USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. II > Part 11
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Though now successful, the most delicate duties devolved upon Mather. William " had been bred a Presbyterian, and was from rational conviction a Latitudinarian ;" and there was therefore no reason to fear that during his reign Popery or Prelacy would be forced upon New England. But religious liberty was not her only desire, - the restoration of that Charter was her dearest wish; and that Charter was an offence in the eyes of all parties in England. William was not ready to make concessions which had been condemned and cancelled by his predecessors. Mather, at an inter- view, March 14, 1688-89, endeavored to secure the royal favor; but the King significantly replied : "I believe they are a good people, but I doubt there have been irregularities in their government."
The King promised to recall Andros; and on Feb. 26, 1688-89, he proposed to send two commissioners to act until a new charter should be prepared. In the mean time, before the tidings of His Majesty's intentions could reach them, the colonists, as we have seen, had taken the decision into their own hands, and the news reached London toward the end of June. On July 4, 1689, Mather had another interview with the King, who then approved the action of the colonists; and on the 12th of August a royal letter was addressed to Massachusetts, ratifying the assumption of government there for the time being.
Mather was not meanwhile regardless of the great power of Parliament to assist in restoring the Charter. The Convention Parliament was still in
23
THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD.
session, and, by advice of his friends, Mather procured a vote of the House of Commons "that the taking away of the New England charters was a grievance, and that they should be restored." A section to this effect was inserted in the Corporation Bill. This step was gained before Parliament took a recess on Aug. 20, 1689.
Besides these appeals Mather sought to enlist the sympathies of the public, and printed a third essay, - The Present State of New England, etc. - licensed July 30, 1689, in which he gave an account of a prosperous colony as developing under the old charter. Soon after this, probably after the reassembling of Parliament on the 19th of October, a Reply to the Vindication was published, which set forth the impropriety of including the New England charters in the Corporation Bill. This controversy and the hopes of the Agent were terminated by the fate of the main bill, from which the most important clauses were stricken out; and Parliament was prorogued on Jan. 27, 1689-90, to be formally dissolved a few days later.
Toward the end of 1689 the opponents of the Charter had begun to make themselves heard. Byfield 1 and another writer had published in England the colonists' version of the over- Martha" Byfelle Speaker throw of Andros, which had been accomplished not without some dis- content. The Episcopalians of Boston sent to England a strong remon- strance, and so did citizens in Charlestown and settlers in Maine. Gershom Bulkeley published a pamphlet to show that the new government was ille- gal. Palmer, one of the ablest of Andros's adherents, prepared in prison a defence of the late government, which found a printer in the distant colony of Pennsylvania, and was doubtless freely circulated even in Boston.
We may imagine that by the beginning of the year 1690 all these re- monstrances had reached London; and early in the year Andros, Dudley, and several others of their party were sent thither by command of the King. Mather and Ashurst, now recognized as Agents by the restored government of New England, received as colleagues Elisha Cooke and Thomas Oakes. Very little progress, however, was made during the year toward fulfilling the wishes of the colonists. Mather says that he made "some essays to see if, by a writ of error in judgment, the case of the Massachusetts Colony might be brought out of Chancery into the King's Bench;" but this was "defeated by a surprising Providence," as Mather called what was most likely a division in the councils of the Agents. Elisha Cooke was for the old charter or none at all, and Oakes joined with him. Mather and Ashurst were in favor of making the best terms possible. The disputes between these four had gone so far that Cooke and Oakes would not sign the articles preferred against Andros before the Privy Council, April 17, 1690, and the
1 [Byfield's account of the Late Revolution in New England is in the Andros Tracts, and also in the Historical Magazine, January, 1862. - Er.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
prosecution fell through on that ground. Hard words were exchanged, Mather saying that the Earl of Monmouth told him " that they had cut the throat of their country in not signing," and Cooke alleging the advice of Sir John Somers in defence of his conduct. A false rumor was circulated that Cooke and Oakes said " that they could have saved the old charter if it had not been for Mather, and that he had betrayed his country."
Cooke continued an opponent to the end, and refused to take any steps toward obtaining a new charter; but the others decided to trust to the kindness of the King. The Earl of Monmouth presented their request, and it was referred to the two Lord-Chief-Justices, Holt and Pollexfen, the Attorney-General Treby, and the Solicitor-General Somers, with whom Mather was on friendly terms. He was present at the consultations at which the new charter was prepared; and the report, having been sub- mitted to the King, was forwarded to the Committee for Trade and Plantations on Jan. 1, 1690-91.
In 1690 the able attack upon Mather, entitled New England's Faction Discovered, was published. After the unconditional release of Andros in April, his friends seem to have been active and eloquent in opposing a re-grant of a charter to Massachusetts. Palmer issued a reprint of his Defence, wisely expunging the Scriptural arguments which were specially adapted to a New England audience. These two writers not only praised the conduct of Andros, but skilfully displayed the feebleness of his suc- cessors in the government. In reply to them, Mather undoubtedly pub- lished his Vindication of New England,1 containing the first petition of the Episcopalians of Boston. Soon after, the Government of Massachu- setts put forth their statement entitled The Revolution in New England Justified, and the People there Vindicated, and the accompanying Narrative of the Proceedings of Andros, by several of his Council. Indeed, the latter pamphlet, dated at Boston, Feb. 4, 1690-91, refers especially to "such untrue Accounts as that which goes under the name of Capt. John Palmer's, and that scandalous Pamphlet entitled New England's Faction Discovered, sup- posed to be written by an Implacable Enemy [Randolph] of all good men, and a person that for Impudence and Lying has few Equals in the World." Lastly, to the pen of some friend of the Agents we may attribute the pamphlet called The Humble Address of the Publicans of New England, with its insinuations that the second petition of the Episcopalians was intended for whichever King might succeed, and that their protestations of loyalty were worthless. As we have seen, the matter of the new charter was in the hands of the Committee for Trade and Plantations, and Mather was busy in securing the interest of all who might aid him. He published a paper of Reasons for the Confirmation of Charter Privileges; he gained the support of such Nonconformist ministers as had influence with noble- men; he specially obtained the good offices of Archbishop Tillotson and
1 [This is included in the Andros Tracts, ii. 21, following a copy without title. The copy in Harvard College Library has a title. - ED.]
25
THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD.
Bishop Burnet. Finally, on April 9, 1691, he was granted an interview with the Queen, in which Her Majesty displayed her usual kindness of heart, and promised to use her influence with the King in behalf of the colony.
In April, William, having been absent in Holland, returned to England for a fortnight, and Mather was favored with two interviews, in which he presented addresses from the General Court, and from a number of London merchants, and urged the difference between New England and the other colonies.
In preparing the new charter, the first question was whether the colo- nists should make their own laws and appoint their own officers, or there should be a governor appointed by the Crown, who should have the power of vetoing laws. The King decided for a royal governor, but avoided a direct decision of the question as to the veto power. Mather soon became involved in disputes with the Lords of the Council, who evidently in- tended that the governor should have the veto power; while Mather strenuously endeavored to persuade them to adopt a plan which the Attorney-General, Treby, had drawn up at his solicitation, and by which the governor had not this power in any case. Mather protested to the ministers that he would sooner part with his life than consent to their plan, or to " anything that might infringe any liberty or privilege that justly belonged to his country." Their significant reply was, "that nobody ex- . pected or desired his consent; that they did not look on the Agents from New England as plenipotentiaries from another sovereign state; but that if they declared that they would not submit unto the King's pleasure, His Majesty would settle the country as he pleased, and they were to take what would follow." The irrepressible Agent, however, continued to protest, and persuaded his friends at court, and even the Queen, to write to the King, now in Flanders, asking either that his plan might be adopted, or that the charter might be delayed until the King's return to England. Believing that he had thus secured a respite, Mather went to recruit his health " to the Waters," - probably to the fashionable resort at Bath ; but he was quickly recalled by the news that the King had, on the 10th of August, signified his approval of the Council's plan of a charter. Mather now tried to obtain all possible concessions in the details. He succeeded in having the territories of Nova Scotia, Maine, and Plymouth annexed to Massachusetts, but failed in having New Hampshire also included. He had the form of oaths amended to suit his views, and obtained the addi- tion of a most important clause confirming all grants made by the General Court, notwithstanding any`defect which there might be in form of con- veyance. The new charter, thus framed and amended, was signed on Oct. 7, 1691.
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Here ended the labors of Mather as Agent for Massachusetts. On the 4th of November he waited on His Majesty to thank him for the charter, and to notify him that the Agents united in recommending that Sir William VOL. II. - 4.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Phips should be appointed governor. On March 7, 1691-92, Mather and the newly commissioned governor left London; and on the twenty-ninth sailed from Plymouth, under convoy of the "Nonesuch " frigate, for Boston, where they arrived May 14, 1692.
Italiam H. Whitmore
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CHAPTER II.
THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS. - MASSACHUSETTS DIPLOMACY IN LONDON. - BOSTON A VICE-ROYALTY: ITS COURT AND CHURCH.
BY GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS, Vice-President of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
O F all the colonies planted by subjects of the Crown of Great Britain on the four continents and many islands of the globe, not one has ever revolted from the authority of the parent country except those thirteen in North America, -Massachusetts being the leader, -which in due time as- serted and achieved their independence. The causes, methods, and agencies which brought about that result, and the instigating motives which prompted and guided it, are to be traced in their spring and workings through the period in our history between 1692 and 1774, during which the government of Massachusetts was administered by officials commissioned by the Crown. Had that régime been instituted from the first planting of the colony, instead of having been substituted for a previous one quite unlike it, it is conceiv- able that the result might have been different in time or circumstance. The fact that previous to the exercise of a direct royal sway over Massachu- setts it had, under a different form of government, substantially anticipated the independence which it afterward achieved, prejudiced and perilled at the start the interposition of its authority by the Crown. The people who for two generations had been practised in self-government, constituted an unpromising constituency for the experiment of a foreign rule over them. It is also conceivable that the revolt of Massachusetts might never have occurred, or would, if ever effected, have been brought about quite other- wise as to time and circumstances, if she had been left to retain and exercise the form of self-government enjoyed under her colonial charter. There were party divisions and struggles, sometimes very passionate ones, devel- oped between her two bodies of legislature and executive. There were many persons, some of them quite influential in place and means, who found causes of disaffection and antagonism in the state of affairs, in the usages and traditionary principles of the administration of the colony, and who were restive under the stern, hard sway of what still survived of the old Theoc- racy. The mother country might really have exercised more authority and
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
have retained more deference from her subjects here, had she been regarded simply as a resource for appeal, arbitration, or mediating and reconciling interference between parties who could not always manage their affairs successfully when left wholly to themselves, than she could have hoped to do by an assertion of absolute power over them. Then, too, the risks to which the colony was for a century and a half so calamitously exposed in war- fare with the French and their Indian allies, might naturally have induced her wiser magistrates to keep themselves under a due allegiance to the King, that they might have a claim on his aid. It is idle, however, to speculate at any length upon what might have happened under certain cir- cumstances had not the continuity of their course been broken by the interposition of a radical change in them. There is an episode in our history dividing two periods,-the earliest and the present one of our gov- ernment by ourselves, -in which we were brought under a direct subjec- tion of legislative, executive, and judicial authority to the mother country. This is the theme of the following pages.
From the date, when, in 1692, the monarchs of Great Britain assumed the responsibility of selecting governors and other officials for Massachu- setts, till the period in 1774-75, when the revolting Province concluded to dispense with them, eleven such chief magistrates had received the royal commission. Their names, in order, are Sir William Phips, Richard Earl of Bellomont, Joseph Dudley, Samuel Shute, William Burnet, Jonathan Belcher, William Shirley, Thomas Pownall, Sir Francis Bernard, Thomas Hutchinson, and General Thomas Gage. Between Dudley and Shute's ad- ministrations a commission as governor had been issued to Colonel Elisha Burgess. This he sold for a thousand pounds paid him by the friends of Shute. In temporary vacancies of the chair, William Stoughton, William Tailer, William Dummer, and Thomas Hutchinson were successively quali- fied to occupy it, having been commissioned as Lieutenant-Governors. Of the eleven Governors just named, only ten really exercised here their full functions, or left tokens of their authority in our legislation. General Gage, for three good reasons, is hardly to be recognized as one of our gov- ernors. He had been sent here as a temporary substitute for Hutchinson, who it was intended should return from England to resume his office after making report at Court. Gage was avowedly appointed rather with refer- ence to military than civil functions; and he never really governed, as his authority from the first was thwarted and set at nought. Even as a military officer Gage was so soon superseded by General Howe, that, except as bear- ing the first shock of the bloody conflict, there is but little mark of him in our history.
Ten royal Governors, then, were recognized as having authority in Massa- chusetts, and put their names to acts of legislation with the other branches of our Provincial government, -the style being changed with the new charter, from " the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay " to " the Governor, Council, and Representatives convened in General Assembly."
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29
THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
If these Crown officials had been of the very best and wisest among men, considerate of the local and traditional prepossessions, prejudices, and usages of those whom they were to govern, tentative, gentle, and deferential in the exercise of authority; and if they had even subordinated their ob- ligations to advance the supposed interests of the Crown for the sake of a temporizing policy of humoring a self-willed people, - there would hardly
William phipp.
Cellomont
Samll fhrk
Felchen
Whirly Pourall Fra.Bernard
Tho: Gages the Histchinon
THE ROYAL GOVERNORS.1
have been a sensible relief of the shock caused by their presence and administration here. Among the parallelisms which the Puritan colonists had fondly traced between their own providential mission and guidance and those of the " chosen people " of old, they had loved to dwell in their prayers and occasional sermons upon their enjoyment of the privilege emphasized by the Hebrew prophet, of choosing " their governor from the midst of them " (Jer. xxx. 21). Four of their ten royal Governors were, indeed, natives, and of their own stock; and their own foremost divine and politician, Increase
1 [The seals of the Governors are given in Heraldic Journal, i. and ii. - ED.]
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30
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Mather, had been considerately allowed the favor of proposing the first of them. But, none the less, it was by kingly prerogative and not by popular election that these chief magistrates, with others, came into power. The change was a radical one, and it covered possibilities of much more.
Through these Crown officials a foreign government, with its own distinct and often rival interests, had a representation and a sway here such as it had never had before. The reader must find elsewhere general and de- tailed statements of the changes wrought in the constitution and adminis- tration of the government by the substitution of the Provincial for the Colonial charter. They need only to be summarily repeated here. Massa- chusetts, no longer retaining its individuality, was a part of a province which included the old Plymouth Colony, Maine and Nova Scotia and the lands between them, except New Hampshire. The governor and lieut .- governor were to be appointed and commissioned by the king. In a legislature of two Houses, a popular branch was to be composed of delegates or repre- sentatives from the towns (of which there were seventy-five, - seventeen of these being in the old Colony of Plymouth), and a council of twenty-eight (the first members of it having been designated by the king) were to be nominated by the representatives, subject, however, to rejection by the Gov- ernor, who also might veto bills passed by the Court. Laws approved by him after their enactment were suspended in their full force for three years, dependent for that period upon the allowance of the king. Judicial officers were to be chosen by the Governor and Council. The General Court held the power of the purse. There was a right of appeal to the English courts, limited to cases considerable in amount.1
It should be recognized here that by no means all the people of the colony, especially those whose homes and interests were identified with Boston, were of one mind as regarded the change in the government. Even of those born of the native stock, and most concerned in its local relations, there was no inconsiderable portion, in position and influence, who avowedly or secretly welcomed that change. The rule of the old régime had been to some, stern, oppressive, and arbitrary; the clerical and eccle- siastical, the domestic and social espionage had become offensive and irritating. What the lovers of the old ways mourned over as a decay of piety and morality indicated a preference and welcome by others of a re- laxed rigidness. And while we distinctly trace the influence of such restive- ness among descendants of the Puritan stock, we have to allow for the presence and activity here of a vigorous and unsympathizing class, who, as concerned in trade, or brought here as military and naval officers, soldiers, and sailors during the chronic warfare against the French and their Indian allies, identified their sympathies and interests with the old home, and so were in accord with the assertion here of the royal authority.
1 [A heliotype of the charter of William and Mary, which united Plymouth with Massachu- setts, and instituted the line of royal Governors, is herewith given. The negative was made, by
the kind permission of the Secretary of the Com- monwealth, from the original which hangs on its several rollers beside the Colonial charter in the office of the Secretary at the State House .- En.]
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"not then contante askthe af fumirates for our the thingham friute ar State is within the honor Simile or Criteria of the Trullern & clear His home created for li asie lite tting house the it
ELF
Parcour S'inales
1691
MASSACHUSETTS PROVINCIAL CHARIER, 1691.
31
.THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
But after yielding the fullest reasonable admission as to the number and weight of those in the community to whom the newly instituted government might be indifferent or preferable, we can hardly overstate the repugnance, the melancholy regret, the dismay and apprehension of possible contingent losses and evils which the prostration of self-government brought with it to the larger and the more homogeneous elements of the people of Boston. Of the sadness of feeling, of the fond recalling of the past, and the painful retrospects and visions of the future connected with it, the Journal of Chief- Justice Samuel Sewall presents many plaintive reminders. Though he filled honored places under the new government, and shared the most intimate social intercourse and privileges with the representatives of the Crown, he was never in heart reconciled to the change; and before he went, in full years, to the tomb, which he had previously filled with his large family, he felt that the glory had departed from his Israel. The dismay and anxiety which had attended the unsettled interval of the eight years previous to the setting up of the second charter, the exhaustion, poverty, and depression which had disheartened the whole community in a continuous warfare with the French and Indians on sea and land were, indeed, somewhat relieved by the re-establishment of security and order. Yet it would hardly be worth the while to offset the general sorrow for the loss of the old charter by any encouragement or hope which those of the native stock could find in the new organic disposal of them and their interests. Any one who attempts to trace the springs, the occasions, and the directing forces of the revolt which, in less than three quarters of a century afterward, prepared the way for our independence, cannot find his clew a year short of the date when the former self-governed Colony of Massachusetts Bay became a Royal Prov- ince. To those who in lineage, sentiment, and habit represented, in the full maturity of active life, the first planters on the soil, the experience might be compared to that of a man in the vigor of two or three score years, who had not even in his nonage been subject to another, and who had felt no crisis of increased freedom when the law made him his own master, and who should find himself then suddenly put under guardianship, as unsound or imbecile. Birthright privileges, with their wonted exercise, the elastic spirit of full manhood, with all the fond associations and usages which had strengthened through two full generations, were rudely arrested. Fester- ings of discontented feeling from the first experience of the change indicated a constant contrasting of the new dispensation of things with the cherished remembrances of the past. There was a manifestation of something more and worse than awkwardness in the effort at adaptation and conformity with changed habits and rules. These frettings and retrospects would not allow the memory of a previous independence to fade into a mere tradition, but kept it latent as in full vigor of spirit. Under a forced repression it mani- fested itself in a seldom intermitted, and often in a resisting and pugnacious opposition to the advice and commands of the representatives of the Crown, even when they spoke by positive instructions from the monarch. Even
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