The Effect of the Restoration in New England
The accession of Charles II to the throne of England provoked a
crisis in the affairs of the Puritans and gave rise to many problems
that the New Englanders had not anticipated and did not know how to
solve. With a Stuart again in control, there were many questions
that might be easily asked but less easily answered. Except for
Massachusetts and Plymouth, not a settlement had a legal title to
its soil; and except for Massachusetts, not one had ever received a
sufficient warrant for the government which it had set up.
Naturally, therefore, there was disquietude in Rhode Island,
Connecticut, and New Haven; and even Massachusetts, buttressed as
she was, feared lest the King might object to many of the things she
had done. Entrenched behind her charter and aware of her superiority
in wealth, territory, and population, she had taken the leadership
in New England and had used her opportunity to intimidate her
neighbors. Except for New Haven, not a colony or group of
settlements but had felt the weight of her claims. Plymouth and
Connecticut had protested against her demands; the Narragansett
towns with difficulty had evaded her attempt to absorb them; and the
settlements at Piscataqua and on the Maine coast had finally yielded
to her jurisdiction. As long as Cromwell lived and the Government of
England was under Puritan direction, Massachusetts had little to
fear from protests against her; but, with the Cromwellian régime at
an end, she could not expect from the restored monarchy a favoring
or friendly attitude.
The change in England was not merely one of government; it was one
of policy as well. Even during the Cromwellian period, Englishmen
awoke to a greater appreciation of the importance of colonies as
assets of the mother country, and began to realize, in a fashion
unknown to the earlier period, the necessity of extending and
strengthening England's possessions in America. England was engaged
in a desperate commercial war with Holland, whose vessels had
obtained a monopoly of the carrying trade of the world; and to win
in that conflict it was imperative that her statesmen should husband
every resource that the kingdom possessed. The religious agitations
of previous years were passing away and the New England colonies
were not likely to be troubled on account of their Puritanism. The
great question in England was not religious conformity but national
strength based on commercial prosperity.
Thus England was fashioning a new system and defining a new policy.
By means of navigation acts, she barred the Dutch from the carrying
trade and confined colonial commerce in large part to the mother
country. She established councils and committees of trade and
plantations, and, by the seizure of New Netherland in 1664 and the
grant of the Carolinas and the Bahamas in 1663 and 1670, she
completed the chain of her possessions in America from New England
to Barbados. A far-flung colonial world was gradually taking shape,
demanding of the King and his advisers an interest in America of a
kind hitherto unknown. It is not surprising that so vast a problem,
involving the trade and defense of nearly twenty colonies, should
have made the internal affairs of New England seem of less
consequence to the royal authorities than had been the case in the
days of Charles I and Archbishop Laud, when the obtaining of the
Massachusetts Bay charter had roused such intensity of feeling in
England. What was interesting Englishmen was no longer the matter of
religious obedience in the colonies, but rather that of their
political and commercial dependence on the mother country.
As the future of New England was certain to be debated at Whitehall
after 1660, the colonies took pains to have representatives on the
ground to meet criticisms and complaints, to ward off attacks, and
to beg for favors. Rhode Island sent a commission to Dr. John
Clarke, one of her founders and leading men, at that time in London,
instructing him to ask for royal protection, self-government,
liberty of conscience, and a charter. Massachusetts sent Simon
Bradstreet and the Reverend John Norton, with a petition that reads
like a sermon, praying the King not to listen to other men's words
but to grant the colonists an opportunity to answer for themselves,
they being "true men, fearers of God and the King, not given to
change, orthodox and peaceable in Israel." Connecticut, with more
worldly wisdom, sent John Winthrop, the Governor, a man courtly and
tactful, with a petition shrewdly worded and to the point. Plymouth
entrusted her mission also to Winthrop, hoping for a confirmation of
her political and religious liberties. All protested their loyalty
to the Crown, while Massachusetts, her petition signed by the
stiff-necked Endecott, prostrated herself at the royal feet, craving
pardon for her boldness, and subscribing herself "Your Majesties
most humble subjects and suppliants." Did Endecott remember, we
wonder, a certain incident connected with the royal ensign at Salem?
Against the lesser colonies no complaints were presented, except in
the case of New Haven, which was charged by the inhabitants of
Shelter Island with usurpation of their goods and territory; but for
Massachusetts the restoration of the Stuarts opened a veritable
Pandora's box of troubles. In "divers complaints, petitions, and
other informations concerning New England," she was accused of
overbearance and oppression, of seizing the territory of New
Hampshire and Maine, of denying the rights of Englishmen to
Anglicans and non-freemen of the colony, and of persecuting the
Quakers and others of religious views different from her own. She
was declared to be seeking independence of Crown and Parliament by
forbidding appeals to England, refusing evaded by various
definitions of "orthodox" and "competent estates" and was not to be
fully executed for many years, yet its meaning was clear — no single
religious body would ever again be allowed by the royal authorities
in England, to monopolize the government or control the political
destinies of a British colony in America or elsewhere.
SIMON BRADSTREET
Painting in the State House, Boston.
JOHN ENDECOTT
Painting in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society,
Boston.
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