The Empire Reformed. Owen Stanwood

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СКАЧАТЬ as royal enforcer came in the spring of 1686. The royal frigate Dartmouth arrived in Bermuda, commanded by an actual naval officer, George St. Lo, who carried a warrant for Sharpe’s arrest. St. Lo shared Sharpe’s politics but not his tactics. The officer surveyed the situation and spoke to partisans on both sides before concluding that Coney was right and the Bermudians had no legitimate grievances against the governor. When he departed during the summer of 1686 he carried off both Sharpe—to face trial for piracy in Nevis—and five leading opponents of the regime, sent like Edward Gove to face trial and punishment in England.

      At this point a measure of calm returned to Bermuda, but for Coney the damage was done. His efforts to royalize Bermuda had been even less successful than those of Cranfield. Moreover, officials in Whitehall proved reluctant to take a hard line against the rebels. Almost as soon as they arrived in London, the five opponents of Coney petitioned for their freedom, and within six months they returned to Bermuda and presented a petition to receive reimbursement for their forced confinement and transportation. The new governor, Sir Robert Robinson, viewed local politics in a much less paranoid manner than his predecessor, and as a result his rule was remarkably free of drama. Indeed, as former Bermudian William Milborne joined his fellow Bostonians in overthrowing their governor during the revolutionary turmoil of 1689, Robinson and his people sat tight, confused but not particularly alarmed by the tumultuous politics in England.⁴⁷

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      The ordeals of royal administrators in New Hampshire and Bermuda demonstrate some important truths about the Restoration empire. In both places, reformers had grand ambitions and expectations for success, not least because so many local inhabitants expressed theoretical support for royal governance. As they set out to govern, however, the governors and their primary opponents fell prey to the conspiratorial outlook that pervaded English politics during the 1680s. Moreover, while officials in Whitehall theoretically supported their officers in the field, they proved reluctant to provide any actual support, leaving the new royal governments as mere ciphers with great theoretical powers but no means to turn their ideals into reality. The result was chaos and rebellion, the first examples of colonial subjects rising up against imperial centralization. At the same time, however, the news was not all bad for bureaucrats in Whitehall. After all, no one in either Bermuda or New Hampshire questioned the king’s right to remake the plantations; people simply disputed whether their governors were legitimate royal representatives. If the king found wiser men to rule the colonies, and supported them with even a few royal soldiers, future royal projects might prove more successful than the false starts in New Hampshire and Bermuda. In addition, the Bermuda debacle especially underscored the importance of security in colonial politics. In that case, it was fear of Spanish enemies, and the widespread belief that the governor was in league with them, that doomed the government. If this issue had been neutralized, it seemed, the people would have been more compliant.

      In many ways, the campaign to remake Massachusetts reflected the lessons learned in the other old Puritan colonies. Unlike New Hampshire or Bermuda, Boston was important—not an economic powerhouse, perhaps, but a center of commerce with a large and growing population. Moreover, it had a longstanding reputation as a haven for radical dissenters, exacerbated by the virtual independence 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. СКАЧАТЬ