The Dominion Of New England:

The Rule: A New Governing Construction

The Dominion of New England in North America was an administrative matrimony of English colonies, including the territories of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Plymouth Colony, the Province of New Hampshire, the Province of Maine, and the Narragansett Land (nowadays-day Washington County, Rhode Island). It was composed of the present-day states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Bailiwick of jersey. The union lasted from 1686–1689 and ultimately failed because it was likewise big for a single governor to manage.

Seal of the Dominion of New England, 1686–1689

The seal of the Rule of New England was ordered by Male monarch James II of England. The inscription effectually the edge is an abbreviation for Iacobus Secundus Dei Gratia Magnae Britanniae, Franciae et Hiberniae Rex, Fidei Defensor ("James the Second, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith"), the monarch's total championship, an inscription which was as well on the Great Seal of the Realm. The motto of the dominion was Nunquam libertas gratior extat, taken from the Claudian quotation Nunquam libertas gratior extat Quam sub rege pio ("Never does liberty appear in a more than gracious form than under a pious rex").

The paradigm depicts a Native American and a colonist kneeling at the anxiety of King James.

Forming the Dominion

Post-obit the English language Restoration in 1660, Rex Charles II sought to streamline the administration of the colonial territories and began a process that brought a number of the colonies under direct crown control. One motive for these actions was to control the price of administration of individual colonies; some other significant reason was the desire to regulate merchandise. The specific objectives of the Dominion included the regulation of trade, an increase in religious freedoms, reformation of land championship practices to conform more to English methods and practices, coordination on matters of defense, and a streamlining of the assistants into fewer centers.

Joseph Dudley, a Massachusetts-born colonial, was made provisional president of the Council of New England on October 8, 1685, a move intended to secure the Rule while political support was raised for Sir Edmund Andros, who was to have permanent command. Dudley'south council successfully petitioned the Lords of Trade to include the colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut in the Rule on September 9, 1686. Edmund Andros, whose committee had been issued in June, was given an annex to his commission to incorporate them into the Dominion.

Andros arrived in Boston on December 20, 1686, and immediately assumed power. The Dominion at this time consisted of the Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Isle colonies. In 1688, its jurisdiction was expanded to include New York, and East and Westward Jersey. Andros' commission called for governance past himself, once more with a council. The initial composition of the quango included representatives from each of the colonies, but because of the inconvenience of travel and the fact that travel costs were not reimbursed, the council's quorums were dominated by the most local representatives from Massachusetts and Plymouth.

Tensions in the Dominion

Andros was extremely unpopular in New England. He disregarded local representation, denied the validity of existing state titles in Massachusetts (which had been dependent on the old lease), restricted town meetings, and actively promoted the Church building of England in largely Puritan regions. He also enforced the Navigation Acts, laws that restricted New England trade.

Enforcing Revenue Laws

The first attempts to enforce revenue laws were met past stiff resistance from a number of Massachusetts communities. Several towns refused to choose commissioners to appraise the town population and estates, and officials from a number of them were consequently arrested and brought to Boston. Some were fined and released; others were imprisoned until they promised to perform their duties. Other provinces did not resist the imposition of the new law even though, at least in Rhode Island, the rates were higher than they had been under the previous colonial administration. Plymouth's relatively poor landowners were hard hit past the high rates on livestock.

Andros, responding to the tax protests, sought to restrict boondocks meetings, since these were where that protest had begun. He introduced a police that limited meetings to a unmarried annual meeting, solely for the purpose of electing officials and explicitly banned meetings at other times for any reason. This loss of local power was widely hated. Protests were made that the town meeting and tax laws were violations of the Magna Carta, which guaranteed taxation by representatives of the people.

State Title Practices

Andros had been instructed to bring colonial land title practices into line with those in England and innovate quit-rents as a means of raising colonial revenues. Some landowners went through the confirmation process. Many refused, fearing the possibility of losing their state; they viewed the process every bit a thinly veiled country grab. The Puritans of Plymouth and Massachusetts, some of whom had extensive landholdings, were among the latter. Since all of the existing land titles in Massachusetts had been granted under the now-vacated colonial charter, Andros declared them to be void and required landowners to re-certify their buying, paying fees to the Dominion and becoming subject to the charging of a quit-rent.

Religious Protests and the Glorious Revolution

The religious leaders of Massachusetts, led past Cotton fiber and Increment Mather, were opposed to the rule of Andros and organized dissent targeted to influence the court in London. Increase Mather and other Massachusetts agents traveled to England in 1688 and were received past Male monarch James II, who promised to address the colony'south concerns.

Even so, James Ii became increasingly unpopular in England and faced opposition from the Anglican church bureaucracy when he issued the Declaration of Indulgence, establishing some freedom of religion. With the nascence of his son and potential successor James III in June 1688, factions of English conspired with the Dutch prince to replace James with his Protestant son-in-law, William of Orangish. The nearly bloodless "Glorious Revolution" followed in November and December of 1688 and established William and his wife Mary as co-rulers of England.

After the Glorious Revolution and the ascent of William and Mary, the Massachusetts agents and then petitioned the new monarchs and the Lords of Trade (who oversaw colonial affairs) for restoration of the Massachusetts charter. Furthermore, Mather convinced the Lords of Trade to delay notifying Andros of the revolution. He had already dispatched to previous colonial governor Simon Bradstreet, a letter containing news of a report (prepared before the revolution), that the disparateness of the Massachusetts charter had been illegal, and that the magistrates should "fix the minds of the people for a modify." Rumors of the revolution apparently reached some individuals in Boston before official news arrived.

The Dissolution of the Rule

When the other New England colonies in the Dominion were informed of the overthrow of Andros, pre-Rule colonial government moved to restore their former governments to power. Rhode Island and Connecticut resumed governance under their earlier charters, and Massachusetts resumed governance according to its vacated charter subsequently being temporarily governed by a commission composed of magistrates, Massachusetts Bay officials, and a majority of Andros' council. The committee was disbanded after some Boston leaders felt that radical rebels held too much sway over it.

The dissolution of the Rule presented legal problems for both Massachusetts and Plymouth. Plymouth had never had a royal charter, and Massachusetts had been legally vacated. As a upshot, the restored governments lacked legal foundations for their existence. This was particularly problematic for Massachusetts considering its long frontier with New French republic was exposed to French and American Indian raids with the 1689 outbreak of King William's War. The cost of colonial defense resulted in a heavy tax burden, and the state of war also fabricated it difficult to rebuild the colony'southward trade.

Agents for both colonies worked in England to rectify the charter issues. The Lords of Trade decided to solve the upshot by combining the two provinces. The resulting Province of Massachusetts Bay, whose charter was issued in 1691 and began operating in 1692 under governor Sir William Phips, combined the territories of both colonies, along with the islands south of Cape Cod (Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Elizabeth Islands) that had previously been part of New York.