The Empire Reformed. Owen Stanwood
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that the Bay Colony enjoyed under its 1629 charter. In many ways, the royal campaigns in both New Hampshire and Bermuda were practice runs for the much more critical design against the Massachusetts charter, and in turn, the events in each of those colonies only underscored how Boston served as a center for antimonarchical sentiment in America. Cranfield had blamed Harvard College for trumpeting sedition, and rebels from both New Hampshire and Bermuda fled to Boston to avoid punishment. As Edward Randolph told the Archbishop of Canterbury, “they give encouragement to Phannaticks of all sorts & receive them from all places.” The town and region were filled with refractory subjects from all over the empire, and a firm action against the charter would send a message to all enemies of the king that they now had nowhere to hide.48
The battle over the Massachusetts charter—beginning with Edward Randolph’s arrival in 1676 and ending with a ruling against the colony in the Chancery court in 1684—appears in many historical accounts as a contest between core and periphery, Puritanism and empire, America and England. When compared with New Hampshire and Bermuda, however, the long process of royalization appeared both moderate and more or less consensual. Randolph hurled vitriol at his enemies and they hated him in return, but he always believed that a majority of New Englanders would welcome royal government once they understood that it would guarantee their rights against an overbearing Congregational “oligarchy” and protect them from outside enemies. He was at least partly right: while Cranfield and Coney inspired a large majority of subjects in their colonies to resist royalization, people in Massachusetts divided into two more or less evenly matched parties. On one side stood not just new arrivals like Randolph, but the colony’s few Anglicans and even many self-styled “moderates” such as Governor Simon Bradstreet, one of the original Puritan settlers, and Joseph Dudley, whose father had been one of the first governors. The opposition party, led by a cadre of church members and eventually championed by the Rev. Increase Mather, attempted to use conspiratorial politics to inspire a popular movement against imperial regulation. At least at first, however, the attempt to build a consensus in favor of defending the charter did not succeed. New Englanders were divided on how to deal with the empire, mainly because royal officials acted with more moderation than Cranfield or Coney had done. Most historians have labeled Mather’s group the “popular party,” thus implying a high level of opposition to imperial plans; in fact, neither side could claim a popular mandate at the outset of the controversy.49
While some royal officials aimed at the Massachusetts charter as early as the 1640s, the campaign resumed during the Restoration and reached a crescendo in the mid-1670s. King Philip’s War devastated New England, reminding imperial administrators of the dangers of allowing a large and strategically placed region essentially to rule itself. These issues appeared clearly in an anonymous report filed in 1675. The author objected to the religious life and antimonarchical bent of New England’s leaders, but his main objections concerned defense. New Englanders argued constantly among themselves and “they cannot I doubt at present make a sufficient defence of his Majts Territorys & Subjects in those parts, if a more powerfull Enemy should invade.” The author recommended sending “some Gentlemen, residing there, by his Majte authorized to make appeales unto to end their Differences, and keep unity amongst them”—an appointed royal council to serve as the face of authority. This particular plan proved too cumbersome or expensive to realize; instead, the king’s ministers went after the Massachusetts charter in the courts, much as they opposed the charter of London during the same period.50
The circumstances of the delivery of the quo warranto against the charter demonstrated the diversity of New Englanders’ responses to the royal campaign. A common legal tactic in Charles II’s time, the order demanded “by what warrant” the Massachusetts Bay Company exercised power over the colony, charging that the company had violated the terms of the charter and therefore possessed no rightful authority. When Edward Randolph delivered the quo warranto, he pleaded with the rulers of Massachusetts to relinquish the charter without a legal challenge, ensuring that the king would deal with them tenderly as he designed the new royal government. In order to help the process along, Randolph brought two supporting documents: the first a guarantee of liberty of conscience, to dissuade the people from the belief that the king had any designs on their churches; and the second a declaration of how the corporation of London had surrendered its charter without a fight.51
Evidence from within Massachusetts indicates that the colony’s inhabitants were divided over how to respond to the loss of the charter. No angry crowds met Randolph when he delivered the writ to Massachusetts officials, and even among the magistrates there was an air more of resignation than of resistance. After all, Charles held out an olive branch to the colonists, offering them the chance to submit input regarding a new charter that would better acknowledge the king’s sovereignty. Governor Bradstreet and many of the more prominent magistrates favored submission, and so did many of the colony’s clergy—though not without consternation. The diary of Peter Thacher, the minister at Milton, provides some indication of how people away from the colony’s center viewed the events over the course of 1683. Thacher spent much of the 1680s, like his neighbors, praying for the Protestant cause and “for the Continuation of our libertys sivil & sacred,” and he was horrified when he received news of the court action against the charter. On 31 October 1683 he met with other ministers to decide what to do—the matter was so sensitive that Thacher recorded his observations in cipher. Several days later, after the General Court met to consider the matter, Thacher revealed the predominant opinion of the gathered ministers: “tht if the patent was forfeited by law, thn it was best to resigne it up to his majesty for such regulation as might make it most fit for his Majesty’s service, tht so the Essentialls of the patent might be continued.” In other words, even the ministers, those trumpets of sedition, thought twice before offering offense to the king, preferring a pragmatic course over confrontation.52
Despite the moderation of many New Englanders, however, there were others who resisted any compromise regarding the country’s “liberties.” Alongside the longtime firebrand, Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth, Increase Mather emerged as the most eloquent spokesman against surrendering the charter; he did so by linking the design against the country’s liberties to the ongoing popish plot. Such an interpretation was not altogether fanciful. Many New Englanders knew that the campaign against corporations in England was primarily a means to remove dissenters and their allies from positions of authority, and pamphleteers noted that the same thing had happened in France before Louis XIV escalated his campaign against the Huguenots. An exasperated Edward Cranfield accused radical ministers of “infusing the people, that it is God’s cause and that they may lawfully draw their Swords in the defence of the Charter.” This was surely an exaggeration—no one openly favored armed resistance—but opponents to royal government were beginning to endorse aspects of Calvinist resistance theory, arguing at least implicitly that people, or at least inferior magistrates, did not have to obey their rulers if they turned against God.53
The confrontation over submission climaxed in Boston’s town meeting in January 1684. In a ritual repeated all over the colony, the city’s inhabitants met to consider the design against the charter. The same divisions existed in Boston as in the colony as a whole, but in this case the radicals ruled the day by a combination of parliamentary tactics and soaring rhetoric. First, leading radical Samuel Nowell dismissed all nonfreemen from the meeting, ensuring that only church members would be present for the discussion and vote on the charter. Then Increase Mather rose and addressed the crowd, using examples from the Old Testament and the recent past—including contemporary events in New Hampshire—to urge resistance. In response, the freemen of Boston pledged that they would not voluntarily relinquish their charter, and essentially dared the king to take it.54
Despite the drama, however, Mather’s speech did not usher in a new age of resistance in New England. Throughout 1684 and 1685, as anarchy reigned in New Hampshire and Bermuda, inhabitants of Massachusetts continued their lives much as before. The most notable event was the electoral defeat of several prominent moderate magistrates, but at the same time Governor Bradstreet won reelection. In 1685 colonists learned that the king had chosen Percy Kirke as their governor, an unwelcome choice for radical Protestants. Kirke had been commander of the royal regiment at Tangier—afterward known as the Queen’s Regiment—a division known for