Volume 1, Chapter 57, The Glorious Revolution in the Northern Colonies, 1689 through 1690.
The fall of Sir Edmund Andros, crucial as it was, was a reflection of the fall of his
far mightier sovereign, James II, who was deposed in the virtually bloodless, glorious
William and Mary, the Protestant daughter of the Catholic James, were crowned the Sovereigns
of England in February 1689. This moderate shift from James II's despotism, as well
as from his attempt to grant religious liberties to his fellow Catholics, brought an end to
The 17th Century Era of Conflict and Rebellion in England. Indeed, there has been nothing
like a revolutionary upheaval in England since. The news of the Glorious Revolution brought
the thrill and joy of expected liberation to the northern colonies, all of which, save
Pennsylvania, were groaning under the tyranny of Andros and the dominion of New England.
The example of the Glorious Revolution was all that was needed to fire the spark of revolt
in the northern colonies. If the English tyrant could be overthrown, why not his American
henchmen? Indeed, all that was needed to spark a revolution was the news that the Glorious
Revolution had begun. The news of Williams's November landing in England first reached
Boston on April 5th, and the successful outcome was not yet known in America.
Andros, who had privately heard the truth in eastern Maine many weeks before, tried
to keep the news from the people by arresting the hapless young man who brought the news.
When he refused to remain silent, Andros sent him to prison without bail for bringing traitorous
Andros and Treasonable Libels in Papers of News. But news of this sort could not now be
kept secret, and preparation for a coup against Andros got quietly underway. Wild rumors spread
about the colony that Andros was a secret papist, that he was conspiring with the French
and the Indians to take over the colony, and so forth. It became evident to the leaders
The leaders of the colony that a popular revolution against Andros was inevitable, so the leaders determined to take charge of the revolution, to keep it in channels that would be safe for themselves, and to prevent what ill effects an unformed tumult might bring.
Not only did John Usher shift to insurrection, but even that old rogue William Stoughton managed to preserve his record of being on the winning side by joining the leaders of the impending rebellion.
The revolution was precipitated by Andrus' panicky attempt to suppress the growing opposition
to his rule, specifically an attempt at a special meeting of the Council to try Reverend
Cotton Mather, eminent son of Reverend Increase Mather, for preaching sedition.
The revolution broke out on the morning set for the trial, April 28.
The speedy and virtually bloodless revolt was launched that morning when bands of boys
The soldiers and youths ran through Boston, shouting falsely that the popular revolution had already begun in the other parts of town.
Captain George of the naval frigate Rose was seized.
Two hundred armed rebels of the militia gathered under the command of Captain John Nelson.
The English soldiers at the fort showed reluctance to fire on the people of Boston.
Edmund Andros surrendered and was kept in prison for a year by the revolutionaries, as were the other hated leaders of the Andros regime, including Edward Randolph, Joseph Dudley, John West, John Palmer and Charles Liget.
Of the twenty-four men imprisoned with Andros, twenty were English bureaucrats, military and civilian, and only four were from New England.
To justify this revolution, the leaders issued, on April 18, a declaration of the gentlemen
merchants and inhabitants and the county adjacent, drawn up by Cotton Mather.
The declaration set forth the rebel case, including the numerous oppressions the citizenry
had suffered, and praised the glorious revolution in England.
The revolutionaries were now faced with the inevitable problem of what to do next.
The radicals urged the frank reproclamation of the old Massachusetts Bay Charter that
had been vacated five years before, but the leadership was not prepared to take so drastic
a step.
Instead, the leaders quickly established on April 20 a 37-man revolutionary council for
for the Safety of the People and Conservation of the Peace.
This council was heavily weighted with Boston merchants and included old magistrates, councilors
of the Dominion and former private citizens.
This self-constituted council now named the cautious and venerable ex-Governor Simon Bradstreet
as President and Waite Winthrop as Commander of the Militia.
The Council for Safety then summoned a popular convention to meet on May 9.
To unite the people of Massachusetts, the Council took the highly significant step of
suggesting that the towns extend the right to vote from Puritan Church members to all
freeholders.
Most of the Massachusetts towns quickly complied.
Delegates were selected at meetings of the freemen and inhabitants of the towns, an inhabitant
being someone over the age of 24 with an estate of 80 pounds or more. At the convention that
met on May 9 were 66 delegates from 44 towns of the colony. The relatively radical convention
wanted the old charter reproclaimed and it appealed to the old pre-Dudley Council of
Magistrates, the last under the old charter, to resume its functions and to reconstitute
General Court with the Convention delegates as the House of Deputies. The more conservative magistrates, however, refused, and the Council for Safety continued to exercise rule until the next enlarged Convention met on May 22.
The second convention represented fifty-four towns, of which forty-two had instructed their delegates to insist on resumption of the old charter. Once again, the majority of the more timid and conservative magistrates opposed the plan. Finally, however, the popular will prevailed, with forty-four towns voting for restoration of the charter government and nine for continuing temporary rule by the Council for Safety.
The last charter governor, Simon Bradstreet, as well as the charter magistrates, now jointly
agreed to reconstitute the old general court and to resume the charter government.
The convention further overruled the governor and magistrates by insisting that the Council
for Safety not continue as ruling magistrate body of the colony.
With good reason, the delegates distrusted the revolutionary fervour of such council
members as Waite Winthrop and the notorious William Staughton. This action of the Convention
removed them from their post of power. However, within a week, the Convention decided to compromise
slightly by naming Winthrop, Samuel Shrimpton, and three other opportunists to vacancies
in the Old Council of Magistrates. By the end of May, this arrangement had been completed,
and the general joy was at this moment redoubled by news of the coronation of William and Mary.
A great celebration ensued in Boston, with pump and banquets and wine literally flowing
in the streets. But celebration was not enough to secure the fruits of victory. Caution was
The Watchword of the New Monarch and one of his first actions in January was to order
all previous arrangements continued in force until further notice. Specifically, Sir Edmund
Andros was to continue his rule over New England. Fortunately, however, Reverend Increase Mathur,
who had fled to England to plead Massachusetts case against Andros, was able to block transmission
of the King's Order to New England. Indeed, Mather went further, and with his old friend
and parishioner, Sir William Phipps, a native of eastern Maine, petitioned the King to restore
all the New England charters. The cautious Crown would not go that far, but it did agree
to remove Andros immediately, and to call him unto an account for his maladministration.
The King also agreed to draft for Massachusetts a new charter that was to grant at least some
of the colony's demands. Mather even succeeded in introducing into Parliament a bill to restore
the Massachusetts Charter. The bill passed the House of Commons, but was blocked by the
House of Lords. The old guard of the Royal Bureaucracy politicked for this roadblock.
Professor Robert Southwell of the Plantation Office warned a colleague that the bill would
so confound the present settlement in those parts and their dependence on England that
it is hard to say where the mischief will stop or how far the act of navigation will
be overthrown thereby.
While Mathers' valiant efforts failed to win resumption of the old charter, he did succeed
in Winning Temporary Royal Recognition of the Revolutionary Government.
This news, too, was received with great joy, as if the old charter was as good as renewed,
for on June 5, the old political institutions of Massachusetts had been reconstituted, including
a general court and a newly elected House of Deputies.
Along with the temporary recognition of the Massachusetts regime, the King ordered Andros
Andros and the other prisoners sent back to England. Many radicals wanted to ignore the
order and keep the hated oppressors in jail, but after many weeks of delay the prisoners
were shipped back to England in February 1690. The citizens of Massachusetts realized that
the first order of the day was to convince the Crown of the justice of the grievances
against Andros, and the need to restore the old charter. Right after the two-day revolution,
local committees busily gathered evidence of grievance against the Andros regime. By
the end of 1689, a central committee was organized in Boston to collect the testimony. Numerous
pamphlets on the Andros regime were published in Massachusetts to try to win the minds of
of the Crown, and on May 20, 1689, as soon as Massachusetts heard the news of the proclamation
of William and Mary, the colony explained to the sovereign that the people had risen
as one man in emulation of the late, glorious enterprise and were able to accomplish the
victory without the least bloodshed or plunder.
In England during 1690, Massachusetts and the Andros Randolph Party argued their respective
cases, their charges and counter-charges, before the Committee for Trade and Plantations.
Massachusetts sent over two agents, Thomas Oates and Elisha Cook, to aid Mather.
The Committee, headed by the former Earl of Danby, now the Marquis of Carmarthen, showed
There was no obvious partiality to the Andros side in the hearings.
Quickly the committee cleared Andros and Randolph of charges against them.
Carmarthen did not even give Massachusetts the chance to present its case.
Also powerful on the pro-Andros side were the two prominent royal bureaucrats,
Robert Southwell and William Blathwaite.
Edward Randolph helped turn the hearings into an attack on Massachusetts by open testimony and by publishing anonymous tracts against the colony, concentrating on its failure to enforce the navigation laws.
In the meanwhile, Parliament tried to pass a bill prohibiting the voiding of any corporate charters. This would have restored the old Massachusetts Charter.
But the bill took too much power away from the Crown for William III's comfort, and King William defeated the bill by dissolving Parliament in February 1690.
It was becoming clear that Massachusetts would have to settle for a new charter, granting far less independence than the old.
At home, the Massachusetts regime made halting last-minute attempts to gain support among non-Puritan Church members.
By the end of May 1689, the towns had pledged enlargement of the freemen, but nothing had
been done for a year.
After a petition for enlargement was sent to the general court in 1690, the court finally
repealed the restrictive clauses and voted to admit to freemanship anyone able to pay
four shillings and to the poll tax, or whose income from land was six pounds.
In the spring of 1690, 700 new freemen were admitted, of whom nearly two-thirds were non-church
members. But Puritans were still favored in the new regulations, for church members were
specially exempt from the property qualifications. As might be expected, the electrifying news
of the overthrow and arrest of Andros in Boston galvanized the other colonies under Andros's
In Plymouth, the people seized Andros' main henchman, the counselor Nathaniel Clark, and reestablished the old Plymouth government under former Governor Thomas Hinckley.
Clark was sent to England along with Andros and the others, hopefully to answer for his high crimes and misdemeanors.
Plymouth, always charterless and anxious to obtain a proper charter, naively thanked Increase
Mather for supposedly presenting Plymouth's case at court.
But on arriving in England, Plymouth's agent, Reverend Ichabod Wisval, soon discovered that
Massachusetts was trying to absorb Plymouth in its own charter, in short, to play the
and the same game by which Connecticut had seized New Haven three decades before.
Mather, indeed, had already managed to incorporate Plymouth when Wiswall arrived and was able
to strike out the clause, an act for which Mather dubbed Wiswall the Weasel.
But Mather had an enormous advantage for winning his way—money.
Mather was supplied with the very large sum of seventeen hundred pounds, which he was
was able to use, for the purpose intended, to spread about in the right places.
Plymouth, on the other hand, was a poor colony, and had little money to supply.
Wiswell had virtually nothing to bestow for favors.
When in February 1691 the Plymouth General Court, in desperation, asked the towns to
subscribe 500 pounds to keep their independence, the sum could not be raised.
Plymouth's future was fading fast. When New Hampshire heard the glorious news of
Andrus' arrest, it did not, like the other New England colonies, have a recent self-governing
past to look back upon. Instead, it had been strictly a royally controlled colony, and
before that, for decades, part of Massachusetts. The four New Hampshire towns first attempted
to Draw Up a Self-Governing Constitution to Frame a Government.
The Constitutional Convention met at Portsmouth on January 24, 1690, and included 22 of the
leading men of the colony. It included also the rehabilitated revolutionary hero Edward
Gove of Hampton, as well as Major William Vaughan and Major Richard Waldron from Portsmouth.
The convention agreed to a brief constitution providing for election of a president, to
be head of the province's militia, and a council of ten representing the people of the four
towns. The president and council were also to call an assembly of representatives from
each town. This was the first constitution in American history to be drawn up by popular
and then submitted to the people for ratification.
But the town of Hampton, worried about too much power accruing to Portsmouth under this arrangement,
refused to elect representatives and so the Constitution fell through.
The immediate reaction was a petition signed by hundreds of the leading men of New Hampshire
urging Massachusetts to resume, at least temporarily, government of the colony.
The revolutionary Massachusetts government promptly granted the request at the end of
February and in England, Mather did his best to absorb New Hampshire as well as Plymouth
in his forthcoming new charter.
But Massachusetts' plans were foiled from two sides.
In the first place, the independent and unbridled town of Hampton, led by Nathaniel Weir, balked
at a Permanent Surrender to Massachusetts, and Weir was known in England as the man who
had gone there from New Hampshire to lay low the hated Governor Cranfield five years before.
Perhaps more important was the partial reactivation of the old Mason menace to the liberty and
property of the residents of New Hampshire. Mason, who had been on the council for New
New England had sold his proprietary claim to New Hampshire to Samuel Allen, and Allen
was able to persuade the King to nominate himself to be governor of the new royal colony
of New Hampshire. Allen named his son-in-law, the former Dominion Treasurer John Usher,
to be lieutenant governor and operating head of the colony. Usher assumed his post in August
1692. New Hampshire had lost its struggle for self-government. Usher was not only a
son-in-law of the new proprietary pretender, but had himself bought a great amount of New
Hampshire land from Mason, and therefore depended on the latter's rather dubious title. Usher's
return brought the Mason, now Allen, claims once again into the forefront of New Hampshire
The leading enemies of the Mason claims, Vaughan, Waldron, Weir, now banded together to oppose the Usher regime.
Connecticut, too, received the news of the Boston Revolution with jubilation.
Facing the question of what to do next, the colony confronted three alternatives.
To resume the old charter government, which, unlike Massachusetts, had not been formally voided.
To continue the dominion government, which had virtually dissolved, or to follow Massachusetts path and establish a provincial committee for safety.
Leading the fight for the first alternative was James Fitch, who also wanted to exclude such top Andrews supporters as Fitch John Winthrop and John Allen from public office.
Counter-pressure for continuing the defunct dominion came from Reverend Gershom Buckley
of Wethersfield and Edward Palmes, both of whom had been made judges by Andros. Connecticut
had an election on May 9, 1689, and the delegates decided to reestablish the former Governor
Robert Treat and the general court. One of the court's first acts was to resume the
the old laws and institutions of the colony. But while the bulk of the freemen agreed with
Fitch that the old Andrews henchmen must be excluded, the more conservative delegates
decided to reappoint the old council of magistrates. As a further blow to the revolutionary forces,
they appointed such old Andrews supporters as Fitch John Winthrop and Samuel Willis, members
The old opportunist clique, anxious to head off Fitch's likely drive for democratic reform of the Charter, had managed to outmaneuver the popular party.
The decisions of the convention were submitted to the body of freemen for approval, but the freemen could only vote for or against the entire panel of officials selected by the delegates.
They did not have the option of voting down such individual nominees as Allen or Winthrop.
Still battling the new dispensation, however, were such ultra-reactionaries as Gershom Buckley
and Edward Palmes, who pleaded with England to restore the Old Dominion rule.
In a sense, Buckley was more prophetic than his more moderate colleagues, for James Fitch,
Liesler and the great leader of the Connecticut Revolution soon came to dominate the council
and the Connecticut government.
The newly elected councilors were followers of Fitch.
Fitch, an open admirer of Jacob Liesler's revolutionary government in New York, was
able by 1692 to widen the Connecticut franchise.
The only requirement for free-manship was now possession of a 40 shilling freehold.
Moreover, a highly democratic election system was installed. Each freeman could write out
a list of twenty nominees for the fourteen post of governor, deputy governor and magistrates.
The officials were to be elected from the top twenty names submitted by the freemen
in a second series of town meetings. Connecticut had decided for self-government and for resuming
for one thing, it shared Andros' deep antipathy to Massachusetts. For another, it was grateful for Andros' support in the old Narragansett controversy with Connecticut. Indeed, Andros had been preparing to flee to Rhode Island before his capture. Rhode Island now determined to return to its old self-governing charter. The timorous former governor, Walter Clark, however, refused to realize
It was temporarily occupied at the end of February by John Cogshill, the previous deputy governor.
At the end of April, Newport issued a summons to the other towns of Rhode Island to meet there on May 1 to plot the colony's future course.
There the delegates decided to resume operations under the old and never officially vacated charter.
But, once more, the timid Walter Clark refused to reassume his post, and the permanent post
of governor was granted to the Quaker Henry Bull.
Thus, on the advent of the glorious revolution in England, the New England colonies took
the welcome opportunity to overthrow the dominion regime.
Upon the imprisonment of Andros and his henchmen, Massachusetts returned, at least temporarily,
to self-government according to its old charter and institutions and was followed by Plymouth,
Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, the last temporarily placing itself under
Massachusetts sovereignty.
We remember, however, that the dominion of New England had expanded to New York and to
the banks of the Delaware.
These lower colonies had been left in charge of Lieutenant Governor Francis Nicholson.
Nicholson also learned of the Glorious Revolution in early February, but kept it from the public.
Finally, news of the overthrow of Andros reached New York at approximately the end of April.
Already the Dominion was in a far stronger position in New York than in New England,
for when Andros and his colleagues were arrested, there were no other Dominion officials in
New England to continue the old regime in power.
Furthermore, there were previous charters to which the colonies could conveniently return,
but New York and the lower dominion areas were still controlled by Nicholson and his
subordinate officials, and there were no charters to fall back upon.
Governor Nicholson, the representative of the King's authority in New York and the
Jersey's, was now faced with the problem of what to do at this point.
His first step was to call the New York members of the Council of the Dominion together, but
prudently they failed to appear. Nicholson was left with the appointed civil and military
officials who constituted the de facto government under him. At the end of April, twenty-six
such officials began to meet as a ruling convention or council. The first rebellion against the
The Dominion in New York broke out, as might be expected, in the always turbulent Suffolk
County on eastern Long Island. Led by Southhold, the Freeholders of Suffolk met at Southampton
on May 3, ousted all the local appointed civil and military officials, and elected their
own. They also demanded the return of the tax monies that had been extorted from them.
The Suffolk towns were soon followed by the towns of Westchester and Queens, each of which
established home rule. The grievances of Queens on western Long Island were aggravated by
the fact that drafted militiamen from that county had not been paid for their part in
a military expedition Dongan had sent against French Canada. Now Nicholson decided to pay
The Federal Reserve decided to pay these ex-soldiers, but determined to raise the funds by ordering the collection of Queens County's arrears for back taxes.
The money was never collected from the rebellious people of Queens, and this protest of militiamen's pay was promptly joined by Kings and Suffolk counties.
On May 9, the protesting ex-soldiers gathered armed at Jamaica to demand their promised pay.
Nicholson and his council agreed.
This was followed on the same day by demonstrations for back pay by the New York City militia
with similar results.
We have seen that the Catholicism of several high officials in New York had intensified
The Anti-Catholic hysteria in New York attended on troubles with the French. New York was
the colony closest to French Canada and the Iroquois, and conflicts with the Catholic
French had grown in recent years. By May 6, discontent had spread to New York City itself.
After a vote to apply customs revenue to strengthen the fortification of New York, the charge
Research was made that the collector of customs, Matthew Plowman, was a Catholic.
So hypersensitive were New Yorkers becoming on this issue that a government official at
Setocket, Brookhaven, Long Island, refused to serve as a messenger to Andros, fearing
that the people taking him to be a papist would raise and plunder his house if not offer
violence to his family.
Asserting the accusation against Plowman as a convenient excuse, the merchants of New
York City now refused to pay the custom duties, asserting that they were illegal decrees of
the executive.
In short, the atmosphere in New York by the end of the first week in May was becoming
increasingly revolutionary.
Anti-Catholic prejudice quickly spurred a tax rebellion and an implicit call for a representative
of Assembly, with sole power to levy taxes. And meanwhile, Dominion government was caught
in an increasingly aggravated inner contradiction. The clamor for promised back pay by the armed
militia grew at the same time that refusal to pay taxes increased in scope and breadth.
How then could the Nicholson regime impose more taxes to pay the promised back salaries?
Man's promises were not enough to satisfy the increasingly revolutionary militia. On
May 10, the militia captains of the Long Island towns of Southampton, Eastampton, and Huntington
demanded that the Manhattan fort be delivered into the hands of such persons as the country
shall choose, that is, clearly out of existing hands. The ruling convention of New York City
Many officials denounced the militia action as mutinous, but the Long Island towns, joined
by Hempstead, refused to send delegates to any expanded convention called by Nicholson.
On May 22, the Nicholson Convention ordered the signers of the various petitions to appear
before it. They flatly refused. The developing revolutionary temper of the militia was further
by Nicholas's Failure to Proclaim William and Mary as His Sovereign
This prompted further suspicions of his allegiance to the Catholic and absolutist James II.
Matters finally came to a head on May 30.
Lieutenant Hendrick Kyler of the Militia directed a corporal to place a militiaman at a certain sensitive post at the fort.
When the regular English soldier refused to give way to a New Yorker at the post, Kyler
took the dispute to Nicholson. Not only did the governor side with the soldier and order
the militia corporal from his room at gunpoint, but he told Lieutenant Kyler that he feared
for his life and would set the town in fire rather than see the situation continue. Word
of Nicholson's threats spread through New York City like wildfire and caused an immediate
Revolt by the Militia. The New York Militia decided to ignore all commands from either
Nicholson or his appointed militia commander, Colonel Nicholas Bayard. Further, the Militia
proceeded to take over and hold the fort. The day after this revolt, the Militia issued
a declaration of the inhabitant soldiers. The declaration, signed by some 400 men, avowed
The Revolutionary Militiamen held the fort themselves, but had not yet openly repudiated
Nicholson as governor.
The governor now foolishly precipitated his own ouster by ordering Colonel Bayard to take
command of the militia. When Bayard ordered the militia companies to leave the neighborhood
of the fort, most of them refused. They joined the company that happened to be taking its
turn occupying the fort that day, a company headed by a leading Dutch Calvinist merchant
of German Origin, Captain Jacob Leisler.
The militiamen had now openly repudiated the orders and the rule of the governor.
There were now two parallel governments in New York, the militia and Governor Nicholson
and his convention officials.
On June 3 and 4, four of the five captains of the militia, the leading officers subordinate
to the repudiated Bayard signed a humble address of the militia and people of the city. This
document recognized and hailed King William as liberator from tyranny, potpourri and slavery,
and as the protector of the true Protestant religion, liberty and property. The militia
also proceeded to call for a new revolutionary governmental form, a committee of safety.
The committee consisted of two delegates from each county and was to meet on June 26.
The Nicholson government had precipitated this revolutionary step by ordering all the
New York funds, now kept at the fort, transferred to the home of counselor Frederick Phillips,
and by commanding the militia captains to appear before the convention.
Both demands were refused by four of the five militia captains, with Leisler the most outspoken.
With the Council denouncing the rebels, Nicholson sailed on June 24 to England for help. Before
going he angered New Yorkers still further by ordering the Catholic customs collector,
Matthew Plowman, to enforce the payment of duties. The Nicholson Council now decided
to remove Plowman and to fill his post with four collectors, including the hated Nicholas
Bayard.
The militiamen, however, were by now in far too rebellious a mood to accept this arrangement.
They evicted the four men from the Custom House and substituted their own appointee,
Peter Delanois, a former treasurer and collector of New York City.
Some of the militiamen tried to assault Bayard, but were stopped by Captain Leisler.
On June 26, the Revolutionary Committee of Safety met in Queens.
Most of the counties of New York accepted the invitation to send delegates and prominent
citizens attended from New York City, Kings, Queens, Westchester, and Richmond, Staten
Island counties, as well as one each from the towns of Tappan, Hackensack, and Elizabethtown
The county delegates were in turn elected at county meetings of delegates elected by the towns. Refusing to send delegates was Suffolk County, where the towns, especially Southhold and Setocket, once again hoped to join Connecticut.
Albany, Kingston and most of New Jersey also failed to send representatives.
It seems clear that the town elections were highly democratic, with almost all of the
adult males of the participating towns voting in the elections for delegates.
The Suffolk towns were not, incidentally, the only ones that wanted to merge with Connecticut.
Jacob Leisler was particularly active in working for such a merger, and Connecticut did agree
to send two delegates to the meeting of the Committee of Safety, along with ten friendly
soldiers.
The delegates to the committee, to repeat, were not unknown members of a mob, but prominent
citizens of the community.
The Revolutionary Committee, for example, included in its ranks Dr. Gerardus Beekman
of Kings, a future acting governor of the colony, William Lawrence of Hackensack, a
future counselor, and Samuel Edsel, father-in-law of both Lawrence and Delanois and a prominent
trader who had held political office in New Jersey.
The Committee of Safety officially dissolved the authority of the royal council and its
Liesler's Customs Commissioners appointed Peter Delanois as moderator of the committee
and confirmed his appointment as collector. It also named Jacob Liesler as permanent captain
of the fort. The old municipal court now ceased to meet. Liesler refused to guarantee the
safety of its members. The reactionary pro-Andros mayor of New York City, Stephanus Van Cortland,
and his fellow counselors made themselves scarce.
The revolutionary government was now the sole government in New York City and vicinity.
Now that the revolution had been accomplished and the old order completely overthrown,
we may pause to ask about the meaning of this revolution, for it is important, when weighing
the reasons for the outbreak of a revolution, to separate this stage from the later history
of the Revolutionary Government after it has taken power.
Many writers have judged the rebellion to be a class struggle, a pure outbreak of religious
hatred or an ethnic war of Dutch against English rule.
Yet it should be clear that all these explanations are either fallacious or, in the case of the
religious explanation, partial and misleading.
The Revolution was not a class struggle of the poor against the rich or of the laborer
against other occupations. It was the culmination of many years of political and economic grievances
suffered by every great economic class in the colony, by every section, by English and
Dutch alike. The aggressively English towns of Suffolk were and had always been even more
are more revolutionary than the Dutch of New York, and the Dutch members of the ruling
oligarchy, the Bayards, the Van Cortlands, and the leading Dutch ministers, were just
as fiercely opposed to the revolution as were the English members.
Economically, the leaders of the revolutionary movement ranged from the prominent merchants
and other citizens named above, to such men as Joost Stol, a carter, and an ensign in
and Lisler's Militia Company. Stoll was probably the single person most responsible for the
fateful decision of the militia to seize the fort on May 30. In short, this was truly a
liberal people's revolution, a revolution of all classes and ethnic strains in New York
against the common oppressors, the oligarchal ruling clique and its favorites, receivers
Rebellion of the Rebellion has written, a fair characterization of all the opponents
of the revolution would be that they were officials and landed, or would be landed aristocrats.
There are, however, no grounds for terming the rebellion a class struggle in the Marxist
sense.
Capitalists were found in both camps.
The reason for the last statement might be added, capitalists are never a homogenous
entity, as is true of all Marxian classes that are not, as we have noted above, estates
or castes. The capitalists who gained their money from government privilege were against
the revolution. The capitalists who earned their money in free market activity joined
and all the other producers in the colony to favor it.
As in the other colonies under dominion rule, though with greater difficulty because of the
Nicholsonian bureaucracy, the people took heart from the overthrow of Andros in Boston
to end the hated rule of the dominion in New York as well.
Even the anti-Catholicism is largely explainable by the Catholicism of James II and many of
his ruling henchmen in New York.
And finally, the revolution in New York cannot correctly be termed Leisler's Rebellion.
The fact that Jacob Leisler acquired control of the revolutionary government after it had
assumed power should not be allowed to obscure the fact that Leisler was only one of the
many leaders of the actual revolution and that this was a spontaneous uprising of the
mass of the people.
Any libertarian revolution that takes power immediately confronts a grave inner contradiction.
In the last analysis, liberty and power are incompatible.
Thus, Peter Delanois was now supposed to collect the colony's taxes, but a tax paid to a Delanois
was no less oppressive or tyrannical than the same tax paid to a Nicholson, and so the
The merchants still refused to pay the duties, again using the argument that they had not
been levied by a representative assembly. Six weeks later, the revolution took a decisive
step from liberty to power. On August 16, the Committee of Safety in its second meeting
created an executive of almost unlimited authority by naming Jacob Leisler Commander-in-Chief
The first step was to arrest whoever dared to criticize the new regime.
Arrest included merchants and laborers, Dutchmen such as the Schulers and Philipses, and Anglicans
such as Thomas Clark.
Many were arrested on suspicion of disloyalty.
It is true, however, that the prisoners were treated with relative respect.
The first step was to arrest whoever dared to criticize the new regime.
The Revolutionary Committee of Safety decided to press ahead with the annual September elections that had been held in pre-dominion years.
Also, to expand democracy and check oligarchy by subjecting justices of the peace and militia
captains to the decisions of the voters.
In an action reflecting the bitter anti-Catholicism of the people, all Protestant freeholders
were made eligible to vote.
In New York City, the people elected aldermen and common councillors according to the old
charter.
In addition, Leisler made elective the three top posts in the city, Mayor, Sheriff and
Town Clerk, which had always been appointed. The free elections removed the counter-revolutionaries
from office, and Stephanus Van Cortland was replaced as Mayor by Peter Delanois, who was
to be the last popularly elected Mayor of New York until the 19th century. Although
Although Leisler and the Committee controlled the bulk of New York, they did not command
the allegiance of Albany. Albany, tightly run by the privileged monopolist of the Iroquois
fur trade, was devoted to the Dominion. Its top officials were leaders of the Andros oligarchy,
for example Mayor Peter Schuler and his assistant and brother-in-law, Robert Livingston. In
In the fall elections, Albany simply re-elected its old officials.
The shift from liberty to power was now proceeding apace.
Leisler and the committee became filled with imperialist zeal to impose their unwanted
rule on Albany.
An expedition of three ships was sent by Leisler under his future son-in-law, the merchant
Jacob Milburn, to seize Albany.
Albany, to cover itself, forced every townsman to take an oath of allegiance to William & Mary.
The Albany Convention then refused to permit Milburn to enter the fort. Milburn now tried
to appeal to the people of Albany over the heads of their rulers. He urged them to overthrow
all government derived from James II and promised free elections and other liberties. Milburn's
The stirring words had some effect and a hundred citizens of Albany elected Joachim Statz as
captain of Milburn's troops in Albany. But the support of Statz and the Albany opposition
for Milburn was not enough. The Convention oligarchy and the fort determined to resist
and they threw into the breach the powerful support of the Iroquois, fur trading allies
of the Albany Oligarchs. The Iroquois threatened to attack Milborne should he persist, and
Milborne finally left ignominiously for home. Moreover, to complete the fiasco, Captain
Statz and his Milborne militia were now obliged to take orders from the Convention. Albany
was the more strengthened by Connecticut's recognition of its Convention government.
At this point, Leisler's fortunes took a swift turn upward. A letter arrived in mid-December
from King William, legitimizing the rule of either Nicholson or such as for the time being
take care for preserving the peace and administering the laws, and naming said person lieutenant
governor. Thus, by the end of 1689, the revolutionary government in New York, as in Massachusetts,
had been at least temporarily legitimized by the Crown, while the other New England colonies
resumed their old ways of self-government. As with the other colonies, the key to their
fate rested on the decisions of the new monarch. The August session of the Committee of Safety
had decided to send an agent to England to plead its case. Chosen was the revolutionary
Murray Cartman, Joost Stoll, whose lower-class ways were not, alas, calculated to endear
him to the aristocratic officials of the Crown. Stoll presented seven bold demands to the
Privy Council, including royal and parliamentary approval of the actions of the Revolution,
a new self-governing charter for New York, and encouragement for a united colonial effort
to Conquer French Canada. But unlike the cause of Massachusetts at court, Leisler's regime
was doomed from the start. For even as Leisler was being temporarily confirmed in his post,
the King prepared to end his rule and all self-government in New York. Heavily influenced
by the reports of the old oligarchs Bayard and Van Cortland, the Lords of Trade recommended
that a royal governor with two companies of troops be sent to rule New York.
Colonel Henry Slaughter was promptly chosen as governor.
Only a war in France held up Slaughter's actual arrival in New York and permitted Leisler
to continue his interim rule.
In contrast to conditions in other colonies under dominion rule, everything was quiet
during the Glorious Revolution in the colonies of East Jersey and West Jersey.
While the New England colonies aimed to resume self-government, and while New York tried
to move from royal colony to self-government, the Jerseys had been proprietary colonies
before the Dominion.
With Nicholson and his royal officials gone, the proprietors who had been facing co-warrento
Action against their territories trod warily in deed and did nothing during the years of
turmoil after 1689.
Central government in the Jersey's disappeared with the end of the Dominion and the colonies
were left with existing local governments only.
In this state of purely minimal government, the people of the Jersey's were happy.
The Royal Officials were gone, their ancient proprietary enemies were cautious and inactive.
Indeed, there was virtually nothing against which to revolt.