Conceived in Liberty (73 page)

*
Edwin B. Bronner,
William Penn’s “Holy Experiment”
(New York; Temple University Publications, 1962), p. 108. To Professor Bronner belongs the credit for discovering this era of anarchism in Pennsylvania.

*
Edward Channing,
A History of the United States,
6 Vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1905-25) 2:125.

**
Bronner,
“Holy Experiment,”
p. 119.

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.