importation into the colonies of any European commodities not laden in England. This would destroy the ship-building and other industries connected with it, a principal source of wealth to Massachusetts, and give England. a monopoly of trade. Edward Randolph, kinsman of Mason, was commissioned to enforce these measures, and also to discover the sentiments of the inhabitants of Maine and New Hampshire, as well as in the Massachusetts colony itself, toward the Massachusetts government, and to collect all the information possible prejudicial to the government. The Lords of Trade were ready to undertake the work of crushing the local governments, and he was only too glad to furnish them with all the material he could accumulate.

The first step was to recall the charters. Randolph bent all his energies to aid in this task. For the next twenty years he was the untiring persecutor of Massachusetts. His first official visit lasted six weeks. Every moment was used in collecting evidence against the colony, fomenting discord and stirring up intrigues against the government. He was the bearer of disagreeable messages, and he took a savage delight in making them as unpalatable as possible. Doyle says of him that "he was one of those men who, once enlisted as partisans, lose every other feeling in the passion which is engendered of strife." He had a capacity for bringing together the facts which would further his object in so effective a way that his statements carried conviction and baffled denial. His pen was never idle. Letter after letter full of the grossest misrepresentations was sent to work mischief in England, while the writer busied himself in increasing the minority of disaffected men which he soon discovered to exist in the colony. Almost all the intrigues and disputes which resulted in the downfall of the charter can be traced to his work in those six weeks. He sowed; Andros reaped a harvest of thorns.

Randolph's promotion to the office of collector of customs in Boston gave him larger opportunities of thwarting the magistrates in their efforts to preserve the Puritan theocracy. For the next fourteen years his malicious spirit was never idle. He went back and forth between England and the colonies, the evil genius of New England wherever he was. In 1679, as a consequence of his efforts to overthrow the theocracy, imperative orders were sent to the rulers of Massachusetts to extend freedom of worship and equal civil rights to all except Papists, and enjoining a strict observance of the clause of the charter which required eighteen assistants in the General Court. It was hoped that the result of these commands would be to weaken the patriotic party and strengthen the opposition. Matters were now rapidly approaching a crisis. Hitherto the patriots had felt that in the defence of their liberties they could count on the sympathy of the English commoners, and that that would be a check on the king's tyranny. But it was a forlorn hope. Charles was determined to assert the divine right of kings and to govern without responsibility to a Parliament. He began a war on the charters of towns and corporations. Charter after charter was annulled by the corrupt courts of justice. The colonies were not forgotten. Charles was resolved to be an absolute monarch in all his dominions.

Massachusetts instructed her agents to yield none of her charter rights. The king was determined to abolish those rights. The perplexed agents warned the leaders. that unless they yielded in some points they would lose all. The General Court deliberated long on their letters. Opinion was divided; a large part were in favor of yielding, but there were still enough members with the Puritan sturdiness to carry the point, with the influence of the clergy on their side. This decision ended the agents' work. When it was made known in England, a quo warranto was issued against the charter. One more chance was given Massachusetts to humble herself before the king. Governor Bradstreet and the majority of the assistants passed a vote to submit, but it was re

jected by the deputies, who chose to abide by their former decision, and in June, 1684, the charter was annulled by a decree in chancery, — and with it perished the Puritan Commonwealth in Massachusetts.

The annulment of the charter, the bulwark on which they relied for the protection of their rights and which they had struggled so valiantly to keep, was a crushing blow to the people. If a king's solemn pledge could be recalled, on what could they rely? They were left at the mercy of a despotic monarch. In one decree of a distant court, their title to the country, even the titles of individuals to land and houses, were swept away with the patent which conferred them. Charles II. showed how much tenderness the colony might expect at his hands by his nomination as his viceroy of the infamous Colonel Kirke, whose bloodthirsty course in Tangiers had won him so notorious a reputation. The sudden death of the king and the accession of James II., followed by Monmouth's insurrection, interfered with his coming; he proved so necessary to James in his terrible punishment of the rebels that he could not be spared for New England.

Until the new monarch had leisure to attend to colonial affairs, a temporary government was erected, consisting of a president and a council of eighteen members. There was no provision for a legislature. Joseph Dudley, a clever, selfseeking politician, was appointed president, through Randolph's influence, as a man who would be a subservient tool in carrying out the arbitrary designs of the crown. At the same time it was hoped that the people would be conciliated by the choice of one of their countrymen, and the way smoothed for harsher measures. Dudley, however, had made himself obnoxious both to the patriotic party and many of the moderate party. He had shown, while agent for the colony at a time when the unselfish devotion of her sons was most needed, that he cared less for her welfare than for his own advancement. On his arrival in Boston he presented his commission to the General Court. It was addressed to "some of the principal gentlemen" of the colony,

instead of the "Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay," as official documents had always been directed, — thus emphasizing the complete overthrow of the former government. A protest was drawn up, which declared the powers granted in it to the president and his council too arbitrary, "both in the matters of legislature and in the laying of taxes," and appealed to Dudley to refuse a commission which so grossly infringed the liberties of his countrymen. But he was too ambitious to heed their appeal.

The people were alarmed by the absence of provision for popular representation in the government; and a remark of Dudley's, that "the people in the colony must not suppose that the rights of Englishmen would follow them to the ends of the earth," showed his disposition toward them. Fortunately his power was of short duration. Had his office been permanent, he would have been an arbitrary and oppressive governor. The presidency lasted only six months, and he made no efforts to organize a government that would be so soon set aside. Except that no General Court met, the former government remained unchanged. But a general listlessness and uncertainty pervaded all its branches. Everything was unsettled. No one knew how soon new and harsher measures would be taken. They knew of the brutalities committed by Stuart orders in Scotland during the preceding ten years, and of the horrors perpetrated in England by Jeffries and Kirke. These things might happen within their borders while a Stuart was on the throne. Although intended to pave the way for the imposition of a stricter government, Dudley's appointment only served to keep the country in a discontented and restless condition and roused a stronger opposition to the

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Had the royal governor been sent out at once, and a defined and firm rule established, he would have been spared much trouble and had an easier task than Sir Edmund Andros found awaiting him on his arrival in Boston, in December, 1686, with a commission from the king appointing him governor-general of

all New England. The news of a settled government was received with relief. Anything was better than the gloom and depression into which the colony had been plunged for the past two years.

Sir Edmund Andros was no stranger to the people of New England. He had spent the greater part of the preceding twenty years in America. His family was noted for its devotion to the house of Stuart, and his own loyalty to his successive sovereigns was one of the prominent features of his character. He began his career in the army of Prince Henry of Nassau. At the restoration, he entered the service of the king's aunt, the Queen of Bohemia, where he acquired the accomplishments of a courtier and saw royalty in its most favorable aspect. His marriage with the sister of the Earl of Craven, the queen's chief adviser, is a proof of the favor in which the young cavalier was held at her court. It was probably through the Earl's influence. that, in 1666, he was made major of a regiment of foot-soldiers and sent to America, where he distinguished himself by his bravery and skill. He was promoted to the command of the forces in Barbadoes, and soon won the reputation of being skilled in American affairs. When the province of New Netherlands, which had been granted to the Duke of York, was restored to the Duke by the Dutch, he appointed Andros lieutenant

governor, an exceedingly difficult position to fill. The Dutch settlers had been forced to surrender to the English commander, Colonel Nicolls, in 1664. The province was re-named New York, in honor of its new proprietor, and Nicolls was made governor. He established an autocratic government, which his successor, Lovelace, continued. The success of the Dutch fleet in 1673 encouraged the settlers to rise against their tyrannical ruler and return to their old government. Their triumph was short-lived, and the English power was reinstated in the province, this time too firmly to be shaken. But they chafed under the foreign yoke, and it was only by the greatest wisdom and tact that Andros brought order out of the disturbed conditions he found on his arrival.

The king's instructions left the governor to use his own discretion in administering the government. James regarded his provinces as sources of income. He demanded that the governors whom he appointed should supply him with large revenues. The welfare of the people was of trifling importance. Fortunately for them, and in spite of all that has been said to the contrary, Andros was a more public-spirited and liberalminded man. During the six years he

was governor of New York he labored unweariedly for the people's good. A recent historian of New York says with justice : "His administration forms a memorable epoch in the colonial history of New York. . . . A careful scrutiny of the manuscript records in Albany shows that of all the New York governors before and after the Revolution, not one has taken such a purely personal supervision of everything that looked to the improvement of the city as Governor Andros. . . He may justly be considered the most able and enlightened of New York's colonial governors.'

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When he took up his residence in New York in 1674, the town was in a ruinous condition. The fort was falling to decay, the guns were useless, the public buildings sadly in need of repair, every department of municipal and colonial government neglected. He at once set himself vigorously at work to reform abuses and improve the town. Its defences were carefully strengthened, the fort was repaired, the harbor was enlarged, new wharves were built, substantial public buildings erected, owners of vacant lots obliged to improve them on penalty of having them sold at public auction. A market house was built, and market days and fairs were established; and the poor laws were so effectively carried out that in two years there were no beggars to be found. The public records had hitherto been carelessly kept in the secretary's house. Andros had them carefully arranged and removed to the town-hall. He organized a well-drilled militia, improved the sanitary regulations, established stringent laws against drunk

* Quoted from the Memorial History of New York, Mr. Stone's chapter on Andros, which gives a very interesting account of his administration.

enness and to regulate public morals. To all these reforms he gave his personal supervision. He foresaw the future commercial importance of New York, and especially directed his attention to furthering the commerce of the colony. He encouraged intercolonial trade and regulated the exports and imports of the colony for its best interests. In all his reforms he was so thorough and so far ahead of his time that his successors could make no improvement on his work.

Far from being a tyrant, one of his earliest acts was to second the petition of the people to the Duke of York for an Assembly. He recognized the justice of their demand, and used all his influence to persuade the Duke to grant it. But James had the Stuart hatred of popular assemblies and, with his usual narrowmindedness, declared himself unable to see any necessity for them and in isted that they would be destructive to the government. Still Andros did not give up his efforts to open James's eyes in this matter. When he visited England in 1677, he strongly urged upon both the king and his brother the advisability of yielding to the people's desire. But although he was received favorably at court and knighted in reward for his good service, his advice was ignored.

He has been accused by historians, and the people accused him at the time, of influencing his master to refuse an Assembly. He could not grant one against the Duke's commands; and because he was made the instrument to declare James's tyrannical will, the people. most unjustly flung the blame upon the man who had spared no pains to aid them, instead of looking to the source of the injustice done them and putting the censure where it was deserved. Andros's sympathy with their cause presents favorable contrast to the intolerance of the majority of the royal governors of his own and later times. Lord Berkeley, the governor of Virginia, openly rejoiced on hearing that James had refused to grant the petition, and thanked God there were neither free schools nor printing presses in his colony.

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Throughout his administration, Andros was continually hampered in his efforts

for the good of the colony by the Duke's incessant demands for larger revenues. His letters were full of complaints of the small returns he received from the province. In obedience to his commands, the governor was obliged to enforce the revenue laws stringently, thereby arousing the antagonism of English and Dutch traders, on whom they bore hard and who became anxious for his removal from office. Their accusations and the complaints of Carteret, governor of New Jersey, with whom Andros had come into collision in obeying the Duke's orders, influenced James to recall him. The discontented merchants represented that under another governor the province would yield larger revenues, and James, eager for larger revenues, followed their suggestions. In 1680 Andros was ordered to return to England to answer the charges against him. He hastened to England and laid a report of his administration before the king, the Duke of York and the council, and indignantly refuted the accusations which had been made against him. He came out of the examination wholly cleared and with praise for his administration. He remained in England for the next five years and enjoyed undiminished favor at court. When, in 1685, James II. found leisure to regulate the government of New England, he showed his confidence in Sir Edmund by appointing him governor-general of all the New England colonies, which were included in one royal province. This was the most important post on the continent and the most difficult for a royal governor to fill.

As governor of New York, Andros had been forced into disputes with the rulers of Massachusetts and Connecticut, whose prejudices had blinded them to his friendly attitude toward them. It was owing to his efforts that the Five Nations did not join King Philip in his war against them. He was anxious to help New England, but his offers were rejected, and his exertions were rewarded by accusations of furnishing the Indians with arms and ammunition with which to carry on the war. This was a base calumny; for besides keeping his Indian allies from joining the hostile Indians,

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