Volume 1, Chapter 48, The Crown Takes Over New Hampshire, 1680-1685
Edward Randolph arrived in America in December 1679. His first task was to set up the royal
government in New Hampshire. At Portsmouth in mid-January, Randolph invested John Cut,
a leading Portsmouth merchant, with the office of president. Randolph's problem in New Hampshire
was to rule the four towns that were led by a small group of wealthy Puritan and Massachusetts
merchants, the Vaughns, the Waldrons, the Cots. As elsewhere, his policy was to divide
and conquer. He achieved this aim by finding an ally in John Cot. Next, Randolph appointed
to the post of counselor the other key merchant leaders. These included Richard Waldron, Richard
Martin and William Vaughan. But five of the six counselors at first refused to serve and
it was the influence of John Cot that finally persuaded them to end their civil disobedience
and to assume their post. Waldron became vice president of the colony.
The new general court of New Hampshire, consisting of council and elected assembly, met in March
and bravely passed a kind of declaration of rights, asserting that,
No act, imposition, law or ordinance be made or imposed upon us, but such as shall be made by the Assembly and approved by the President and Council.
Brave words, but they ran straight against the intentions of the royal power.
Leaving New Hampshire, Randolph left behind him another pliable ally, Walter Barefoot,
his deputy collector of customs. Barefoot was to enforce the navigation acts strictly
and collect the corollary revenue. Another ally was the Englishman Richard Chamberlain,
a friend of Mason's who was appointed secretary of the New Hampshire Council. However, Randolph
lost his number one ally, Cot, who died in early 1681. Succeeding him in the post was
was the tough-minded merchant Richard Waldron. The new spirit was evident when Barefoot decreed
that all ships entering and leaving Portsmouth must do so only under his authority. Waldron
and his colleagues immediately displayed the old Massachusetts spirit of independence promptly
arresting Barefoot and trying him before the President and Council as the Supreme Court
New Hampshire was now in virtual revolt against the Crown's rule. King Charles quickly did
This allowed the colony's declaration of rights, and Robert Mason came to New Hampshire in
late 1681 with the king's order requiring Mason to be admitted as a member of the council.
Mason's agents then began to demand his current and back quit rents from the settlers on pain
of eviction, and to forbid the settlers to cut timber on his lands. Acting on numerous
The Council commanded Mason and his agents to cease and desist from these harassments.
There followed a test of strength. Mason summoned the Council to appear before the King. The
Council issued a warrant for Mason's arrest as an usurper. Upon losing the test, Mason
escaped arrest and fled back to England.
But New Hampshire had also to face the royal might of England. Mason, having told his tale
The King decided to remodel the administration of New Hampshire and bring the rebellious
colony to heel.
Instead of a president, New Hampshire was now to have a royally appointed governor with
greatly expanded powers.
The governor could convoke or dissolve the general court, veto its laws, remove counselors,
Constitute Courts and Appoint Officers.
Selected to be the first royal governor was the court favorite, Edward Cranfield, who
was promised a handsome salary and one-fifth of all the quit-rents received.
Cranfield arrived in New Hampshire in October 1682.
Virtually his first act was to remove the independent-minded Waldron and Martin from
office.
He called an assembly, which promulgated a new code of laws, this time omitting the Declaration
of Rights. By December, Cranfield had discovered that Mason, in persuading him to take the
office, had misrepresented the little colony by stating that it was far wealthier and more
populated than it was. For a short while, Cranfield, disappointed at the poor pickings,
In a few more weeks, however, Cranfield remembered what he was there for, and settled down to
his job of plundering as best he could.
As Cranfield was reported to have said, he had come to New Hampshire for money, and money
he would have.
Cementing his alliance with Randolph, he put Randolph on the New Hampshire Council,
and also appointed him attorney general of the colony.
Toward the end of December, Cranfield seized and dragged into court George Jaffrey, a Puritan
merchant of Portsmouth, for shipping goods deemed contraband under the navigation laws.
At the trial, the jury, following the great English tradition of deciding on the justice
of the Law as well as the facts of the specific case decided against the law and brought a
verdict with court cost against the Crown. Cranfield reacted by removing Elias Stallman
from his office of councilman and commander of the fort. Stallman had disobeyed an order
to fire on Jaffrey's ship and was replaced as commander by the always pliable Captain
and Walter Barefoot. The most high-handed reaction of Cranfield was to direct Randolph
to prosecute the jury and all others involved in the criminal conspiracy. Cranfield would
have liked to proceed against the main leader of the resistance, Reverend Joshua Moody,
a Puritan minister who was also a merchant. Cranfield now found the popularly elected
of the Assembly refusing to pass his demands for higher taxes. The Governor decided to
institute a complete executive despotism and subdue the recalcitrant colonist. Cranfield
dissolved the Assembly and made himself and the Council the supreme legislative and judicial
power. He changed the juries from being elective to agencies appointed by the Governor. Virtually
Virtually the entire populace of the colony, led by the merchants, freeholders and puritans,
bitterly opposed the despotic regime that Cranfield had managed to impose in three short
months in office.
The people of New Hampshire were not the sort to take this treatment passively.
Many people in Exeter resisted payment of the tax levy, but Edward Gove, a deputy from
from Hampton decided on more active resistance. Rebellion. Gove, aided by Nathaniel Ladd of
a prominent New Hampshire family, rode to and fro between Hampton and Exeter on January
27, trying to raise a rebellion and claiming that Cranfield's commission was invalid. Gove
raised the cry of liberty and reformation, but the other leaders of the colony decided
that rebellion was imprudent, and the tiny band of eleven men was quickly arrested by
the soldiery. There is reason to believe that the Gove Rising was premature and that the
leaders of the popular opposition were themselves preparing to revolt three days later. The
Gove rebels were tried for high treason on February 2nd. Ironically, the chief judge
Judge was Richard Waldron, a man whose views and sentiments were all with Gove. Waldron
knew that Gove was right and that he, Waldron, should have been standing in the dock instead
of judging the man now there. But as often happens when men confront the embodiment of
their conscience, Waldron was especially severe. For daring to speak in his own defense, Gove
was denounced by Waldron for insolence and then sentenced to be tortured and executed.
Gove's property was duly confiscated and part of the spoils, as was the rule, was pocketed personally by Governor Cranfield.
But Cranfield feared the rising revolutionary situation and was worried that Gove might escape,
so he decided to follow the royal rule for rebels and ship Gove to England.
Gove's colleagues, though also convicted of treason, were released. In England, Gove was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where there may have been an attempt to poison him.
Cranfield and his little clique now imposed a grinding despotism upon the colony.
Cranfield speedily removed Waldron and Martin from the council once again, and appointed Barefoot, his deputy governor, and Mason, the chancellor.
With the magistrates and juries all appointed by the governor, Mason began mass prosecution for failure to pay quit rents.
Cranfield was supplied with a special incentive to enforce Mason's claims.
One-fifth of the quit rents, extracted from the people, was to go to Cranfield himself.
Mason won 30 or 40 suits before packed juries and had the satisfaction of winning the first suit against none other than Waldron.
The jury consisted of tenants of Robert Mason.
But when executions were levied, no one would buy the confiscated lands or take possession of them.
They remained in the hands of the property owners.
Cranfield now tried to meet this non-violent resistance and extract Mason's rents by force.
But the people, emboldened by news of Gove's life being spared, rose up and met force with force, led by Waldron, Vaughan and Reverend Mr. Moody.
Cranfield promptly retaliated by clamping the colony's leaders, including Waldron, Moody, Vaughan and Stallman, into jail.
Cranfield undaunted, pressed on in his despotic course. The ships of Massachusetts, thought to be anti-Cranfield, were excluded from New Hampshire, because of Massachusetts' persistent violations of the navigation laws. He altered town boundaries and forbade the collection of taxis.
Executive despots have traditionally had one Achilles heel, taxes.
Cranfield found himself forced in January 1684 to recall the assembly to try to raise more tax revenues.
Cranfield used the old device of despots, trying to frighten the assembly with dark
forebodings of a foreign and an Indian threat. He had secret intelligence, said Cranfield,
that New Hampshire was in danger of foreign invasion. He therefore demanded the doubling
of tax rates for various increased expenses of government, including the repair of the
and the Portsmouth Fort, but the assembly staunchly refused to be intimidated by war
scares and refused to pass the revenue bill.
Governor Cranfield now dissolved the assembly again and proceeded to the ultimate length
of levying taxes himself without consent of the assembly.
He also angered the colonists deeply by deciding to suppress completely the colony's largest
Church, the Puritan Church, and to impose Anglicanism on New Hampshire by force.
Cranfield's goal was to suppress the Puritan ministers and force them to administer the
sacraments according to the Anglican right. He also called for an Anglican test for holding
any public office. Concretely, he proceeded with enthusiasm against one of the leading
Opponents of His Despotic Regime, Portsmouth's Puritan Minister, Rev. Joshua Moody. Cranfield,
backed by Mason and Councilor John Hinks, ordered Moody to administer to them the sacrament
of the Lord's Supper after the Anglican Order. When Moody refused, he was arrested.
Cranfield put considerable pressure on the judges, and Moody was condemned and sentenced
to six months imprisonment. After his release, Moody was prohibited from preaching, which
forced him to move to Boston. But the tide now began to turn against the governor. The
sober, moderate Nathaniel Weir, justice of the peace and leading citizen of Hampton,
was sent secretly out of the colony. Financed by the leading planters and merchants, he
He sailed to London. Weir came armed with an extensive petition to the king against the tyranny of Cranfield. Even Edward Randolph, apprised of the Weir petition, turned against the extremes of Cranfield. Cranfield's own response to the Weir petition, incidentally, was characteristic of the man. He would get the names of all the signers and it would be the best hand he ever had, for it would be worth a hundred pounds a man.
For helping Weir with the petition, the prominent merchant and landowner, William Vaughan, was imprisoned for nine months by Cranfield.
However, the cause of New England in general, and New Hampshire specifically, was now being argued by the liberal George Seville, Marquis of Halifax and President of the Privy Council.
Halifax argued frankly, according to the report of a French envoy, that the same laws enforced
in England ought to be established in a country inhabited by Englishmen, that an absolute
government was neither so happy nor so safe as one that is tempered by laws, and that
he could not make his mind easy to live in a country where the king should have the power
to take the money he had in his pocket whenever his majesty saw fit.
The first sign of the Crown's displeasure with Cranfield came in April 1684 when the
Lords of Trade rebuked him for deciding the Mason claims himself instead of sending them
to England to be adjudicated as per his instructions.
But Cranfield's internal troubles were even greater.
The attempt to enforce payment of the new taxes led to general civil disobedience in the colony.
All refused to pay taxes to the constables. And when the property of the resistors was
finally seized, no one would buy. In December, the resistance began to move
into the stage of outright revolution. At Exeter, cudgels and boiling water were used
In Hampton, Thurston was disarmed and beaten, and from there was escorted to the village of Salisbury with a rope around his neck.
When the magistrate Roby ordered seizure of some of the mob, he was assaulted instead.
The governor ordered a troop of cavalry, commanded by Robert Mason, into the field to put down the rebellion.
Robert Mason, into the field to put down the rebellion. But so widespread was the revolutionary
movement that at the appointed time and place Mason found himself alone on his horse. During
the height of the turmoil in June 1685, Cranfield took the precaution of taking extended leave
of absence in the West Indies for his health. He left barefoot to face the music.
While England was rapidly turning against its agent, King Charles II died in February 1685 and was succeeded by his brother, the Duke of York, James II.
In April, Halifax again censured Cranfield for not sending the Massachusetts disputes to England.
Edward Randolph now began to denounce his former creature openly and bitterly.
Cranfield, in New Hampshire, by his arbitrary proceedings, has so harassed that poor people
that they wish again to be under the Bostoners.
For Mr. Cranfield has quite ruined that place, and should a governor go over who will tread
in Mr. Cranfield's steps or do worse things if possible, it will cool the inclinations
of good men and make them take the first occasion to free themselves.
With the accession of King James, Edward Gove was freed from the tower, pardoned, and returned
home in the autumn of 1685.
Walter Barefoot was now in precarious charge of the province, but he and Mason lay discreetly
low.
The symbolic end to the Cranfield reign of terror came in December when the once mighty
Barefoot and Mason were severely beaten up in the former's home by two leading citizens
of the Colony. A former despotism had become opera bouffe. And Cranfield? Cranfield found
it best for his health to make his leave permanent. He remained in the West Indies as collector
on Barbados.