WEBVTT NOTE 47. The Crown Begins the Takeover of New England 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.720 Volume 1, Chapter 47. The Crown Begins the Takeover of New England, 1676 through 1679. 2 00:00:10.720 --> 00:00:19.680 It was 1675. The last Dutch war was well over and King Charles II was free to turn his attention 3 00:00:19.680 --> 00:00:27.400 to longer-run concerns. Furthermore, the relatively liberal cabal administration, which had succeeded 4 00:00:27.400 --> 00:00:36.720 Clarendon in the mid-1660s had now fallen to be replaced by the absolutist Earl of Danby. 5 00:00:36.720 --> 00:00:43.600 With the accession of Danby, Charles determined to scrap his relatively tolerant administration 6 00:00:43.600 --> 00:00:50.540 at home, his flirting with liberty for Catholics and dissenters, and to embark instead on an 7 00:00:50.540 --> 00:00:56.720 absolutist course, royalist and theocratic Anglican. 8 00:00:56.720 --> 00:01:02.320 In colonial affairs, with the relatively liberal Shaftesbury now in opposition instead of in 9 00:01:02.320 --> 00:01:09.320 power, Charles determined that absolutism would hold sway there as well. As he looked 10 00:01:09.320 --> 00:01:17.480 overseas, it became obvious what was the stumbling block to absolute royal power, New England. 11 00:01:17.480 --> 00:01:23.120 New England that had the temerity to govern itself without so much as a royal governor 12 00:01:23.120 --> 00:01:30.720 and to trade freely with blithe disregard for the ever-tightening English Imperial Navigation Acts 13 00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:36.320 and at the heart and head of New England, Massachusetts Bay. 14 00:01:36.320 --> 00:01:41.720 Overwhelmingly, the most populous and most prosperous colony, 15 00:01:41.720 --> 00:01:47.220 the successful defier of the King's Royal Commission a decade before, 16 00:01:47.220 --> 00:01:51.920 Massachusetts, the seat of the prosperous rising merchant groups 17 00:01:51.920 --> 00:01:55.920 who were the primary scoffers at restrictive trade laws 18 00:01:55.920 --> 00:01:59.920 and the main thorns in the side of those London merchants 19 00:01:59.920 --> 00:02:03.920 that had pushed through the Navigation Act of 1673, 20 00:02:03.920 --> 00:02:07.920 the purpose of which was to enforce the navigation laws. 21 00:02:07.920 --> 00:02:14.920 It was high time, on many counts, to impose the imperial power on New England. 22 00:02:14.920 --> 00:02:19.920 The first preliminary step in the drive to centralize royal power 23 00:02:19.920 --> 00:02:23.840 over the colonies came in 1675 24 00:02:23.840 --> 00:02:28.000 when the King transferred the handling of colonial affairs 25 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:32.320 to a new committee of the Privy Council, the Lords of Trade 26 00:02:32.320 --> 00:02:36.840 and Plantations, with more power than previous committees 27 00:02:36.840 --> 00:02:42.000 in the imperial bureaucracy. The Lords realized that the main function of the 28 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:43.780 goal of absolute power 29 00:02:43.780 --> 00:02:47.520 was to regulate, monopolize and extract 30 00:02:47.520 --> 00:02:50.480 Revenue from Colonial Trade. 31 00:02:50.480 --> 00:02:57.740 The first direct step in King Charles' campaign to seize New England began in 1676, when the 32 00:02:57.740 --> 00:03:05.020 Lords of Trade appointed Edward Randolph to go to New England and check on its situation 33 00:03:05.020 --> 00:03:08.940 and on enforcement of the Navigation Acts. 34 00:03:08.940 --> 00:03:14.420 Randolph also carried a letter from the King to Massachusetts, ordering the colony once 35 00:03:14.420 --> 00:03:44.420 Edward Randolph was the perfect choice for heading in expanded 36 00:03:44.420 --> 00:03:58.420 Imperial Bureaucracy. He was the very model of the royal bureaucrat and placement, dedicated to maximizing the power and plunder of the crown for the benefit of king and self. 37 00:03:58.420 --> 00:04:08.420 He was an arch-royalist and high Anglican. He was grasping and arrogant before his inferiors, while obsequious before his betters. 38 00:04:08.420 --> 00:04:33.420 Edward Randolph was, by marriage, a cousin to Robert T. Mason, the son of John Mason, who was pressing for his old claim over the New Hampshire towns and who was largely responsible for Randolph's appointment. Thus Randolph had a special, personal interest in the assertion of royal authority over the New Hampshire towns and their separation from Massachusetts rule. 39 00:04:33.420 --> 00:04:41.420 Edward Randolph was also a model of the new breed of imperial bureaucrat for another critical reason. 40 00:04:41.420 --> 00:04:47.420 He was a leading official emerging not from the great aristocratic families 41 00:04:47.420 --> 00:04:53.420 but from the ranks of the burgeoning royal bureaucracy itself. 42 00:04:53.420 --> 00:04:59.420 Like such contemporaries as Sir Robert Southwell and William Blathwaite, 43 00:04:59.420 --> 00:05:05.860 Randolph was a creature of the new imperial civil service, and this common experience 44 00:05:05.860 --> 00:05:12.860 forged in this new breed a common class or caste interest, an interest that joined the 45 00:05:12.860 --> 00:05:19.940 power and fortunes of the king to their own. As Professor Hall expresses it, early in the 46 00:05:19.940 --> 00:05:26.660 decade of the 1670s, the great families were being replaced in high government office by 47 00:05:26.660 --> 00:05:34.100 By Men of More Humble Origins, The Permanent Civil Service Was Being Born, These Men Obed 48 00:05:34.100 --> 00:05:41.820 Their Position Not to Family or Wealth, but to the Crown. To the Crown, they returned 49 00:05:41.820 --> 00:05:49.100 a heightened loyalty, and they would expect the same from others. Massachusetts, used 50 00:05:49.100 --> 00:05:56.420 to its independence, treated Randolph's message from the King with its accustomed short shrift. 51 00:05:56.420 --> 00:06:01.380 Mr. John Leverett at first refused to take off his hat for the reading of the King's 52 00:06:01.380 --> 00:06:08.300 letter. When Randolph complained of the extensive violations of the navigation laws of the foreign 53 00:06:08.300 --> 00:06:15.060 ships and the cargo of Spanish wines he had seen in the harbor, Leverett staunchly replied 54 00:06:15.060 --> 00:06:23.220 that English laws were only applicable in what consist with the interest of New England. 55 00:06:23.220 --> 00:06:30.060 It took Randolph only a week to decide on what should be done with Massachusetts. Smash 56 00:06:30.060 --> 00:06:36.900 it! It was a course he would urge for years. King Philip's war was not quite over and 57 00:06:36.900 --> 00:06:45.060 so now, now was the time to act. He warned, three frigates of forty guns with three catches 58 00:06:45.060 --> 00:06:51.820 well manned lying a league or two below Boston, with His Majesty's express orders to seize 59 00:06:51.820 --> 00:06:57.220 all shipping and perform other acts of hostility against these revolters 60 00:06:57.220 --> 00:07:00.700 would do more in one week's time 61 00:07:00.700 --> 00:07:05.560 than all the orders of King and Council to them in seven years. 62 00:07:05.560 --> 00:07:09.600 To make Massachusetts look even blacker, Randolph Grand 63 00:07:09.600 --> 00:07:14.020 eloquently claimed that the other New England colonies would like nothing 64 00:07:14.020 --> 00:07:16.020 better than a royal governor 65 00:07:16.020 --> 00:07:18.860 general to rule over them. 66 00:07:18.860 --> 00:07:23.620 The plan was a little too abrupt for the Lords of Trade, but it echoed a considerable amount 67 00:07:23.620 --> 00:07:30.740 of influential opinion in England. Before leaving for England, Randolph traveled through 68 00:07:30.740 --> 00:07:37.740 New England trying to round up allies for his campaign to take over the colonial governments 69 00:07:37.740 --> 00:07:44.160 in behalf of the Crown. The motley group of allies that Randolph was able to accumulate 70 00:07:44.160 --> 00:07:51.360 has generally been called the moderate party, a curious concept, since there were neither 71 00:07:51.360 --> 00:07:57.440 moderate nor party. It is difficult to see why these satellites of the crown should be 72 00:07:57.440 --> 00:08:03.560 called moderate, and they were by no means a homogenous party, but a varied group of 73 00:08:03.560 --> 00:08:09.680 individuals collected from different circumstances and occupations. Neither is it true that these 74 00:08:09.680 --> 00:08:15.800 These moderates were the merchants. It is true that the ruling oligarchy of magistrate 75 00:08:15.800 --> 00:08:22.640 gentry and Puritan ministers in Massachusetts generally excluded the merchants, and that 76 00:08:22.640 --> 00:08:29.000 the ranks of Randolph's favorites were drawn from the opponents to the existing regime. 77 00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:35.840 But merchants never form any sort of homogenous class, and they differed on this issue too. 78 00:08:35.840 --> 00:08:49.840 Furthermore, those seeking government privileges or lucrative posts in the bureaucracy perform an economic role entirely different from that of people genuinely engaged in trade. 79 00:08:49.840 --> 00:08:53.840 Those so engaged oppose interference with their trade. 80 00:08:53.840 --> 00:08:59.840 It is highly misleading to lump the two together into the term merchants. 81 00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:06.540 Certainly, a sizable number of colonists cooperated or appeared to cooperate with Randolph, but 82 00:09:06.540 --> 00:09:12.840 they were too multifarious to form a party. Some wanted closer ties with England. Some 83 00:09:12.840 --> 00:09:22.340 wanted religious toleration. Some wanted aristocratic government. Some simply wanted political power. 84 00:09:22.340 --> 00:09:28.520 In each case, Randolph tried to find the factor that would turn the person against the Massachusetts 85 00:09:28.520 --> 00:09:34.660 Government. As in the case of the Royal Commissioners a decade earlier, Randolph found his first 86 00:09:34.660 --> 00:09:42.080 allies outside Massachusetts. Anglicans, especially in the Maine and New Hampshire towns, and 87 00:09:42.080 --> 00:09:49.600 Governor Josiah Winslow of Plymouth, who made Randolph a free man of the colony. Winslow 88 00:09:49.600 --> 00:09:56.400 was motivated by understandable fear of Massachusetts aggression, a fear heightened by the unfortunate 89 00:09:56.400 --> 00:10:03.300 precedent set by Connecticut's swallowing up of New Haven. Plymouth was still in limbo 90 00:10:03.300 --> 00:10:09.120 without a charter and Winslow was anxious to curry favor with the Crown to obtain such 91 00:10:09.120 --> 00:10:10.640 a charter. 92 00:10:10.640 --> 00:10:18.520 Returning to England, Randolph wrote two lengthy reports in the fall of 1676. In these he denounced 93 00:10:18.520 --> 00:10:25.280 Massachusetts in detail and erroneously asserted that the bulk of the people would welcome 94 00:10:25.280 --> 00:10:30.600 from the Capture of the Government by the Crown and the Consequent Overthrow of the 95 00:10:30.600 --> 00:10:33.600 Existing Oligarchy. 96 00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:40.520 But with the theocracy already decidedly on the wane, many Massachusetts citizens undoubtedly 97 00:10:40.520 --> 00:10:47.800 felt that its elimination by such a route would be much too high a price to pay. 98 00:10:47.800 --> 00:10:55.000 Randolph tried to turn every contingency to his anti-Massachusetts designs. Thus, in late 99 00:10:55.000 --> 00:11:02.480 1676, he wrote a series of papers in which he tried to tie in the measures underway against 100 00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:09.680 Bacon's rebellion in Virginia. One paper suggested that the anti-Bacon fleet in Virginia 101 00:11:09.680 --> 00:11:17.320 proceed to Boston to help settle matters there. This time in peril, Massachusetts sent two 102 00:11:17.320 --> 00:11:34.060 In the summer of 1677, the Committee of Chief Justices of the Lords of Trade issued their 103 00:11:34.060 --> 00:11:41.160 report on New England. The Committee recommended for Massachusetts a supplementary charter, 104 00:11:41.160 --> 00:11:46.780 which Boston hailed as a great victory over Randolph's proposals. The Massachusetts General 105 00:11:46.780 --> 00:12:00.780 The Federal Court, cockily triumphant, ignored almost all of the other recommendations of the committee, brushing aside its demands that Massachusetts allow appeals or reviews of its laws to the Crown. 106 00:12:00.780 --> 00:12:10.780 Massachusetts even ignored a royal request of great symbolic, but only symbolic, importance, taking an oath of allegiance to the Crown. 107 00:12:10.780 --> 00:12:18.740 Instead, Massachusetts repeated its own independent oath of fidelity. Massachusetts' only concession 108 00:12:18.740 --> 00:12:25.900 was to agree to enforce the Navigation Acts in the colony, a very sore point with the 109 00:12:25.900 --> 00:12:33.620 Crown. But here Massachusetts staunchly insisted on its view of its own absolute right to make 110 00:12:33.620 --> 00:13:00.240 The Committee of Chief Justices also decided to reject the Mason claim to New Hampshire. 111 00:13:00.240 --> 00:13:06.560 and also rejected the right of Massachusetts to rule there. This left New Hampshire explicitly 112 00:13:06.560 --> 00:13:13.640 in limbo, but with the implicit threat of being converted into a royal colony. Massachusetts 113 00:13:13.640 --> 00:13:19.080 expected, however, that the end of the Mason threat would soon result in the acknowledgement 114 00:13:19.080 --> 00:13:25.580 of its own jurisdiction over New Hampshire. For the main towns, however, the committee 115 00:13:25.580 --> 00:13:33.180 decided to acknowledge the Gorgias claim. At this point the king received shocking news. 116 00:13:33.180 --> 00:13:38.820 King Charles had hoped to buy the main charter back from Gorgias and then grant the area 117 00:13:38.820 --> 00:13:46.340 as a proprietary gift to his natural son, the Duke of Monmouth. But Massachusetts now 118 00:13:46.340 --> 00:13:54.100 executed a brilliant maneuver, purchasing all of Gorgias' rights to Maine for 1250 119 00:13:54.100 --> 00:14:02.500 pounds cash. Massachusetts now had an excellent royal title to the Maine towns and it later 120 00:14:02.500 --> 00:14:10.620 proceeded to enforce that title by trying to collect quit rents from the Maine settlers. 121 00:14:10.620 --> 00:14:17.980 At the turn of 1678, a clamor grew on all sides for the reopening of the Massachusetts 122 00:14:17.980 --> 00:14:25.440 case. Overconfident, Massachusetts itself wished to push on to final victory the official 123 00:14:25.440 --> 00:14:31.700 incorporation of New Hampshire, and Randolph wished to bombard the Lords of Trade with 124 00:14:31.700 --> 00:14:38.260 anti-Massachusetts arguments to reverse the decisions of the previous year. Finally, the 125 00:14:38.260 --> 00:14:44.500 The report of Massachusetts maneuver in Maine angered the committee and moved it to a general 126 00:14:44.500 --> 00:14:48.660 re-evaluation of New England affairs. 127 00:14:48.660 --> 00:14:54.660 At the reopened proceedings of the committee, Randolph maneuvered masterfully. 128 00:14:54.660 --> 00:15:00.500 He first attacked the personal acts of the Massachusetts agents and he discredited on 129 00:15:00.500 --> 00:15:05.100 the agents, then turned the Bay Colony itself. 130 00:15:05.100 --> 00:15:10.700 Here he stressed the colony's insistence that only Puritan Church members could vote, and 131 00:15:10.700 --> 00:15:16.700 especially its lofty rejection the previous fall of the committee's proposals, a point 132 00:15:16.700 --> 00:15:23.580 well calculated to inflame the committee against Massachusetts Bay. Randolph also warned that 133 00:15:23.580 --> 00:15:29.980 Massachusetts' imposition of an oath of fidelity was a direct threat to his own informers in 134 00:15:29.980 --> 00:15:39.660 in the Colony. By May 1678, Randolph's victory over Massachusetts was complete. The King 135 00:15:39.660 --> 00:15:44.660 insisted on the oath of allegiance in the colony, which Massachusetts finally accepted 136 00:15:44.660 --> 00:15:52.860 in October. But most important, the Attorney General's advice was accepted. Massachusetts' 137 00:15:52.860 --> 00:15:59.700 Randolph's crimes and violations were sufficient to void its charter, and the Crown prepared 138 00:15:59.700 --> 00:16:03.140 to sue to nullify the charter in the courts. 139 00:16:03.140 --> 00:16:10.380 To complete the route, Randolph was himself appointed over Massachusetts' bitter protest 140 00:16:10.380 --> 00:16:17.260 to be the collector of customs for New England, the first salaried bureaucrat to be stationed 141 00:16:17.260 --> 00:16:21.180 by the Crown in that region. 142 00:16:21.180 --> 00:16:27.020 Randolph's task was primarily to enforce the collection of duties from the Navigation Acts. 143 00:16:27.020 --> 00:16:33.960 The decisions in the spring of 1678 spelled the beginning of the end of independence in 144 00:16:33.960 --> 00:16:38.620 Massachusetts and New England. 145 00:16:38.620 --> 00:16:44.780 At this point, with the jubilant Randolph prepared to distribute patronage to his friends, 146 00:16:44.780 --> 00:16:50.820 events in England forced another turn, a postponement of the destruction of the Massachusetts 147 00:16:50.820 --> 00:17:08.820 In 1678, Titus Oates and his friends touched off a mighty wave of anti-Catholic hysteria with his elaborate hoax of a popish plot to assassinate the king and impose Roman Catholicism upon England. 148 00:17:08.820 --> 00:17:19.820 This hysteria was manipulated by a relatively liberal country party headed by Lord Shaftesbury to ride briefly back into power. 149 00:17:19.820 --> 00:17:26.460 The Earl of Danby was impeached and sent to the Tower, and Shaftesbury became President 150 00:17:26.460 --> 00:17:34.420 of the Privy Council in early 1679 and a member of the Lords of Trade. 151 00:17:34.420 --> 00:17:39.260 In view of this, the Committee of the Lords of Trade realized that it had to postpone 152 00:17:39.260 --> 00:17:43.500 indefinitely its plans for crushing Massachusetts. 153 00:17:43.500 --> 00:17:49.140 The Lords contented themselves with urging the colony to adopt liberty of conscience, 154 00:17:49.140 --> 00:17:55.200 especially of Anglican conscience to repeal the religious restrictions on voting and to 155 00:17:55.200 --> 00:17:58.020 impose the oath of allegiance. 156 00:17:58.020 --> 00:18:01.940 They also decided to move quickly on New Hampshire. 157 00:18:01.940 --> 00:18:07.540 The Lords of Trade made New Hampshire a new royal colony with a president appointed by 158 00:18:07.540 --> 00:18:14.740 the king, an assembly and a council of nine of whom six were to be appointed by the crown 159 00:18:14.740 --> 00:18:19.300 and the three others to be selected by those six. 160 00:18:19.300 --> 00:18:24.260 Robert Mason was persuaded to acknowledge the land titles of existing settlers 161 00:18:24.260 --> 00:18:27.500 in return for yearly feudal quidrant 162 00:18:27.500 --> 00:18:31.020 of not more than six pence on the pound 163 00:18:31.020 --> 00:18:35.940 and the vital timberlands were to be reserved to the ownership of Mason. 164 00:18:35.940 --> 00:18:38.740 Edward Randolph finally returned to New England 165 00:18:38.740 --> 00:18:41.140 after delay of more than a year 166 00:18:41.140 --> 00:18:47.380 To take up his post and to put the royal government of New Hampshire into effect, Randolph was 167 00:18:47.380 --> 00:18:54.000 instructed to administer an oath to uphold the Navigation Acts to each of the four colonial 168 00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:55.940 governors of New England.