Volume 1, Chapter 62, Rhode Island and Connecticut after the Glorious Revolution
We have seen what happened in the northern royal colonies after the Glorious Revolution.
Connecticut and Rhode Island, alone of all the colonies, continued on their old self-governing
path.
Connecticut's charter was reconfirmed as we have seen in 1690, Rhode Island's in late
1693.
Rhode Island was probably the only colony that did not greet the overthrow of Andros
with great joy.
Not only did Andros and Rhode Island have in common a profound hatred of Massachusetts,
but the little colony was thoroughly grateful for Andros's decision to stand with it on
the Narragansett country question and against the aggressive claims of Connecticut and the
of the Atherton Company. Upon the overthrow of the Dominion, Rhode Island assumed possession
of King's Province, never to relinquish it again, even though the territorial dispute
dragged on for years. In 1703, commissioners from Rhode Island and Connecticut finally
settled the dispute. In a compromise, the territory of the Narragansett country was
was conceded to Rhode Island, but Rhode Island agreed to ratify all existing land claims
to the area, thereby granting victory to the huge arbitrary Atherton Company land claims.
In effect, the decision foisted on the future of Narragansett country a large plantation
way of life. Rhode Island remained one of the most libertarian
of the Colonies. The Quaker governor, John Easton, found it impossible, for example,
to raise troops in 1691 to join in the war to conquer Canada. The basic cause was the
inability to impose enough taxation on the colony. The libertarian bent of the colony
continued when the non-Quaker Samuel Cranston was elected governor in 1698. A nephew of
of the former Quaker governor Walter Clark, Cranston essentially continued Quaker policy.
Thus, tax laws were scarcely enforced, and laws in general almost totally ignored in
the colony. In 1698, Edward Randolph ranted that neither judges, juries nor witnesses were
under any obligation. His explanation for this unusual breadth of liberty and minimization
of Government in the colony was that the management of the government, such as it is, was in the
hands of Quakers and Anabaptists, who, for one thing, would take no oath. This included
a refusal of the Quaker governor in 1698 to take the required oath to enforce the navigation
laws. Neither did Rhode Island impose any government schooling on its citizens. The elected
The Massachusetts governors of Rhode Island assumed admulty powers, hence the Quaker governor
Walter Clark refused to permit the English admulty judge to function in the province.
Since the Crown could not control Rhode Island by appointing a governor, it tried to bring
the colony's militia under neighboring royal governors.
Governor Phipps of Massachusetts tried to send agents to take over the Rhode Island
in 1692, but the assembly and the government fought back, ordered their own officers to
retain command, and asked the king for redress.
Rhode Island also pointed out that several Massachusetts counselors had a vested interest
in the derogantic country, and thus in bringing Rhode Island to heel.
The Crown replied against Rhode Island, but shifted the militia power to New York.
did concede Rhode Island's control of its own militia in peacetime. Ironically, Rhode
Island's gravest conflict with the governors of New York came under the relatively liberal
Bellamont administration. One of Bellamont's non-liberal traits was an excessive zeal in
hunting down pirates, a practice which absorbed a good deal of his energies during his brief
Unquestionably, Rhode Island governors had aided and abetted piracy during the war with
France in the 1690s by commissioning privateers whose only difference from pirates was an
official license to plunder.
Bellamont, investigating conditions in Rhode Island during 1699, was already prejudiced
against Rhode Island and denounced its leaders as poor, lower class, and generally Quakers
and sectaries. He was particularly bitter at the absence of religious orthodoxy among
them and the lack of government schools. Bellamont's liberalism, so refreshingly intense and benighted
New York, virtually disappeared in the highly individualistic colony of Rhode Island. So
So far, no outside governor had successfully made good his claim to command of Rhode Island's
militia.
But the tyrannical Joseph Dudley, who had lobbied in England for abolition of the Rhode
Island Charter, dearly tried.
On assuming the governorship of Massachusetts in 1702, Dudley attempted to assume command
of the colony's militia as well as impose an admulty judge on Rhode Island.
Going to Rhode Island, he pressed his militia claim, but the Rhode Island governor and council
refused and asserted their own authority. Dudley ordered the militia major to serve
under him, but the major stood with Rhode Island. In more turbulent King's Province,
Dudley was more successful and the militia joined his command, but the Rhode Island
officials soon went to the Narragansett country and won the militia back again. Dudley's exercise
Ahos of Admiralty jurisdiction also greatly angered the colony. Dudley, as had Bellomont,
objected to Rhode Island Commissions to privateer pirates and, when his Admiralty Judge, Nathaniel
Byfield, released a French prize captured by a Rhode Island privateer, he was hooted
down the street by an angry Newport mob. Once again Rhode Island's disdain for war and
and the State. Its quite obvious lack of patriotic exultation in killing officially declared enemies, brought down upon its head numerous denunciations for being a rogues land. Dudley complained to the Crown that the colony was a perfect receptacle of rogues and pirates. He was particularly bitter that the Quaker-run colony would contribute neither men nor money to the great war to conquer French Canada.
which had been resumed in 1701. In fact, the Rhode Islanders went so far as to shelter deserters from the Army.
In this, of course, Rhode Island was following in its great tradition of being the haven for refugees from all types of state persecution.
Judley was also bitter at Rhode Island's low taxes. While Massachusetts strained and groaned under a tax burden of 2200 pounds per month to pay for war against France, Dudley noted that Rhode Island relaxed happily with taxes of less than one penny on the pound.
Dudley kept up his harangue and charges against Rhode Island, and by late 1705 they were endorsed
by the Board of Trade.
Beginning in 1701, the Board had tried several times but failed to induce Parliament to liquidate
the self-governing and proprietary colonies, that is, those not under direct control of
the Crown.
The proposal had largely been engineered by Randolph and Dudley, the old enemies of the
of the American Colonies. Now in 1704-05, the board took its case to a more sympathetic
crown and urged that the Queen appoint royal governors for Rhode Island and Connecticut.
The leader in the drive to smash Connecticut's and Rhode Island's independence was again
Joseph Dudley. But the tide was stemmed by Sir Henry Ashurst, the indefatigable English
The Board of Trade made its last attempt to cripple the Rhode Island and Connecticut charters
in a parliamentary bill of 1706. Asherst was again easily able to defeat the bill. Moreover,
the Board of Trade was by now losing its power and its Tory drive. The war against France
Edward Randolph, the board's great champion of aggressive imperialism, had died in 1703, and Blathwaite and the other high Tory members of the board were to be dismissed in 1707 and succeeded by far more moderate and liberal members.
As the war with France dragged on, however, Rhode Island began to drift from pacifist
and libertarian principles and to tax its resources heavily by contributing men and
materials.
As we shall see in a later volume, Rhode Island, following the lead of Massachusetts, financed
the ruinous expeditions against the French by turning to a dangerous and mischievous
the creation of paper, money, and with the Quakers losing control of the provincial government, the non-Quaker assembly decided to shift control of the militia to the central government from the towns, where Quaker influence was still strong.
Connecticut, of course, in these years followed much the same path as her sister colony, Rhode Island.
It similarly rebuffed attempts by Massachusetts and New York to assume command over its militia,
and led in repelling attempts by Dudley, Randolph and the Board of Trade to liquidate its independence.
Connecticut too hung back at first in the resumed war against France, but at the end of the
first decade of the 18th century was zealously participating in attempts to invade Canada.
however, continued to handle her own meager maritime cases, even though she was technically
under New York's jurisdiction.
When Connecticut effected its revolution against the Dominion in 1689, the true leadership
of its government rested in the hands of the main architect of the revolution, the pro-Les
Larian, James Fitch.
As leader of the Popular Liberal Party, Fitch, though only a counselor, dominated the government.
Fitch drove through a democratic extension of the franchise to freeholders of 40 shillings,
as well as a uniquely democratic method of selecting public officials.
Taking his stand squarely for the old charter, Fitch threatened reprisals against the partisans
of the royal oligarchy.
The Arch Reactionary Party continued, well after 1690, its desperate attempts to restore
royal government in Connecticut. Thus Gershom Buckley, Edward Palmes and William Rosewell,
aided by the Tory Governor Fletcher of New York, petitioned the King in 1690 to restore
royal government. Buckley expanded his diatribe against the charter government into a book,
Will and Doom, 1692, which remained unpublished, but which furnished ammunition for all the
Board of Trade attempts of the following decade to liquidate independent Connecticut.
Governor Fletcher, after command of the militia was transferred from Massachusetts in 1693,
tried to assume control of the militia in Connecticut.
The Connecticut government resisted Fletcher's demands, and the threat of bloodshed forced
Fletcher to return to New York. Fletcher finally obtained the limited power to requisition
a quota of troops in the colony, but Connecticut managed to resist this as well. The liberal
revolutionaries headed by Fitch were, however, destined to go down to defeat, not at the
at the hands of Tory opponents of Connecticut independence, such as Buckley and Palms, but
at the hands of more subtle middle-of-the-roaders, headed by Fitz-John Winthrop.
Having headed off various assaults on Connecticut's charter during his stay in England, Winthrop
returned to Connecticut a popular hero in 1698. He won election as governor that year,
When Fitch was ousted from his council post, Winthrop's method was deadly to the liberal
cause. While disarming the liberals by successfully defending Connecticut's charter against Tory
assault, Winthrop reimposed government power and oligarchic rule at home. Winthrop moved
quickly to enlarge the powers of the governor, only nominal during the liberal days of Fitch.
The assembly granted Winthrop more power to act between legislative sessions, to appoint
government officials, and to manage military affairs. Furthermore, in 1699, Connecticut,
like Rhode Island three years earlier, split its legislature into two chambers. This bicameral
split was a maneuver to increase executive and oligarchic power, for now the governor
and his Upper House of Assistance were able to veto the popularly elected deputies. Furthermore,
the judicial system was converted into an independent oligarchic power. Whereas before
1698, judges were elected annually in each county, now county judges remained independently
in office on good behavior. In this way, the judges were freed of the checks put on their
by popular elections and were transformed into a quasi-permanent oligarchic bureaucracy.
Or as the reactionary Samuel Willis put it, they were freed from the arbitrary humors
of the people. Finally, to complete the litany of counter-revolutionary statism imposed by
the Winthrop regime, a law of 1699 established the Puritan or Congregational Church in each
Every taxpayer was now forced to pay for its maintenance, and new churches could be formed only on permission of the general court. New public schools were also forced upon the colony.
Professor Dunn's comments on Winthrop's reactionary reforms are more favorable, but provide correct insight into the facts.
For example, by curbing the colonist's undisciplined anarchic, that is, individualistic behavior,
he, Winthrop, could meet charges from the Board of Trade that Connecticut's government
was inadequate and irregular.
The reforms were particularly designed to break James Fitch's democratic faction.
With support increasing for Fitch, and with Winthrop kept busy for the next decade in
in Defending Connecticut's Charter, there was no time for further changes of this type
in Connecticut. But the damage had been done. Furthermore, the main result of the Board
of Trade's assault on Connecticut was to force the colony to agree to the right of
appeal in judicial decisions to the Crown. Moreover, the status Winthrop program was not
yet ended, for when Winthrop died in 1707, he was succeeded by his chief advisor, Reverend
Gerdin Saltenstahl, who proceeded in the Saybrook Platform of 1708 to organize the Puritan Churches
into a tight Presbyterian system. If a community is to have a state-run church, it is far easier
for the state to control a centrally governed church than one of independent congregations,
So Connecticut transformed its Puritan churches halfway between truly congregational and Presbyterian
forms into a fully Presbyterian structure.
The legislature convoked a Synod of Ministers and Elders at Saybrook, which adopted the
new regime.
The general court then imposed the system, taking care to allow religious liberty to
dissenters provided their churches were licensed by the state.
From then on, only a minister legally recognized by the general court could receive state support.
It was also in Saltenstahl's regime that Connecticut threw itself into expensive attempts
to carry the war to Canada.
During the long tenure of Reverend Mr. Saltenstahl, the oligarchic faction became cemented in
the colony.
Here was the beginning of Connecticut's later reputation as a land of steady habits.