37. The Restoration Crisis in New England

The Restoration of the Crown in May 1660 was a fateful event for New England. The destruction of the Puritan Revolution had ended, and the home country could now turn its full attention to the state of the American colonies. From the royal point of view the Southern colonies were in satisfactory order: Virginia, always of royal sympathies, had already restored the royal Governor Berkeley to his post; and the Calverts had quickly returned to control of Maryland. But in the north, the New England colonies appeared chaotic. Not one colony had a royal governor; all were self-governing, and three—Rhode Island, New Haven, and Connecticut—didn’t even have a proper charter. Connecticut and New Haven were completely without a charter, and Rhode Island’s perfunctory charter had been granted by the Commonwealth Parliament and thus could hardly be deemed valid by the restored Crown. And though Charles II in his Declaration of Breda, preceding the Restoration, had pledged religious liberty, none of the Puritan or dissenting colonies of New England anticipated warm treatment.

Neither were the New England colonies reassured by the English condemnation of those implicated in the death of Charles I. Of those implicated fourteen, including Henry Vane and Hugh Peter, were executed, twenty-five committed to life imprisonment, and many others exiled or excluded from public office. Two of the regicides, Whalley and Goffe, escaped to New England, where they were protected and became the objects of constant complaint by the English government, which was convinced that the two were plotting to restore the Commonwealth. The news of the Restoration was, indeed, received as a calamity in New England, signifying at the least the end of the Puritan republic, which had treated these colonies almost as self-governing allies. Typical of New England’s response to the Restoration was the comment of Roger Williams: “The bloody whore is not yet drunk enough with blood of the Saints.” But the New England colonies prudently decided to recognize the Restoration government: Rhode Island in October 1660, Connecticut and New Haven in March and June of 1661, and Massachusetts trailing them all in August 1661.

The first order of business for the three New England charterless colonies was to preserve their self-government by obtaining royal charters. Connecticut, one of the three, determined to seize the occasion to annex some or most of the territory of its neighbors. John Winthrop, Jr. was sent to London as Connecticut’s agent to try to annex all of Rhode Island, New Haven, and even New Netherland to the west, still in the hands of the Dutch. If not all of Rhode Island, then Connecticut at least tried to seize the Narragansett Country, about one-third of present Rhode Island— the territory to the southwest of Warwick and west of Narragansett Bay. Winthrop was particularly eager to acquire the Narragansett Country as he was a leading partner of the Atherton Company of Massachusetts, speculators whose arbitrary claims to the land were backed by Connecticut. This backing was quite understandable: the Atherton Company had been recently formed, in 1659, and had engaged in a spurious purchase of the choicest areas of the Narragansett Country, near Boston Neck, from the sachem of the Narragansett Indians. Winthrop had then proceeded to use his power as governor of Connecticut to add greatly to the possessions of himself and his partners. In the fall of 1660 Winthrop induced the New England Confederation to order the Narragansett Indians to pay Connecticut a huge fine in wampum in compensation for various disturbances in the border regions. The gracious alternative offered the Indians was to mortgage the entire Narragansett Country to the Connecticut government. Captain Humphrey Atherton, a major partner of the Atherton Company, now in turn graciously paid the Indian fine, provided that Connecticut transfer the mortgage of the Narragansett Country to the company. By treading this path of chicanery and coercion, the Atherton Company managed to acquire a claim—unrecognized by Rhode Island—to the Narragansett Country of Rhode Island. Only Connecticut jurisdiction guided by the company’s own Winthrop could guarantee the land to the company.

Connecticut’s designs on New Haven were also made clear before Winthrop arrived in London. It had sent an arrogant message to the latter colony in early 1661, asserting “our own real and true right, to those parts of the country where you are seated, both by conquest, purchase and possession....”

Winthrop managed, by judicious distribution of money in London, to obtain for Connecticut a royal charter in May 1662. The charter confirmed Connecticut’s powers of self-government and left its political structure intact, except for restricting the franchise completely to freemen of the colony. The royal charter granted to Connecticut all land west of Narragansett Bay and south of Massachusetts. By this, Rhode Island territory was reduced to the tiny area of existing settlement and New Haven Colony, whose existence was not even mentioned by Connecticut in its negotiations at London, was wiped out altogether. It is quite probable that the new English government, in the confusion of the day, had never heard of New Haven Colony, and that its grant of New Haven’s territory to Connecticut was entirely unwitting. The problem was that New Haven, a fading colony with an economy in decline, felt itself too poor to afford the expense of maintaining an agent in London, and it believed that either Connecticut or Massachusetts, its brothers in the New England Confederation, would look after its interests. Very fortunately, Rhode Island did have an agent in London to speak up for its interest. Dr. John Clarke had remained there after Roger Williams’ return to Rhode Island years before. When Charles II assumed the throne, Clarke had urged a new charter for Rhode Island, stressing its great principle of “soul liberty,” or freedom of conscience, and shrewdly emphasizing the similarity of that principle to Charles’ views in his Declaration of Breda. Now as soon as Clarke heard of the aggressive Connecticut charter gained by Winthrop, he appealed to the king for a charter and for review of the Connecticut document, which had “injuriously swallowed up one half of our colony.” In response, Edward Hyde Clarendon, the lord chancellor, blocked the Connecticut charter and the dispute raged between Winthrop and Clarke, with Winthrop continuing to insist that the Narragansett lands belonged to Connecticut. Finally they submitted the dispute to five arbitrators, who awarded the entire Narragansett Country to Rhode Island; the Pawcatuck River was to be the latter’s western boundary, as in the original Rhode Island patent in 1644. The award also provided, however, that the Atherton Company was free to shift the jurisdiction over its land to Connecticut. John Winthrop, Jr.’s personal property on Fishers Island, on the boundary, was also carefully given to Connecticut. With Winthrop and Clarke both accepting the settlement in April 1663, Winthrop now joined in support of a royal charter for Rhode Island. Finally, in July 1663, the Crown granted Rhode Island its charter as a self-governing colony, including the Narragansett land.

Particularly remarkable in the charter was the explicit guarantee of religious freedom for Rhode Island: “No person within the said colony was to be anywise molested, punished, disquieted or called in question for any differences in opinion in matters of religion, and do not actually disturb the civil peace.” Furthermore, Rhode Island was protected from encroachment by Massachusetts by guarantees of freedom to trade with the Bay Colony. In general, the governmental changes made by the new royal charter were minor: the president’s name was changed to governor, and the number of assistants or magistrates expanded from four to ten. The new charter, however, did cause the removal of the important nullification check on central government power in Rhode Island, by rescinding the law requiring a majority of towns to approve the laws of the General Court. Two years later the Crown restricted democracy further by requiring that suffrage in Rhode Island, as well as in the rest of New England, be limited to those with “competent estates.”

The Narragansett land dispute was far from over. As soon as Winthrop had concluded his agreement with Clarke in April, he joyfully sailed for home, convinced that he had outsmarted Rhode Island. By the agreement the Atherton Company was recognized as the owners of the Narragansett lands and it was granted a free choice of jurisdiction. Winthrop had no doubt which path his associates would choose. As soon as he landed, Winthrop and his partners voted to shift jurisdiction of the Narragansett Country from Rhode Island to Connecticut and Connecticut eagerly accepted the gift. But, in the meanwhile, in the course of drafting the Rhode Island charter, Clarke had shrewdly neglected to include any mention of a free option to the Atherton Company. Thus, Rhode Island obtained a charter with unconditional jurisdiction over the Narragansett lands.

But if Dr. Clarke did a superb job of winning rights for Rhode Island in the turbulent years following the Restoration, hapless New Haven suddenly found itself blotted from the map. Here was a treacherous blow indeed from its neighbor colony, and a clear violation of the terms of the New England Confederation.

In addition to treachery without, New Haven was suffering increasing opposition within—rebellion against its extreme theocratic and oligarchic rule. The opposition denounced the severe limitations on suffrage and longed to join the more liberal and prosperous Connecticut. Francis Browne, for example, denounced the New Haven government and magistrates and refused to obey laws not in conformity with the laws of England.

When news of the royal grant of New Haven to Connecticut arrived in the fall of 1662, Connecticut issued an ultimatum to New Haven Colony to surrender its jurisdiction to it. The colony refused, but town after town now took advantage of the opportunity to shift its allegiance from New Haven to Connecticut. First came Southold on Long Island and then part or all of Stamford, Greenwich, and Guilford. By the end of 1662, the jurisdiction of New Haven had shrunk to a fraction—to its hard core. Only the towns of New Haven proper, Milford, and Branford remained.

The core of New Haven, headed by Governor William Leete and Rev. John Davenport, remained adamant. The freemen of the colony voted to keep its independence, and to appeal the decision to the king and ask for a charter for the colony. New Haven then took its case to the New England Confederation, charging Connecticut with gross violation of its terms. In September 1663 the Commissioners of the United Colonies voted in favor of New Haven and its continued independence. Connecticut, however, blithely ignored the verdict of the commissioners and continued to demand unconditional submission. New Haven, for its part, took heart in the winter of 1664 when the Crown’s order to the colonies enjoining enforcement of the Navigation Acts included New Haven in its address. This seemed to accord implicit royal recognition of New Haven’s autonomy. Even the defection of the town of Milford to Connecticut could not dampen New Haven’s hopes for survival.

But in 1664 the crisis reached its culmination. The king took the first step down the path of ending the right of self-government in New England by sending four commissioners to New England in mid-1664 to try to enforce the navigation laws, settle disputes, and generally begin the process of taking over the colonies. In the meanwhile, in March the king decided to give to his brother James, the Duke of York, the entire huge area of New Netherland, which England was in the process of seizing from the Dutch: from the Connecticut River all the way south to Delaware Bay—virtually the entire middle area between New England and the Southern colonies of Chesapeake Bay. For good measure, James was also granted all of central and eastern Maine, from the Kennebec River east to St. Croix on the Canadian border.

The huge grant to the Duke of York startled Connecticut, for all of Long Island now belonged to the duke. In 1650 New England had come to an amicable agreement with the Dutch for partitioning Long Island: three-quarters of the island east of Oyster Bay went to Connecticut or New Haven, and Dutch sovereignty was virtually limited to Long Island areas that now are Nassau County and part of New York City. Now, suddenly, the Long Island towns had been transferred to the Duke of York. But far more dangerous was the fact that James was now granted all land west of the Connecticut River. This meant the virtual eradication of the colony of Connecticut; all the significant towns in the colony, except New London, were located west of this river. Its charter thus completely negated, and being anxious to present the royal commission with a fait accompli, Connecticut again demanded total submission from New Haven and sent its agents to that colony to take over the government.

The other colonies also wanted to settle matters as quickly as possible. The commissioners of the United Colonies reversed their stand in September and endorsed Connecticut’s appropriation of New Haven. Finally, in November the royal commissioners agreed and decided that all the New Haven area belonged to Connecticut.

The blow was final. The Crown had decided. In December 1664 the New Haven General Court surrendered but under bitter protest to the last, denouncing the injustice imposed by Connecticut. New Haven Colony was ended, and the towns became part of the considerably more liberal colony of Connecticut.

The most extreme and rigid Puritan theocracy in New England was thus no more. The Reverend John Davenport, founder and spiritual chief of New Haven, moved to the ministry of First Boston Church, there to end his days in bitter controversy, as the foremost and most relentless enemy of the Half-Way Covenant. As for Branford’s zealous minister, Rev. Abraham Pierson, he had led his flock there from Southampton, Long Island, two decades before, when that town had decided to join the lax rule of Connecticut. He was not now prepared to give up the strict theocratic ideal, and so he moved his flock once more, this time to found another theocratic settlement in former Dutch territory at New Ark, on the banks of the Passaic River.

With New Haven seized by Connecticut, the New England Confederation came to a virtual end. Although it formally existed for twenty more years, its annual meetings ceased and it no longer played a significant role in New England affairs.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony’s authorities, with their old self-governing charter, had good reason meanwhile to fear the onset of the Restoration. Already a British command had forced Massachusetts Bay to slacken its persecution of the Quakers. What further encroachments might follow?

King Charles, for his part, was determined to bring his most recalcitrant and independent colony to heel. Its virtual independence, its widespread flouting and evasion of the recently passed Navigation Acts, its oligarchic rule by a Puritan theocracy, its grabbing of the New Hampshire and Maine settlements, could only infuriate an Anglican monarch. In mid-1662 the king confirmed the Massachusetts charter but, vaguely and ominously, stressed the invalidity of all laws contrary to the laws of England. More substantively, the king ordered Massachusetts to permit the use of the (Anglican) Book of Common Prayer, and to grant the franchise to all freeholders of “competent estate” whether or not they were members of a Puritan church. By this last command, of course, the king struck at the heart of theocratic rule in Massachusetts. Massachusetts was able to obey the letter of this demand, but not the substance: in place of restricting voting to church members, the Bay Colony substituted the requirement that each non-member must obtain confirmation from the local minister, the town selectmen, and the General Court itself, that he was orthodox in religion—a gantlet that no one was able to run.

Eventually, King Charles saw his opportunity to take the first fateful step for bringing Massachusetts to heel. In 1664 he sent an expedition under Col. Richard Nicolls, a veteran royalist, to America to conquer and seize New Netherland from the Dutch. Nicolls was to remain to govern New Netherland—now renamed New York—as the Duke of York’s deputy. The king took the opportunity to name Nicolls as head of a four-man commission to subdue New Netherland and to inspect, regulate, and settle disputes in New England.

Here was the first intrusion of English authority on New England. Both Massachusetts and the king saw the commission correctly—the entering wedge of British rule and the end of self-government, as well as the overthrow of the Puritan oligarchy in Massachusetts. And neither was Massachusetts reassured by the fact that one of the royal commissioners was Samuel Maverick. A former Boston merchant and veteran rebel against Massachusetts tyranny, and a signer of the Child petition, Maverick was a man eager to wreak vengeance against his old enemy. Professor Oliver Chitwood points out that in this emerging “fight between the Massachusetts oligarchy and the Crown, the people stood to lose regardless of the outcome. If the king won, the rights covered by the charter would be lost to the colony as a whole. On the other hand, if the oligarchy won, it would be strengthened in its position and the old policy of intolerance and limited suffrage would continue.”* Apparently Chitwood does not see the other side of the coin; for upon either outcome, the people also stood to gain—self-government and freedom from imperial rule on the one hand, liberation from theocracy on the other.

The commission came armed with two sets of royal instructions: public and secret. The public instructions were to hear complaints, settle disputes between the New England colonies, and enforce the Navigation Acts. They also conveyed the king’s good intentions to Massachusetts. The secret instructions, however, were to press for the election of more amenable deputies and magistrates who would approve the idea of a royal governor in Massachusetts. Nicolls himself was the king’s preference for this post. The king also instructed the commissioners to insist upon religious toleration in New England, especially, of course, for Anglicans.

Upon the commissioners’ arrival in July 1664, Massachusetts delivered a ringing reply to their pretensions: Massachusetts’ enemies had evidently persuaded the king to send a commission that could on its own discretion revoke the colonists’ fundamental right of self-government, a right granted in their patent. In addition to these arguments from principle, the royal commissioners were subjected to personal denunciation in the colony. One of the commissioners, the ambitious Sir Robert Carr, was accused of keeping a mistress, while Col. George Cartwright was suspected of being a “papist.” In the Puritan climate of Massachusetts Bay, it was difficult to know which crime was deemed the more heinous.

The commission proceeded first to the rapid accomplishment of its top-priority mission—the conquest of New Netherland. The commissioners’ next step, according to their instructions, was to outflank Massachusetts by bringing the weaker New England colonies into submission before confronting their most difficult task, Massachusetts Bay. Accordingly, their first step, in early 1665, was Plymouth, where the commissioners demanded that the franchise no longer depend on religious opinion, and that there be religious liberty, at least for “orthodox” Christians. In contrast to Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth quickly succumbed, thus greatly weakening the theocratic and oligarchic rule. The king warmly commended Plymouth for its ready compliance, but not without a pointed reference to her errant sister: “Your carriage seems to be set off with the more lustre by the contrary deportment of the colony of the Massachusetts....”

The next step was to settle the still raging boundary dispute over the Narragansett Country; the commission was granted power to override any previous royal charter. Connecticut and the Atherton Company were still actively claiming the land. The Crown had advised the commissioners to take the Narragansett Country away from both Connecticut and Rhode Island and to make it a direct royal province, with the Atherton claim continuing in force. At the end of March the commissioners rendered their decision, amending their instructions significantly. For although the Narragansett Country was indeed awarded directly to the Crown and called “King’s Province,” the commissioners decided to compensate Rhode Island for the loss by authorizing it independently to govern the province in the king’s stead. Moreover, they were convinced by Rhode Island’s demonstration of the fraudulent nature of the Atherton Company’s purchase of the tract from the Indians. The commissioners, therefore, boldly vacated the arbitrary Atherton claim and ordered the company proprietors off the territory. (Sir Robert Carr, however, demonstrated his buccaneering bent by asking the Crown to grant him title to a large tract of the best Narragansett grazing land.) Winthrop, however, managed to persuade Nicolls, who had not been present, to get the Atherton decision reversed. But at least Rhode Island was left in charge of the territory.

The commissioners’ other major impact on Rhode Island was, as we have seen, the compulsory narrowing of suffrage to those of “competent estates.” Rhode Island needed no prodding, of course, to agree to what they already had: permission for all the orthodox to have churches of their own choosing.

Apart from the Atherton decision, the commissioners’ rulings were quite satisfactory to Connecticut. We have already seen the commissioners’ role in the liquidation of New Haven. The commissioners were told by Connecticut that it already met the requirements of giving the right to vote to all “men of competent estates,” even if not church members, and of permitting full religious liberty to those of orthodox belief and “civil lives.” While it was true, however, that Connecticut had been far more democratic than Massachusetts in granting the vote to nonchurch members, it had hardly permitted full religious freedom to non-Puritans. In return for their ready compliance with the commissioners’ requests, Connecticut and Rhode Island were, like Plymouth, favored with a message from King Charles complimenting them on their good behavior.

Their business with the southern New England colonies speedily and satisfactorily concluded, the commissioners turned their attention to their major problem—Massachusetts Bay. Confronting the Massachusetts General Court in May 1665, the commissioners soon realized that this colony would be winning no good-conduct medals from the king. The commissioners put forth their demands: that they proposed to act as an appeals court for Massachusetts cases; that, as the other colonies had done, Massachusetts adopt an oath of allegiance to the king; that it grant full religious liberty to Anglicans; and that it observe the Navigation Acts. The commissioners also demanded that Massachusetts really eliminate its prohibition against voting by nonchurch members.

Led by Governor Richard Bellingham, Massachusetts flatly refused each one of these royal demands. Massachusetts’ charter, it further declared, gave the Bay Colony absolute power to make laws and administer justice; therefore, any appellate activity by the commission would be an intolerable breach of Massachusetts’ rights. The commissioners angrily retorted that they were the direct agents of the king, the very royal authority responsible for the charter. Does Massachusetts deny the authority of the royal commission? Massachusetts answered, in a masterpiece of evasion and pseudohumility, that it was beyond its capacity or function to pass on the validity of the commission.

The commissioners decided to take the bull by the horns, and set themselves up as an appellate court, in the house of Capt. Thomas Breedon, to hear grievances against Massachusetts. But the General Court moved swiftly, proclaiming “by the sound of the trumpet” outside the Breedon house that this action was a breach of the royal charter and of Massachusetts’ rights, and could not gain the General Court’s consent.

Defeated and frustrated, the commissioners left Boston, but with this warning of things to come: “The King did not grant away his sovereignty over you when he made you a corporation. When His Majesty gave you power to make wholesome laws and to administer justice by them, he parted not with his right to judge whether the laws were wholesome... ‘tis possible that the charter that you so much idolize may be forfeited, until you have cleared yourselves of those many injustices, oppressions, violences, and blood for which you are complained against.”

With Col. Richard Nicolls returning to New York to take up his post as governor, the other commissioners proceeded northward, to try to disrupt Massachusetts’ rule over the New Hampshire and Maine settlements. Beyond obtaining a few signatures on a petition to the king for relief from Massachusetts’ rule, the commissioners accomplished little in the New Hampshire towns, even though accompanied by agents of the proprietary claimant to New Hampshire, Robert T. Mason. The towns of Portsmouth and Dover, in fact, sent for some Massachusetts magistrates to emphasize their solidarity with Massachusetts. This was not surprising because New Hampshire was dominated by an oligarchy of Massachusetts merchants—for example, Valentine Hill and the Waldron family—who had moved to the Piscataqua to engage in the flourishing timber and fish trade. The oligarchy was either appointed by the Massachusetts General Court or elected by a highly limited franchise. A dozen petitioners from Portsmouth complained to the commission that under Massachusetts “five or six of the richest men of this parish have ruled and ordered all offices, both civil and military, at their pleasure, and none durst make opposition for fear of great fines or long imprisonment.” In particular, the opposition attacked the theocratic Puritan rule and pleaded for the right to worship as Anglicans and for the right to vote. The greatest fire of the petitioners was leveled at Dover’s Puritan minister, Rev. Joshua Moody. The petitioners also asked for a union of New Hampshire with Maine, where the settlements had similar problems.

If some merchants were privileged members of the New Hampshire oligarchy, so also merchants like Francis Champernowne headed the petition and merchants like Pynchon and Bradstreet defended the petitioners in the Massachusetts court. But all to no avail. For as soon as the commissioners left, the Massachusetts authorities began to arrest the leading petitioners and complainants. Thus, the Portsmouth distiller Abraham Corbett was hauled into court “to answer for his tumultuous and seditious practices against his government.”

Pickings were more fruitful for the commission, however, in the Maine towns, which had been seized by Massachusetts only a decade before, and where the preponderance of anti-Puritan settlers and fishermen kept resentment high. Finding Maine discontented with Massachusetts’ rule, the commissioners proceeded to organize an independent government at York for the eight Maine towns. The commissioners were armed with a royal letter commanding the surrender of the Maine towns to the jurisdiction of Ferdinando Gorges, grandson and heir of the previous proprietor, and John Archdale accompanied the commission as an agent of Gorges to see that the order was carried out.

Traveling further east to the Duke of York’s new province east of the Kennebec river (now central and eastern Maine), the commissioners then organized a government, under the duke, of the few scattered inhabitants, and named the territory Cornwall.

Before disbanding, the commissioners sent their report to the Crown in December 1665. In it they attacked Massachusetts’ intransigence and recommended revocation of the Bay Colony charter. They also recommended direct royal government for New Hampshire and Maine, and praised the cooperative attitude of other New England colonies.

The commissioners’ report, however, proved to be ill-fated. One ill omen: none of the commissioners arrived home with the report. Maverick settled down in New York, Carr died shortly after, and Cartwright, traveling to England with the report, was captured at sea by the Dutch. More significantly, the king found this an inopportune time to tangle with Massachusetts.

The Dutch had naturally taken umbrage at England’s sudden seizure of New Netherland at a time when the two countries were at peace. And in the ensuing war with the Dutch, England bore heavy losses and expenses, especially as the French entered on the side of the Dutch. A great plague also devastated London and southern England, and later in the year a great fire destroyed two-thirds of the housing of London. Furthermore, clamor was rising against the king’s lord chancellor, the despotic Earl of Clarendon, soon to be ousted and to flee into exile. With all the turmoil in England, Charles decided to let the Massachusetts matter go for the time being. In April 1666 he asked Massachusetts to send an agent to England to answer the commissioners’ charges. Massachusetts brusquely replied that it had already given all its explanations to the commissioners and now had nothing to add. The Bay Colony did, as a sweetener, send to the Crown for the royal navy a gift of two large expensive masts, worth about two thousand pounds, from the New Hampshire forests.

Massachusetts’ refusal had not been decided upon without opposition. Leading citizens of a few Massachusetts towns counseled obedience to the king’s order. Of the Boston petitioners against defiance, the overwhelming majority were: (a) merchants, and (b) nonfreemen, and hence nonvoters and non-Puritan church members. Thus, the counsel of caution came largely from the groups most prominent in strong opposition to the rule of the existing oligarchy.

Despite the defiance of Massachusetts, the king now dropped the matter and pursued the colony no further. At home the hated Earl of Clarendon fell from power in 1667, to be succeeded by the Cabal ministry, in which Anthony Ashley Cooper, later Earl of Shaftesbury, was the most influential official on colonial affairs. And since Lord Ashley was himself an active proprietor of the new Carolina grant, it was to his interest to minimize royal interference in the colonies. Influential fellow colonial proprietors like the Duke of York, furthermore, were interested more in exploring their own proprietary claims than in bringing the colonies to heel. The Massachusetts government had triumphed—for the short run.

Even the one victory of the commissioners over Massachusetts Bay—the separation of Maine—turned out to be short-lived. During the Anglo-Dutch war, support for Massachusetts in Maine increased out of fear of the Indians friendly to the French and French-Catholic missionaries. Also, realizing that England, in the wake of war and the fall of Clarendon, was in no mind to intervene, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1668, took steps forcibly to reincorporate the Maine towns into the Bay Commonwealth. Four leaders of the General Court went to York and there reimposed Massachusetts’ rule on Maine. Massachusetts now ruled triumphant, without a single defeat at the hands of the Crown.

One of the most far-reaching actions of the first years of the Restoration was a series of Navigation Acts, by which England imposed mercantilist restrictions on its empire. Attempting to eliminate the more efficient Dutch shipping from the American trade for the benefit of the London merchants, the Puritan Parliament in 1650–51 had prohibited foreign vessels from trading with America; goods to and from the colonies could only be carried on English or colonial ships, or on ships of the home country of growth or manufacture. Fish imports and exports from England were limited to English ships alone. As part of the Restoration compromise, Charles II continued to gratify the London merchants and passed a series of Navigation Acts in 1660–63. Part of the commissioners’ instructions, indeed, was to see to the enforcement of these acts.

The new Navigation Acts drastically restricted and monopolized American colonial trade, to the detriment of the colonies. The Navigation Act of 1660–61: (1) restricted all colonial trade to “English” ships (English and American), that is, ships built, owned, and manned by Englishmen; (2) excluded all foreign merchants from American trade; and (3) required that certain enumerated colonial articles be exported only to England and English colonies. We have already seen the havoc caused in the Southern colonies by tobacco being made one of the enumerated goods. Among the others were sugar, cotton-wool, and various dyes. The second important Navigation Act was the Staple Act of 1663, which provided that all goods exported from Europe to America must first land in England. Only a few colonial imports were exempt from this prohibition: salt, servants, various provisions from Scotland, and wine from Madeira and the Azores. The Staple Act meant that English ships and merchants would monopolize exports to America, while English manufacturers selling to America would be privileged by extra taxes being levied at English ports on foreign exports to the colonies. The enumerated-articles provision insured that these staples would be exported only by English merchants and in English ships. The English seizure of New Netherland was partly designed to complement the Navigation Act by crushing the Dutch freight trade with the New World.

The immediate impact of these acts on New England merchants and the New England economy was not great. New England imports were largely manufactured goods from England anyway, and thus were not greatly affected. And the restrictions—such as the enumerated articles and the prohibition of direct imports of wines from the Canary Islands—were simply ignored. The Massachusetts merchants blithely continued to ship enumerated articles direct to European ports—for example, tobacco to Holland—and to import goods direct from Europe. The New England merchants were happily able to save the South from immediate devastation at the hands of the Navigation Acts by first importing Southern tobacco to Boston and then exporting it direct to foreign countries. In this way, the South, for a time, was enabled to avoid the drastic burden of the Navigation Acts. The distracted English government did not attempt to enforce any of these restrictions until the Anglo-Dutch wars were over in the mid-1670s. The position of the merchants was backed fully by the Massachusetts General Court, which declared that it simply was not subject to “the laws of England any more than we live in England.” On this issue the Boston merchants and the Puritan theocracy were allied: the former to prevent British restrictions on their trade, the latter to keep England from interfering with the Puritan regime in Massachusetts.

Indeed, the Massachusetts merchants, able to avoid the restrictions of the Navigation Acts, were also able to take advantage of the provisions driving out their efficient Dutch competitors. The London merchants, having used governmental power to crush Dutch competitors, suddenly found to their dismay the Massachusetts merchants outcompeting them in marketing colonial products in Europe, in shipping, and in supplying the colonies with imported manufactures—including European products competing with English goods. The king’s revenue was of course diminished by direct trade with Europe, because the taxes levied at English ports were avoided.

The most flourishing trade in New England during the Dutch wars of the 1660s and 1670s was the essentially uneconomic supplying of war contracts to provision the English attempts at conquest. Massachusetts’ major provisions were naval stores, especially masts, channeled through Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This became the biggest business seen in New England up to that time. Once again, London merchants were the key entrepreneurs in this trade, using their influence to obtain government war contracts. The most favored Massachusetts merchants were those with connections to the London contractors. The leading New England mast supplier was Peter Lidget, but the Massachusetts mast industry was able to flourish largely because it was highly competitive and not centrally organized. In 1670, for example, Richard Wharton was able to obtain for his company a ten-year monopoly of the supply of naval stores (including masts) in Massachusetts and Plymouth, but the endeavor quickly failed because the grant of privilege was impossible to enforce. Once again the market process was able to dissolve even a monopoly created by government privilege.

*Oliver P. Chitwood, A History of Colonial America, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper, 1961), p. 219.