USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > History of the state of Rhode Island and Providence plantations, Vol. I > Part 43
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From Hartford Andros visited Fairfield, and returning Nov. by the sea-side, completed the annexation of Connecticut by appointing the principal persons in the various towns as justices.3 Stopping at Newport with his troops, he pro-
1 An anecdote that illustrates alike the wit of the great Puritan divine, Dr. Hooker, and the hatred felt in Connecticut for Andros, is preserved by Hon. Theodore Foster, among his MS. collections. Foster Papers, vol. ix. " While Sir Edmund Andros was at Hartford, he met Dr. Hooker one morning, and said, 'I suppose all the good people of Connecticut are fasting and pray- ing on my account.' The Doctor replied, 'Yes, we read, This kind goeth not ont but by fasting and prayer.' "
2 Br. S. P. O., New Eng., vol. iv. p. 762. No date is affixed to this copy of the Report, but a reference to it in a later document upon the same ques- tion in 1697 dates this paper, Oct. 1687. A marginal memorandum men- tions that, prior to the submission of 1644, the Council of Plymouth had con- veyed the tract to the Hamilton family, in 1635, in whom the title still vested, if that conveyance was legal.
$ Letter to Board of Trade from Boston, Nov. 28, 1687. Br. S. P. O., N. E. v. 4, p. 579.
506
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND.
CHAP. posed to take possession of the charter of Rhode Island. XII. But in this attempt he was foiled by the foresight of the 1687. cautious Clarke, who, on hearing of his arrival, sent the Nov. precious parchment to his brother, with orders to have it concealed in some place unknown to himself, but within the knowledge of the secretary. He then waited upon Sir Edmund, and invited him to his house. A great search was made for the coveted document, but it could nowhere be found while Andros remained in Newport. After he left it was returned to Gov. Clarke, who kept it until the fall of Andros permitted a resumption of the government under it.' The seal of the colony was however produced and broken by Andros. A new one was made as soon as 28. it was needed .? In his letter to the Board of Trade, con- cerning the annexation of Connecticut, written directly after this affair, Andros makes no allusion to the success- ful ruse of the governor of Rhode Island, nor does he even refer to the mysterious disappearance of the Connecticut charter.
Dec. 13.
The third quarter sessions was held at Newport, with but five justices present. An order was passed to prevent danger from fire in the compact portions of the town. Should any chimney take fire, the person using it was to forfeit two and sixpence, and each householder was to place a ladder, reaching to the ridge pole, against every dwelling house that he owned. Andros, following an established custom, had appointed the first of December as a day of thanksgiving. The proclamation was generally disregard- ed, and parties were brought before the Courts for con- tempt. One of these answered to the charge of keeping open his shop on that day "that he was above the obser- vation of days and times." Another said that his boy opened the shop, and worked upon his own account, but that if he had not been lame he did not know but he
14.
1 Foster MSS., Bound vol. ii. p. 337.
2 Br. S. P. O., New Eng., vol. v. p. 74.
507
GRANTS TO THE ATHERTON COMPANY.
should have worked himself ! Thus general was the spirit CHAP. XII. of discontent at the loss of their liberties felt even in Rhode Island, where the yoke of tyranny rested compara- 1687. tively lightly. A tax of one hundred and sixty pounds Dec. was ordered for building a court house in Newport and one in Rochester. The committee appointed to do the work wrote to Gov. Andros on the subject, and nominated John 15. Woodman of Newport to be treasurer of the Province or County of Rhode Island if his Excellency should approve.'
Soon after the report of Andros upon Narraganset reached England, Lord Culpeper again petitioned, in be- half of the Atherton company, for a number of grants, amounting in all to sixty thousand acres in Kings Prov- 1687-8. ince, to be selected by themselves, in lieu of the whole country, heretofore claimed. They asked that the land sold by them to the French refugees should be included in Jan. 13. the grant, and that the bass ponds might be reserved to them, as also the use of the waste lands adjoining their settlements .? There were sufficient reasons why this re- quest should be granted, although the terms in which it was expressed-"your petitioners for their parts being willing to consent, in lieu of the whole which is of great extent, to accept of part thereof under such quit-rent as your Majesty shall think fit "-were not very modest or appropriate for parties whose entire claim had just been set aside. The royal council accordingly instructed An- 1688. April 10. dros that, as these petitioners had an equitable pretence to receive favor, he should assign to them such lands as were not already occupied, they paying a quit-rent of two and sixpence for every one hundred acres. 3
The spring term of the Common Pleas was held at Kingston, or Rochester as it was then called. An order encouraging the fishery in Pettaquamscot pond was pass-
March 6.
1 Potter's Narr. 221. R. I. Col. Rec., iii. 228.
2 Br. S. P. O., New Eng., vol. iv. p. 762.
3 Br. S. P. O., New Eng., vol. xxxiv. p. 8.
508
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND.
CHAP. XII. ed, and a tax of over fifty-three pounds was laid upon the whole Province, or County, to pay for the killing of wolves 1688. therein. These animals were still very numerous and April troublesome. The records of Warwick show that some had been killed in that town within a recent period.1
7.
The commission under which Sir Edmund Andros had hitherto acted did not include Rhode Island and Connec- ticut, although he was empowered by it to receive their charters. A new commission was sent out, confirming his government over all New England, and annexing thereto the Provinces of New York and the Jerseys, under the gen- eral name of New England, with a council of forty-two per- sons named therein, seven of whom were from Rhode Isl- and .? Five members were to constitute a quorum in emergencies, and seven in any case. The seal of New York was to be broken, and that of New England, before described, used in its place. Liberty of conscience, in ac- cordance with the declaration of indulgence, was to be per- mitted ; but the freedom of the press was made subject to the will of Andros. The instructions accompanying the commission were very full, and are chiefly exceptionable from the discretionary power vested in certain cases in the governor.3
16.
The news of the prospect of a direct heir to the throne, caused great rejoicing among the Papal party in England, and was received with consternation by the Protestants. A proclamation for a day of public thanksgiving and prayer was issued by Andros, and sent to every county or province in his wide dominion. The appointed day was not observed with a zeal commensurate to the occasion, in the opinion of the Viceroy. The birth of the Prince of
18.
29.
June 10.
1 On 20 April, 1674, old Pumham killed a wolf in Warwick, and on 29 Jan. 1680, a bounty of twenty shillings a head was offered for their destruction.
2 Walter Clarke, John Coggeshall, Walter Newberry, John Greene, Rich- ard Arnold, John Alborough, and Richard Smith.
3 R. I. Col. Rec. iii. 248-54.
509
ANDROS MOVES TO NEW YORK.
Wales, afterward known as the Pretender, caused much CHAP. XII. 1688. Aug. 24.
discussion in England. Suspicions were rife against the legitimacy of this heir to the throne ; and when, upon news of the event reaching America, Andros issued an- other proclamation of thanksgiving for the Queen's happy delivery, it was less favorably received than the former had been. The people generally credited the injurious reports circulated in England.
The June session of the Court was held at Newport. Nine justices were present. New constables were sworn for every town in the county. Providence having disre- garded the orders relative to the last two taxes, the consta- bles were required to levy by distraint for their collection. Some persons in the vicinity of Newport having escaped taxation, the assessors were ordered to perfect the rate list by including them.
Upon receipt of his new commission, Sir Edmund An- dros moved his head-quarters to New York, supplanted Col. Dongan, the late governor, and settled the govern- ment. French intrigues with the hostile Indians led the government to take some measures to protect the friendly tribes, which were afterwards brought up against Andros as evidence of favor towards them, to the prejudice of the colonists. Depositions to this effect were taken in Rhode Island and elsewhere, tending to excite the people against him.1
At the autumn Court, held in Rochester, granting licenses and the trial of criminal causes was the only business. The succeeding session at Newport was the last at which any legislation was had. The fire ordinance
1 These were published in " The Revolution in New England Justified," p. 26. Boston, 1691. This book was called forth by one entitled, " An Answer to the Declaration of the Inhabitants of Boston and the country adjacent, on the day when they secured their oppressor," by John Palmer of New York, one of Sir Edmund Andros's Council. The declaration referred to was issued on the seizure of Andros, April 18, 1689-a printed copy of which is in Br. S. P. O., New England, vol. v. pp. 9, 10.
June 12.
13. July 5.
Sept. 4.
Dec. 11.
510
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND.
CHAP. XII. 1688-9. Jan.
2.
in Newport, having been neglected, was re-enacted, and the fines resulting therefrom were appropriated for the poor of the town. A tax of one hundred and twenty pounds was levied, but never collected, for before the day appointed in the act for the assessors to meet, the revolu- tion broke out. The justices often met for probate busi- ness, in the interval of the quarter Courts. One meeting is recorded during this winter. Once more the Court of Common Pleas assembled at Rochester, between which place and Newport the Courts for this county alternated. It was the last meeting of the Andros government in Rhode Island. The only thing-done was to fine a man two and fourpence for planting a peach tree on Sunday. Some of the justices met a few days later for probate busi- ness, and this closes the records of the "usurpation," as it is often called, in Rhode Island.
March 5.
18.
1689. April 4.
Meanwhile a great change had taken place in English politics. The long struggle between privilege and prerog- ative had closed in violence, if not in blood. William, Prince of Orange, whose wife was the eldest daughter of James, had invaded England with a fleet of five hundred vessels, and an army of fourteen thousand men. The King had fled to France, and a Protestant dynasty was secured to England in the persons of William and Mary. The news of this revolution was the signal for the fall of Andros. The messenger who brought it was imprisoned at Boston, but the great intelligence could not be con- cealed. . The minds of the people were ripe for revolt. The detested usurper was doomed. The principal citi- zens, including some members of his own council, assem- bled at the town house, and signed a summons to Sir Ed- mund Andros to surrender the government. This they urged for his own welfare, assuring him of safety in case of compliance, but otherwise threatening that the fortifi- cations should be taken by storm.1 A lengthy declaration 1 A broadside in Br. S. P. O., New Eng., vol. v. p. 11. R. I. Col. Rec., iii. 256.
18.
511
CHAP. XII 1689. April 18.
REVOLUTION AGAINST ANDROS.
of the inhabitants of Boston, set forth in thirteen sections the grievances of the people as the ground of their action, the burden of which instrument was, that "New England beheld the wicked walking on every side, and the vilest men exalted.1" Capt. George, of the Rose frigate, was seized as he came on shore in the morning, and carried to prison. The Governor and his attendants, attempting to appease the council assembled at the town house, were treated in the same manner. Andros refused to send or- ders to surrender the fort. Thereupon his secretary, Ran- dolph, was seized, and a pistol presented at his breast, threatening him with instant death if he did not accom- pany his captors to the fort, and there represent to the commandant that the Governor required him to surrender it at once to the people. This ruse succeeded. Five thousand men were by this time under arms. The ven- erable Gov. Bradstreet, now eighty-seven years old, who had been supplanted by Dudley, was reinstated by accla- mation. The castle, situated a league below the town, was summoned in the same manner, but with a different result. The commander, suspecting the violence offered
to Randolph, refused to obey. The courage displayed by Andros at this crisis, was worthy of a better cause. Threats of violence were vainly employed to extort from him an order for the surrender of the castle. Although told that he and his adherents should be put to the sword unless instant compliance was made, he firmly refused to yield the point. The next day a committee of gentlemen prevailed on the garrison to surrender, with the promise of their liberty, but on reaching the town they were all thrown into prison. The fort, the jail, and the castle, were all used as prisons for the civil and military officers of the late government, twenty-five of whom were closely confined with their leader .?
1 See note ante p. 509. Br. S. P, O., New England, vol. v. pp. 9-10.
2 Riggs' narrative of the Boston Revolution. Br. S. P. O., New England,
19
512
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND.
When news of this affair reached Rhode Island, Dud- ley, the chief justice, who had gone to Narraganset to hold a Court, was seized by a party of Providence men, taken to Roxbury, and afterwards committed to prison. A letter was circulated among the people, from Newport, in cautious terms, recommending them to assemble there, " before the day of usual election by charter," to consult upon what course should be adopted.1 In accordance with this call, the freemen of Rhode Island, Providence, and Kings Province, assembled at Newport, and put forth a declaration of their reasons for resuming the charter gov- ernment.2 At the same time they adopted an address " to the present supreme power of England," stating that the fall of Andros obliged them to resume their old form of government, which they prayed might be confirmed to them; and that as they were " not only ignorant of what titles should be given in this overture, but also not so rhetorical as becomes such personages," they hoped their deficiencies on this point might be overlooked. Thus easily and quietly did Rhode Island revert to her former freedom; and not knowing yet who might be victorious in England, adopted this cautious and politic form of ad- dress. But the wary Clarke hesitated to accept his former post, and for ten months Rhode Island was without an acknowledged governor. The deputy governor, John Cog- geshall, with several of the old assistants, boldly resumed their functions. Connecticut followed immediately and more thoroughly, restoring all her former officers, conven- ing her assembly, and resuming at once the government
9.
voi. v. p. 7. Capt. George's account, p. 34, and list of prisoners, p. 48. R. I. Col. Rec., iii. 257.
1 This letter is signed W. C., J. C. What appears to be the original is preserved in the Foster papers, vol. iv. The handwriting, the cantious lan- guage, and the first initial signature, all attest the anthorship of Gov. Walter Clarke. It is printed in Staple's Annals, 176, and R. I. Col. Rec., iii. 257.
. 2 R. I. Col. Rec., iii. 268, where by error of type the declaration is dated 1690.
CHAP. XII. 1689. April 23. May 1.
513
ACCESSION OF WILLIAM AND MARY.
under her long hidden charter. Plymouth took the same CHAP. course under Hinckley. In Massachusetts a convention of n
XII. representatives of the several towns was held, who unani- 1689. mously voted to re-organize the government with the May 22. same officers who had been superseded three years before. These officers accepted the trust provisionally, declaring that in so doing they did "not intend an assumption of 24. 26. charter government." 1 Two days later a ship arrived at Boston with the joyful news that William and Mary had ascended the throne. The acting governor and council of Rhode Island immediately proclaimed the new monarchs in every town of the colony; and the same was done, with the greatest demonstrations of loyalty and delight, through- out New England.
Dr. Increase Mather had secretly escaped from Bos- ton, before the revolution, and gone to England to repre- sent the cause of the colonists. Upon the accession of William III., he had an audience with the King, who promised that Andros should be recalled .? The order was issued in due time, requiring the authorities of Massachu- setts to send home Sir Edmund Andros and his fellow prisoners, by the first vessel, to answer for their conduct to the king.3 Andros, by the aid of his servant, who per- suaded the sentinel to drink, and then to suffer him to stand guard in his stead, escaped from the castle and fled to Rhode Island. At Newport he was captured by Major Sandford, and sent back to Boston,4 where a lingering im- prisonment of half a year still awaited him.
The deputy governor and council of Rhode Island peti-
1 Two broadsides in Br. S. P. O., New England, vol. v. pp. 12-14. The Br. archives abound in documents pertaining to the revolution in New England. Volume v. of New England papers is full of pamphlets, broadsides, and MS. letters from both parties upon this subject.
2 March 14, 1688-9. A curious account of this audience, from Cotton Mather's Life of his Father, is in 1 M. H. C., ix. 245-53.
3 Hutchinson, i. 391, note. 3 M. H. C., vii. 191. R. I. Col. Rec., iii. 256.
4 Hutch. i. 392. Randolph to Board of Trade from Boston gaol, Sept. 5, 1689. Br. S. P. O., New England, vol. v. p. 94.
VOL. 1 .- 33
July 30.
Aug. 3.
514
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND.
CHAP. XII. tioned the throne for a confirmation of their charter, re- hearsing the circumstances of its resumption, of the proc- 1689-90. Jan. 30. lamation of their majesties, and of the late seizure of Andros.1 The long confinement of Andros and his asso- ciates was about to terminate. For nearly ten months they had expiated their acts of tyranny in a Puritan prison. The order for their return to England for trial had arrived, and the vessel was now ready to sail. The haughty royalist, who had too faithfully executed the mandates of a despotic master, returned as a prisoner Feb. from the country which, sixteen years before, he had first visited as a ruler, and to which he was again to return, within two years, as governor of Virginia.
In reviewing the administration of Andros in New England, an impartial judge cannot fail to discover, among the principal causes which have made his memory odious, that he inflicted a mortal wound upon the Puri- tan theocracy. The hierarchy, of which Hooker, and Cot- ton and the Mathers were the heads, never fully recovered its prestige. To this, in a great measure, is due the de- testation that attaches to his name. Cotemporary de- nunciation has been echoed in later times by those who have no sympathy with the religious intolerance that evoked it, but who, either through carelessness or timidity, have neglected to analyze the conduct of Andros, or have feared to present it in what we believe to be the just light. He conscientiously and fearlessly obeyed the commands of his sovereign, and in entering upon his difficult mission he displayed a nice sense of the delicate position he was called to fill, utterly at variance with the character of brutality assigned to him by his Puritan critics. The opinions of men who maligned the purity of Williams, of Clarke, and of Gorton, who " bore false witness " to the character and the acts of some of the wisest and best men who ever lived in New England, who strove to blast the
1 Original in Br. S. P. O., New England, vol. v. p. 219. R. I. Col. Rec .. iii. 258.
515
REVIEW OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF ANDROS.
reputation of people whose liberal views they could not com- CHAP. prehend, who collected evidence to crush the good name XII. of their more virtuous opponents, by casting upon them 1689. the odium of acts wherein they were themselves the guilty parties, who committed outrages, in the name of God, far more barbarous than the worst with which they ever charged " the usurper,"-the opinions of such men, we say, are not to be received without a challenge, and the conclusions to which a candid examination brings us are not to be withheld, because differing in some points from the whole- sale denunciation hitherto employed against Andros. For the tyrannical points of his administration his master is to blame ; for the petty oppressions that often rendered its execution vexatious we believe that his tools were more culpable than himself. Their object was to enrich them- selves at the expense of the people, and their practice was to charge upon their leader the extortions that rendered his administration grievous. The wide dominion over which Andros held control could only be organized, under the system of James, by delegating power, and this was too often placed in irresponsible hands. Randolph, the secretary, was the author of many of the acts for which Andros, as the governor, is held responsible. The mutual hatred between him and the colonists was undis- guised, but posterity has shielded the infamy of the legis- lator beneath the mantle of the executive. William III. was looked upon as a mild and liberal monarch, yet upon the arrival of Andros in England the charges 1 against him were dismissed by the royal order on the ground of insufficiency-that he had done nothing which was not fully justified by his instructions ; and in compensation for his imprisonment in New England, he was soon after appointed to succeed Effingham, as governor of Virginia.
1 These charges were prepared by Sir Henry Ashurst, Increase Mather and others, 14 April, 1690, and were answered by Andros and his associates, at great length, and with the result stated in the text. A draft of the charges, and the original reply are in Br. S. P. O., New England, vol. v. pp. 164, 166.
516
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND.
CHAP. XII. The republican spirit of New England could not quietly submit to such a form of government as was prescribed 1689. by James II., however well it might be administered. The prejudice against this form has been unjustly directed upon the instrument employed to establish it, and Andros has consequently been portrayed as a monster of tyranny. Yet it should be remembered, that for three years he ruled without interruption, which could scarcely have oc- curred had a tithe of these misrepresentations been true ; nor, till the news of the revolution in England reached Boston, was there a single attempt made to resist the government of this "incarnate despot."
Although the government of Andros has been held up as one of absolute tyranny, and necessarily so for the reasons here given, the other New England colonies com- plained most bitterly of those acts which Rhode Island could not but approve, and some of which, as seeming to be favors shown to her, were construed into acts of hos- tility to them. So general is the predjudice against him to this day, that it may sound strange to say that in any respect Sir Edmund Andros was a benefactor to Rhode Island. " The evil that men do lives after them, the good is often interred with their bones." So has it been with Andros. His will was arbitrary. His rule, even in Rhode Island, where it was mildest, was oppressive ; but his acts, where they were good, should not be forgotten, even though the evil predominates. He sought to estab- lish universal toleration in religion. This was abhorrent to the Puritans. In their estimation it was rampant Rhode Islandism. His object, to be sure, was to secure a foothold for the church of England, not to favor the principle. But Rhode Island could not object to see her free ideas adopted by a despot, although what was a prin- ciple with her was merely policy with him. Again, the long disputed boundary with Connecticut was established by Andros, in accordance with the claims of Rhode Island. This added a new cause of complaint in which this State
517
CHAP. XII. - 1689-90.
Feb. 22.
ROYALISTS AND REPUBLICANS.
could not unite. And so long as he ruled, Rhode Island was secure from the insults of her neighbors, and protected against them in her rights. The courteous treatment which he here received, compared with the rudeness else- where shown him, led him to represent Rhode Island, in his despatches, in favorable contrast with the other colo- nies. It is not improbable that the assurances of her loy- alty, repeatedly given by Andros, had some effect in secur- ing the tacit confirmation of her chartered rights under the succeeding reign.
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