Volume 1, Chapter 59. Aftermath in the 1690s, the Salem witch hunt and Stoughton's rise to power.
The glorious revolution imposed of the last great settlement on the northern colonies. After the
smoke of the tumult was over, Massachusetts, New York and New Hampshire were royal colonies,
similarly structured. The main forces of conflict were, as they had long been in Virginia,
the royal governor and his oligarchic council on the one hand, and the more democratic assembly
representing the people of the colony on the other. In New York, the royal and landed oligarchy
had been particularly strong and rapacious for many years, and the institution of a representative
of Assembly was just beginning. In Massachusetts, as we have seen, the electoral base made the
always more democratic assembly an especially democratic and relatively liberal voice of
the people, whereas the new royal post of governor bid fair to preserve the rewards
of oligarchic and royal rule. When Massachusetts heard the news of the new charter at the turn
At the turn of 1692, a power vacuum opened in the colony. The new institution of royal governor offered a tempting prospect for oligarchic power and plunder, despite the prospect of conflict with the popular House of Representatives.
But it was still not clear which group would take control. The old Puritan theocracy was
in rather frantic retreat from external and internal blows, but still remained strong
in the colony. The new coalition of Governor Phipps and Increase Mather was an alliance
of moderates. Mather, rather half-heartedly, was trying to lead the more fanatical Puritans
to the New Realities of a More Pluralistic and Liberal Society.
Phipps, highly liberal for a royal official and as Massachusetts Governor, was strongly
sympathetic to the colony's desires for freedom from the exactions and regulations of the
Crown.
If the Mather-Phips coalition had been allowed to continue in control, Massachusetts might
might have found a tolerable and even welcome path into the 18th century. The steady easing
of Puritan restrictions combined with the decided drift back to effective Massachusetts
independence from royal depredations. In short, Massachusetts might have been able to advance
toward a synthesis of the best of the two contending sides of the recent past, the self-government
and freedom of trade, of the Puritans, without the theocratic persecutions, and the religious
freedom and mercantile cosmopolitanism of the pro-royal opportunist, without the royal
Despotism. But such a synthesis for liberal independence was not to be, for at the heart
of the new regime was a sinister canker, Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton. Stoughton was
determined to overthrow this moderate liberalism in order that he and his friends, including
the formerly discredited Joseph Dudley, might return to power and that he might renew his
Stoughton and Dudley were determined to regain power and to re-impose a royal absolutism that they would lead at the head of a newly plundering oligarchy. To do this, they would have to discredit and eliminate Governor Phipps. With great luck, William Stoughton found his opportunity at hand, opportunity to split the ordinarily anti-royalist masses and to rally
In short, Stoughton found a way to rally the two extremes to swing the Puritan masses behind
his Tory opportunist in order to crush the moderate center.
This opportunity was the notorious Salem witch hunt of 1692.
Witchcraft had always been a capital crime in New England, but it had also been almost
The problem, after all, was obtaining evidence of guilt, and until now the sober judges and leaders of the community had not been willing to credit spectral evidence, the unsupported testimony of a historical victim of witchcraft that somebody's spectral witch-shape had appeared to attack him.
But now Puritan zeal was in retreat on many fronts, notably was it retreating from the burgeoning rationalistic and skeptical temper.
Perhaps the Puritan leaders felt a re-emphasis on spectral evidence and the powers of witchcraft could vindicate the true faith and roll back the tide of rationalism and secularism.
As early as 1681, a group of leading Puritan divines had decided to combat rationalism
by gathering supposed evidence of the supernatural in earthly affairs. Among these evidences
was Witchcraft. One of the leaders of this project was Reverend Increase Mathur. In 1684,
he compiled A Galaxy of Superstitions, an essay for the recording of illustrious providences.
With the most eminent divines of the colony paying
and eager and almost loving attention to any signs of juvenile hysteria, these signs were
accordingly encouraged and nurtured by the eager solemnity with which they were greeted.
The Reverend Cotton Mather took one of these young girls into his home, the better to record
the memorable providences, 1689. The time was now ripe for the Puritan divines to lead
a frenzied mob in a determined rear-guard attempt to reinstall Puritan fanaticism in
its old home, an attempt that would be abetted and used by Stoughton and the Tory opportunist.
In February 1692, at the town of Salem Village, now Danvers, these reactionary forces found
their chance.
The stage had been set by the solemn findings of the Mathers. Now a group of young girls
of Salem Village became bewitched and began the delightful game of accusing other people,
at first mostly personal enemies, of witchcraft. The leaders of the bewitched girls were the
two daughters of the Puritan Divine, Reverend Samuel Parris, and so their accusations were
were taken all the more seriously. At first, neighbors who had annoyed the girls were accused
of being witch tormentors, but like an infection the accusations spread with great speed throughout
the colony. Legal proceedings commenced. Since spectral evidence was now accepted by
the courts, the supposed witches were quickly condemned, imprisoned and hanged. After the
The classic pattern of intimidation and informing, reprieve came only if the witch would confess
his or her guilt. And the confession was deemed sincere, only if other people, accomplices,
were named. Many of these confessions were extracted under torture. The circle of accusations
thus became ever wider. The first hanging was that of a neighbor of the Paris family,
Sarah Goode, whose five-year-old daughter was even imprisoned as a witch.
Beginning with helpless old women, the circle of victims of the witch hunt soon expanded.
The Reverend George Burroughs, a retired Puritan minister himself, had the bad fortune of incurring
the dislike of the parishes.
Burroughs was duly accused of being a leading witch—witches are male as well as female—of
Confederacy with the Devil, and so forth.
Reverend Mr. Burroughs was accused by several of the girls of witchcraft.
The unfortunate minister became the most prominent victim of the witch hunt.
Although the more moderate increased matter was dubious of the spectral evidence, his
son Cotton had no such doubts, and eagerly whipped up the witch hunt generally, and specifically
against Burroughs.
By dishonest or deluded witnesses and biased judges, Burroughs was sentenced to be hanged.
It was no wonder that Burroughs, a good puritan, was led by these proceedings to disbelieve
in witchcraft altogether, a dose of rationalism imbibed by many who were falsely accused in
their turn.
On the day of Burroughs' execution, he made a brief and moving statement of his innocence,
The crowd, convinced of his innocence, began to move to free the unfortunate burrows, but Cotton Mather, playing a role reminiscent of Reverend Mr. Wilson's at the hanging of Mary Dyer a generation before, stepped to the fore and explained to the crowd that it was easy for an agent of the devil to simulate innocence.
Thanks to Cotton Mather, the hanging of the venerable wizard proceeded according to schedule.
The witch hunt flourished. One unfortunate woman, Martha Carrier, denounced by Cotton
Mather as a rampant hag, found that her four children had been induced to testify against
her. In a Boston court, even a bewitched dog was solemnly tried, convicted and executed.
When Sir William Phipps arrived in Boston, he found the colony under a full head of witch-hunt
steam. He found over 100 accused witches in prison in a waiting trial. In, over his depth,
he turned, unfortunately, to the Mathers for advice. The Mathers and the rest of the clergy
called for continual efforts to detect and root out witchcraft in the colony. The crime
must meet speedy and vigorous prosecution. The mathers did warn that more than spectral
evidence should be required for conviction, but this was a mere pro forma note of caution,
unheeded by them or by the judges. Phipps then centralized the witch trials. On advice
of the council, he turned over all witch trials to a special court of seven counsellors. Naively,
Gips wrote to William Blathewaite that the seven judges were persons of the best prudence.
Chief Judge and strongman of the new court was Lieutenant Governor Staunton.
The other counselors constituted, in the words of Professor Dunn, a perfect microcosm of
the Massachusetts ruling coalition, Puritans and Tory opportunists.
Trusting believingly that all was safe and in sober hands, Phipps left for Maine to fight Indians. Stoughton was left in charge of the court, which opened in Salem in early June.
Too many writers have treated the Salem witch hunt in psychological terms, childish neuroses and mob hysteria.
The vital point is not the hysteria of children, but the use made of it by the adult society.
Neither can the witch hunt be treated as a case study in mob psychology, for the witch hunt was not a lynching bee,
but a program carried out by the elite of the colony and directed by the lieutenant governor himself,
The man whose major aim had long been the exercise of power. During the summer, the witch hunt centering in Salem spread throughout the colony. Other young girls joined in the business of being bewitched and of leveling accusations, until their number rose to fifty. Favorite targets of accusations were any who dared to raise their voice to criticize the witch hunt, or even to assert that witches didn't exist at all.
and the investigation on these targets served to intimidate critics of the veritable reign of terror.
This same cause was served by executing, as evident proof of diabolism, any conscience-stricken informer who dared to recant his implication of other persons.
To make sure of verdicts against the accused, Lieutenant Governor Staunton decided remarkably to operate under the old charter rules.
As a result, the jurors were chosen only from the ranks of Puritan church members, and the hapless defendants were allowed no rights of counsel.
And, crucially, the special high court decided to admit all spectral evidence under the rather dubious assumption that the devil could not assume the spectral shape of non-witches.
All of the witch executions, including Burroughs's, were the handiwork of the Stoughton Court.
By the end of September the High Court had condemned twenty-seven for witchcraft and
had executed twenty. Fifty witches had escaped punishment by confession, an additional hundred
were in prison awaiting trial, and some two hundred more were accused but not yet imprisoned.
This amounted to almost one percent of Massachusetts' population being accused of witchcraft during
a period of only a few months. Here and there brave men literally took their lives in their
hands by coming out openly against the monstrous proceedings. Young Joseph Putnam, a relative
of one of the bewitched girls, offered his home as refuge to any accused witch and announced
More silently, counselor Nathaniel Saltenstahl, one of the judges on the special court, withdrew
in disgust from the proceedings. The eminent young liberal Puritan of Ipswich, Reverend
John Wise, who had led Massachusetts opposition to the Andros regime, now spoke up in defense
and the defense of two accused parishioners, as did twenty neighbors of the accused couple.
And the prominent liberal merchant of Boston, Thomas Brattle, widely distributed an open letter,
a full and candid account of the delusion called witchcraft, which prevailed in New England.
Brattle denounced the New Salem philosophy and attacked the suppression of personal liberty upon spectral evidence.
Methodically, Brattle warned, what will be the issue of these troubles, God only knows.
I am afraid that ages will not wear off that reproach, and those stains which these things
will leave behind them upon our land.
As the bewitched girls and their adult supporters felt their newfound power, the social level
of their accusations continued to rise.
with poor crones, the accusers now began to strike at some of the most eminent men of
the colony. The renowned Puritan minister of Boston, Reverend Samuel Willard, was accused
of witchcraft, although this was understandable in view of Willard's criticism of the witch
trials. But soon the girls moved to strike at some of the leaders of the witch hunt itself,
The wife of Rev. John Hale of Beverly, one of the most ardent of the witch-hunters, was
accused of being a witch. So too the mother-in-law of one of the most zealous of the judges in
prosecuting the witches. It is not surprising that Hale soon came to see that the witch-hunt
was a double-edged sword, and he joined the outspoken critics of the witch trials. Perhaps
Perhaps the most interesting and tactically the most mistaken of the accusation was the
one leveled against none other than Lady Phipps, wife of the governor.
The Phipps's were liberally inclined and during her husband's absence Lady Phipps angered
the hardline witch hunters by ordering that one of the accused witches be freed.
And so, in the full, heady exercise of its terrorizing power, the witch hunt reached
too far. It moved against the Phipps' themselves, against, in short, the major obstacle to Staughton's
assumption of power in Massachusetts. The witch hunters had made their fatal mistake.
Phipps, never enthusiastic about the witch hunt, now turned flatly against it. At the
The End of September. He suspended the special court and all its proceedings for a three-month
period. As Phipps explained to the Crown, some were accused of whose innocency I was
well assured, and many considerable persons of unblameable life and conversations were
cried out upon as witches and wizards.
Mises Mather concurred in suspending the infamous court, but his son Cotton tried his best to
have the witch trials continued. In fact, the witch hunt was not yet over. Phipps again
journeyed to Maine and a large number of colonists, including ministers and judges, seized this
opportunity to press for continuation of the trials, even though in defiance of Phipps
The Rev. Samuel Tory was particularly eager to get on with the prosecutions.
The matter now came before the general court, and debate was intense.
The hardliners were determined to continue the trials as before.
The moderates called instead for a convocation of ministers to advise the government, with
the trials to be suspended meanwhile.
The resolution for convocation passed the General Court by a very close 33-29 vote.
The margin of victory included those who either had been themselves accused of witchcraft
or had had relatives so accused.
If not for their votes, the General Court would have continued the witch hunt.
When Phipps returned, such counselors as the old Puritans Samuel Sewell and James Russell
tried desperately to persuade him to change his mind and continue the prosecutions, but
to no avail.
When the Convocation of Puritan Ministers assembled, the hard-line old guard, sensing
its defeat, remained away, and so the proceedings were dominated by such relative liberals as
William Hubbard, Samuel Willard and John Wise.
The ministers put the question to Increase Mather, who gave the expected moderate advice.
The devil, Mather maintained, is capable of taking the shape of innocent persons.
This could be seen, he shrewdly noted, by the fact that many ardent believers in the
guilt of the witches were themselves soon accused or found a close relative in that
position.
And with the devil that able, spectral evidence was clearly worth little or nothing.
Using the moderate Mather formula, Phipps ended the old special court, and after the
general court incorporated the Massachusetts judicial system into the charter, Phipps created
in January 1693 a new superior court, which heard the witch cases.
The court, under FIPS orders to prohibit the use of spectral evidence, found it difficult
to indict or convict witches.
Of over 50 suspect witches, 26 were tried and only 3 convicted and sentenced to death.
William Stoughton, Chief Justice of the old court, now assumed that office in the new.
A hardliner to the end, he happily prepared to execute the three convicted women, along
Along with five who had been condemned by the old court, but despite Stoughton's indecent
haste, the eight executions were barred at the end of January by last-minute reprieve
from Governor Phipps.
The reprieve was cheered by thousands in the colony, but it infuriated Stoughton.
Rising in passionate anger, Stoughton thundered that the court, if left unhampered, would
Stoughton had cleared Massachusetts at last of witches, but now justice was obstructed
and the task unfulfilled, thus advancing the kingdom of Satan.
Stoughton left the implied question unstated.
Was Phipps consciously doing the devil's work?
With this diatribe, Stoughton tempestuously quit the court.
The court proceedings dragged on for several months, but the heart was now out of it.
The juries began to acquit everyone, despite the anger of the judges. Finally, in April,
a servant girl, Mae Watkins, was indicted for witchcraft and acquitted by the jury.
The court forced the jury to reconsider, but the panel was adamant. About this time,
the remaining prisoners were released. The Salem reign of terror was over. The side of
For one thing, the witch hunt was led and directed by the elite of the colony, the magistrates
and the ministers.
In addition, by no means were all the masses caught up in the witch frenzy.
On the contrary, it was the revulsion of the people, as shown at the borough's execution
and particularly by the jury acquittals that was instrumental in bringing the witch trials
to an end. In addition, popular petitions had flowed into the government, denouncing
the informers and defending the accused. The end of the witch hunt left Phipps in a very
weak political position in the colony. Hated by the hard-liners for stopping the witch
Fips had equally disenchanted his natural supporters, the liberals, by condoning the trials in the first place.
The whole prosecution, after all, had been conducted by officials of his administration, and so Fips bore ultimate responsibility.
The fanatical Puritan Old Guard, meanwhile, was not so constituted as to give up without a fight.
The people of Massachusetts had almost been won back to the old faith and zeal by the frenzy of the witch hunt.
Perhaps they could yet be won back with a further campaign against witchcraft.
The indefatigable Cotton Mather now dug up the case of Margaret Rule, a bewitched girl of seventeen.
Mather found the case, asked the girl numerous leading questions, gave her great publicity,
tried in vain to get some accusations and then wrote up the case in the monograph
another brand plucked out of the burning.
Mather distributed the essay widely as an open letter.
Phipps had banned any publication on witchcraft.
Mather might have been successful in reviving the witch-hunting spirit
had it not been for courageous Boston cloth merchant, Robert Califf,
Bitter at the clergy's whipping up of the Salem witch hunt, Califf attended Margaret's
public examination by Mather and refuted it in 1694 in an open letter of his own. Infuriated,
Mather denounced Califf as one of the worst of liars and had him arrested for slander.
But Mather prudently decided not to press charges, and Califf kept peppering Mather
with letters pointing to the unreliability of the evidence and the absurdity of the accusation
of witchcraft.
Ministers and magistrates joined in reviling Califf as an atheist, but he stood his ground.
President Increase Mather and the fellows of Harvard College, all but one of them Puritan
The Harvard Scholars joined the fray in March 1694, trumpeting the remarkables of supernatural
intervention in the natural world, and asking people to send to the Harvard fellows more
such evidences.
Caliph, with cutting sarcasm, sent in his own list of remarkables, the deaths of one
of the witch-hunting judges, of two sons of another judge, and so forth.
Early in 1700, the intrepid Caliph gathered the whole inflammable discussion into one book,
More Wonders of the Invisible World, published in London, as no Boston printer would dare
to publish it.
Increase Mather had the book publicly burned in Harvard Yard, but this only served to spread
the book more widely.
Caliph's More Wonders, indeed, had served to crystallize the popular revulsion against
The whole witch hunt episode and its leadership. The instigator of the witch hunt, Reverend
Samuel Parris, was now driven out of his Salem Parish by the aroused congregation and one
of the main bewitched girls of Salem confessed her dishonesty and begged forgiveness. The
Massachusetts General Court itself admitted in 1696 that it had committed wrongs by participating
in the Witch Hunt, and in the same year, Councilor Samuel Sewell, one of the Witch Hunt judges,
confessed his errors publicly and had the liberal Reverend Samuel Willard read the confession
aloud in church. Willard read the noble words, Samuel Sewell being made sensible that as
to the guilt at Salem, he is more concerned than any that he knows of, desires to take
Take the blame and shame of it, asking of men in especially desiring prayers that God
would pardon that sin. Perhaps the supreme irony of the entire affair was that Margaret
Rule, who, like so many of the other afflicted, turned to promiscuity in later life, after
prodding by Cotton Mather to tell the name of the witch who was afflicting her, named
and Mathur himself as the guilty wizard. Unsurprisingly, Cotton Mathur's interest in witchcraft dwindled
markedly after that. But through it all remained Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton, as
always unrepentant, as always ready to come out on top. Phipps had lost prestige from
the witch frenzy, the old Puritan theocrats had been thoroughly discredited, rationalism
The system was now stronger than ever, but political events were bringing Staunton to the brink of power.
Governor Phipps now lost the confidence of the Crown for taking a vigorous part in defending Massachusetts liberties against the depredations of royal officials, and for his conflicts with other governors.
In the summer of 1692, a captain, Short, tried to impress Bostonians into the English Navy.
When two members of the Massachusetts General Court opposed these despotic acts, Short invaded
their homes and assaulted them.
Short then failed to obey orders by Phipps to follow him eastward to Maine.
Infuriated at these peccadillos, Phipps, on his return to Boston in early 1693, fought
Fips, with Captain Short on the street, knocked him down and beat his cane over Short's head.
Fips then imprisoned Short and had him shipped to England for trial. In connection with Short's
arrest, the governor also got into a row with Short's successor and with the government
of New Hampshire. In addition, Fips, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the King's
armed forces in the Northeast, came into conflict with Lieutenant Governor Usher of New Hampshire
Governor, who repulsed Phipps' attempt to inspect the Portsmouth as well as his demand
to search the New Hampshire towns for deserters from an English ship.
Governor Phipps also defended Massachusetts liberties in opposing the depredations of
Jaleel Brenton, whom Edward Randolph had contrived to have appointed as royal collector of customs
for New England.
Brenton, son of Rhode Island merchant William Brenton, enforced the duties rigorously, but
Phipps joined the Massachusetts merchants in arguing that jurisdiction over customs,
collecting, belonged to his own, more pliable, naval officers.
When Brenton, toward the end of 1693, seized a ship arriving in Boston from the West Indies,
The irascible Phipps threatened to break every bone in Brenton's body and to cut off the
ears of Brenton's witnesses if he did not release the vessel.
Phipps punctuated the threat by beating Brenton with his cane and fist.
Even Edward Randolph, though Surveyor General of the King's Customs in America, was flatly
refused in accounting of the Customs books by Governor Phipps.
Moreover, Phipps sponsored a proposal to exempt Massachusetts from the exactions and requirements
of the Navigation Acts.
And when the Speaker of the Massachusetts House, Nathaniel Byfield, had the temerity
to call for greater royal control over Massachusetts with the notorious Joseph Dudley as Governor,
Phipps had him expelled from the House.
In addition, Phipps, a man of decided pro-Les Lurien sympathies, came into sharp conflict
with Governor Benjamin Fletcher of New York, a partisan of the royalist oligarchy of that
colony. Both men claimed jurisdiction over the Connecticut militia, and Fletcher threatened
to take under New York jurisdiction the island of Martha's Vineyard, by this time a part
of Massachusetts. Fletcher also demanded the surrender of young Abraham Gouverneur, one
of the convicted but released Leslarians, who had moved to Boston. Gouverneur had written
a letter, seized by Fletcher, highly critical of the New York Chief Executive. Phipps angrily
refused Fletcher's important demand and also informed Fletcher's agent that New York's
Former Governor Henry Slaughter should have been brought to trial because of his murder
of Leisler and Milborne. With the accumulation of cases concerning Phipps's opposition to
royal power over Massachusetts, the King finally yielded to the charges, especially Brenton's,
and to the anti-Phips machinations of men like Joseph Dudley, and recalled Phipps to
to England in February 1694 to answer charges of misconduct.
Fighting for his political life, Phipps tried to obtain a vote of support for his continuance
by the general court.
Bolstered by the support of Increase Mather, Phipps won a bare majority of the Democratic
House of Representatives, but the relatively oligarchic council, headed by the implacable
Stoughton, was determined to dispose of Phipps.
Phipps finally sailed for England at the end of 1694 and died soon after arriving in England.
Phipps' recall and death left the executive power in the hands of none other than Lieutenant
Governor Stoughton, who now achieved his long-term objective of assuming power in Massachusetts.
Stoughton was to remain as acting governor for the remainder of the decade.
With Phipps gone, the days of a liberal governor were over, no more any quixotic defense of
Massachusetts liberties. Instead, Staunton swiftly molded a pro-royalist ruling clique
of spoils men and plunderers in the best Dudley tradition. Staunton's major allies were the
self-same Dudley, still trying to win the permanent spot of governor, and Speaker Byfield,
whose daughter was married to Staunton's nephew.
Opposition to Staunton centered in the more democratic lower house.
Thus, in 1696, the House of Representatives voted to send an agent to England to work
for restoration of the old Massachusetts Charter, but the council oligarchy naturally vetoed
the plan.
With the glorious revolution over, a royal government fixed on Massachusetts and the
The inconclusive war with France dragging to a close, and in 1697, with the status quo ante
restored in the colonies, King William now had time to turn his attention to enforcing
the imperial system upon America.
The great trading center of Massachusetts especially needed attention, for there the
navigation laws were still virtually unenforced.
The London merchants in particular were pressing the crown more than ever to crack down on
their colonial rivals.
As a result, three significant steps were taken to tighten imperial control of the colonies
and to compel enforcement of the navigation laws.
For one thing, Parliament in 1696 passed another Navigation Act, which, one, confined all colonial
to English-built ships, required all colonial governors, including the elected governors of Connecticut and Rhode Island, to take an oath to enforce the navigation laws, gave the royal customs official in the colonies the right of forcible search and seizure,
5. Forced merchants re-exporting enumerated articles bought from another colony, for example tobacco from the South, to post a bond to ensure that the goods not be sold to another European country, and 6. Authorize the Crown to establish special vice admiralty courts to enforce the national law, and 6. Authorize the Crown to establish special vice admiralty courts to enforce the national law, and
Second, also in 1696, the Administration of Colonial Affairs was taken from the Lords of Trade, a committee of the Privy Council dominated by the court aristocracy, and shifted to a new and independent Board of Trade.
Although the new board contained seven privy councillors, the active working members were eight paid officials generally representing the London merchants.
Among its many functions, the board was empowered to recommend the disallowing of laws conflicting with English law or policy.
The third step, the following year, was the creation by the Privy Council of the Network
of Vice Admiralty Courts for the Colonies, authorized in the Navigation Act.
These courts were specially created for the trial and punishment of violators of the Navigation
Acts.
Prior to 1697, accused violators were tried at the regular common law colonial courts.
This meant that the judges were colonists who probably disapproved of the restrictive
laws and that the trials were by juries almost invariably sympathetic to the violators.
To surmount this problem, the Privy Council now commissioned the royal colonial governors
as Vice Admiral's, each empowered to create a vice admiralty court under his jurisdiction.
The vice admiralty court could now convict violators without the inconvenience of putting
the case to a jury of the defendant's peers, for here trial was conducted by the judge
only. The judges, of course, were to be royal officials, in effect appointed by the governors,
as were all of the vice admiralty court officials. In practice, the judges had the full management
of the vice admiralty courts and, to ensure diligence in convicting offenders, the judges
were paid a percentage of the value of the violators' goods that they condemned. Enhancing
the power of each judge was the fact that each court had one judge only, although in
In some cases, the judge appointed a deputy to try cases. For instance, the judge of the
Massachusetts court, the jurisdiction of which covered New Hampshire, appointed a deputy
for the latter colony. Since the vice admiralty post were only assigned to royal governors,
the Massachusetts court was assigned jurisdiction over Rhode Island, and the New York court
Over Connecticut and the Jerseys In 1699, the English also moved against the
growth of manufacturing in America.
The colonists were accustomed to rural household manufacture of textiles for their own use,
but now New England and Long Island were beginning to manufacture woolens for commercial markets
and beginning to out-compete the powerful English woolen industry.
Not only were the English manufacturers alarmed, but so also were the English merchants, who
stood to lose control of the trade of the southern colonies, should the latter purchase
their manufactured goods from Boston instead of from England.
Therefore, Parliament passed the Woolen Act of 1699, prohibiting the export of wool or
woolens from any American colony, even to another colony.
The instrumental in drafting and implementing these measures was none other than the old
enemy of the American colonies, Edward Randolph. Randolph had had a great deal of experience
with recalcitrant juries in the early 1680s and renewed that experience when Surveyor
General of the Customs in America in the early 1690s. His later enforcement difficulties
In the fall of 1695, Randolph submitted a lengthy memorandum on his findings. Randolph
Randolph was now brought in to advise on the new Navigation Act, and he was one of the
two co-authors of the original draft of the Act.
Randolph then went to work for the new Board of Trade, of which his old friend, the Earl
of Bridgewater, was president.
And when the officers of the Vice Admiralty Courts were selected, Randolph's suggestions
were adopted, as were roughly the boundaries of the court districts.
One of the major disputes in framing the Navigation Act stemmed from Randolph's attempt to impose
a royally appointed attorney general in every colony. To transfer full power over their
trade from the colonies to the Crown, it was necessary for the prosecuting attorneys to
be under Crown control. Randolph wanted the Crown to appoint all the attorneys general
of the Colonies Directly, but the colonies themselves and their proprietors bitterly
protested such a change, and the Crown finally decided to appoint Advocates General to prosecute
admulty cases, but to allow the colonies to continue to choose their own Attorneys General.
This meant that Crown agents would be limited to admulty cases, and further that jurisdictional
Disputes over the Courts of Trial might loom large in the future.
The upshot was a diversity of pattern in the several colonies, but generally the colonial
attorneys general were used also as Crown Advocates General. Only in Massachusetts and
Virginia was a separate Crown official appointed. Because of Randolph's good offices, Nathaniel
Winthrop Winthrop, the old weak-willed moderate and member of the council, could not possibly
accept this crowning of the nefarious Stoughton-Byfield alliance. These were the men whom Winthrop
privately referred to as the Jacobite clique, the high Tory followers of the pretender James
of the Second, who have in a little time got more by the government than all that have
been before, who eat up the poor as bread and squeeze them to death by virtue of an office.
With the Massachusetts Council overriding Staunton and refusing to assent to Bifield's
appointment, Winthrop, pulling strings in England, was able to get himself appointed
as judge instead.
Roth bitterly concluded that the Massachusetts smugglers had turned out Mr. Byfield, a man
zealous for having the acts of trade duly executed.