57. The Glorious Revolution in the Northern Colonies, 1689-1690

0:00Volume 1, Chapter 57, The Glorious Revolution in the Northern Colonies, 1689 through 1690. The fall of Sir Edmund Andros, crucial as it was, was a reflection of the fall of his far mightier sovereign, James II, who was deposed in the virtually bloodless, glorious William and Mary, the Protestant daughter of the Catholic James, were crowned the Sovereigns of England in February 1689. This moderate shift from James II's despotism, as well as from his attempt to grant religious liberties to his fellow Catholics, brought an end to The 17th Century Era of Conflict and Rebellion in England. Indeed, there has been nothing like a revolutionary upheaval in England since. The news of the Glorious Revolution brought the thrill and joy of expected liberation to the northern colonies, all of which, save Pennsylvania, were groaning under the tyranny of Andros and the dominion of New England.

1:22The example of the Glorious Revolution was all that was needed to fire the spark of revolt in the northern colonies. If the English tyrant could be overthrown, why not his American henchmen? Indeed, all that was needed to spark a revolution was the news that the Glorious Revolution had begun. The news of Williams's November landing in England first reached Boston on April 5th, and the successful outcome was not yet known in America. Andros, who had privately heard the truth in eastern Maine many weeks before, tried to keep the news from the people by arresting the hapless young man who brought the news. When he refused to remain silent, Andros sent him to prison without bail for bringing traitorous Andros and Treasonable Libels in Papers of News. But news of this sort could not now be kept secret, and preparation for a coup against Andros got quietly underway. Wild rumors spread about the colony that Andros was a secret papist, that he was conspiring with the French

2:30and the Indians to take over the colony, and so forth. It became evident to the leaders The leaders of the colony that a popular revolution against Andros was inevitable, so the leaders determined to take charge of the revolution, to keep it in channels that would be safe for themselves, and to prevent what ill effects an unformed tumult might bring. Not only did John Usher shift to insurrection, but even that old rogue William Stoughton managed to preserve his record of being on the winning side by joining the leaders of the impending rebellion. The revolution was precipitated by Andrus' panicky attempt to suppress the growing opposition to his rule, specifically an attempt at a special meeting of the Council to try Reverend Cotton Mather, eminent son of Reverend Increase Mather, for preaching sedition.

3:28The revolution broke out on the morning set for the trial, April 28. The speedy and virtually bloodless revolt was launched that morning when bands of boys The soldiers and youths ran through Boston, shouting falsely that the popular revolution had already begun in the other parts of town. Captain George of the naval frigate Rose was seized. Two hundred armed rebels of the militia gathered under the command of Captain John Nelson. The English soldiers at the fort showed reluctance to fire on the people of Boston. Edmund Andros surrendered and was kept in prison for a year by the revolutionaries, as were the other hated leaders of the Andros regime, including Edward Randolph, Joseph Dudley, John West, John Palmer and Charles Liget.

4:21Of the twenty-four men imprisoned with Andros, twenty were English bureaucrats, military and civilian, and only four were from New England. To justify this revolution, the leaders issued, on April 18, a declaration of the gentlemen merchants and inhabitants and the county adjacent, drawn up by Cotton Mather. The declaration set forth the rebel case, including the numerous oppressions the citizenry had suffered, and praised the glorious revolution in England. The revolutionaries were now faced with the inevitable problem of what to do next. The radicals urged the frank reproclamation of the old Massachusetts Bay Charter that had been vacated five years before, but the leadership was not prepared to take so drastic a step.

5:17Instead, the leaders quickly established on April 20 a 37-man revolutionary council for for the Safety of the People and Conservation of the Peace. This council was heavily weighted with Boston merchants and included old magistrates, councilors of the Dominion and former private citizens. This self-constituted council now named the cautious and venerable ex-Governor Simon Bradstreet as President and Waite Winthrop as Commander of the Militia. The Council for Safety then summoned a popular convention to meet on May 9. To unite the people of Massachusetts, the Council took the highly significant step of suggesting that the towns extend the right to vote from Puritan Church members to all freeholders.

6:13Most of the Massachusetts towns quickly complied. Delegates were selected at meetings of the freemen and inhabitants of the towns, an inhabitant being someone over the age of 24 with an estate of 80 pounds or more. At the convention that met on May 9 were 66 delegates from 44 towns of the colony. The relatively radical convention wanted the old charter reproclaimed and it appealed to the old pre-Dudley Council of Magistrates, the last under the old charter, to resume its functions and to reconstitute General Court with the Convention delegates as the House of Deputies. The more conservative magistrates, however, refused, and the Council for Safety continued to exercise rule until the next enlarged Convention met on May 22.

7:08The second convention represented fifty-four towns, of which forty-two had instructed their delegates to insist on resumption of the old charter. Once again, the majority of the more timid and conservative magistrates opposed the plan. Finally, however, the popular will prevailed, with forty-four towns voting for restoration of the charter government and nine for continuing temporary rule by the Council for Safety. The last charter governor, Simon Bradstreet, as well as the charter magistrates, now jointly agreed to reconstitute the old general court and to resume the charter government.

7:55The convention further overruled the governor and magistrates by insisting that the Council for Safety not continue as ruling magistrate body of the colony. With good reason, the delegates distrusted the revolutionary fervour of such council members as Waite Winthrop and the notorious William Staughton. This action of the Convention removed them from their post of power. However, within a week, the Convention decided to compromise slightly by naming Winthrop, Samuel Shrimpton, and three other opportunists to vacancies in the Old Council of Magistrates. By the end of May, this arrangement had been completed, and the general joy was at this moment redoubled by news of the coronation of William and Mary.

8:45A great celebration ensued in Boston, with pump and banquets and wine literally flowing in the streets. But celebration was not enough to secure the fruits of victory. Caution was The Watchword of the New Monarch and one of his first actions in January was to order all previous arrangements continued in force until further notice. Specifically, Sir Edmund Andros was to continue his rule over New England. Fortunately, however, Reverend Increase Mathur, who had fled to England to plead Massachusetts case against Andros, was able to block transmission of the King's Order to New England. Indeed, Mather went further, and with his old friend and parishioner, Sir William Phipps, a native of eastern Maine, petitioned the King to restore all the New England charters. The cautious Crown would not go that far, but it did agree to remove Andros immediately, and to call him unto an account for his maladministration.

9:58The King also agreed to draft for Massachusetts a new charter that was to grant at least some of the colony's demands. Mather even succeeded in introducing into Parliament a bill to restore the Massachusetts Charter. The bill passed the House of Commons, but was blocked by the House of Lords. The old guard of the Royal Bureaucracy politicked for this roadblock. Professor Robert Southwell of the Plantation Office warned a colleague that the bill would so confound the present settlement in those parts and their dependence on England that it is hard to say where the mischief will stop or how far the act of navigation will be overthrown thereby.

10:44While Mathers' valiant efforts failed to win resumption of the old charter, he did succeed in Winning Temporary Royal Recognition of the Revolutionary Government. This news, too, was received with great joy, as if the old charter was as good as renewed, for on June 5, the old political institutions of Massachusetts had been reconstituted, including a general court and a newly elected House of Deputies. Along with the temporary recognition of the Massachusetts regime, the King ordered Andros Andros and the other prisoners sent back to England. Many radicals wanted to ignore the order and keep the hated oppressors in jail, but after many weeks of delay the prisoners were shipped back to England in February 1690. The citizens of Massachusetts realized that the first order of the day was to convince the Crown of the justice of the grievances against Andros, and the need to restore the old charter. Right after the two-day revolution, local committees busily gathered evidence of grievance against the Andros regime. By the end of 1689, a central committee was organized in Boston to collect the testimony. Numerous

12:08pamphlets on the Andros regime were published in Massachusetts to try to win the minds of of the Crown, and on May 20, 1689, as soon as Massachusetts heard the news of the proclamation of William and Mary, the colony explained to the sovereign that the people had risen as one man in emulation of the late, glorious enterprise and were able to accomplish the victory without the least bloodshed or plunder. In England during 1690, Massachusetts and the Andros Randolph Party argued their respective cases, their charges and counter-charges, before the Committee for Trade and Plantations.

12:53Massachusetts sent over two agents, Thomas Oates and Elisha Cook, to aid Mather. The Committee, headed by the former Earl of Danby, now the Marquis of Carmarthen, showed There was no obvious partiality to the Andros side in the hearings. Quickly the committee cleared Andros and Randolph of charges against them. Carmarthen did not even give Massachusetts the chance to present its case. Also powerful on the pro-Andros side were the two prominent royal bureaucrats, Robert Southwell and William Blathwaite. Edward Randolph helped turn the hearings into an attack on Massachusetts by open testimony and by publishing anonymous tracts against the colony, concentrating on its failure to enforce the navigation laws.

13:45In the meanwhile, Parliament tried to pass a bill prohibiting the voiding of any corporate charters. This would have restored the old Massachusetts Charter. But the bill took too much power away from the Crown for William III's comfort, and King William defeated the bill by dissolving Parliament in February 1690. It was becoming clear that Massachusetts would have to settle for a new charter, granting far less independence than the old. At home, the Massachusetts regime made halting last-minute attempts to gain support among non-Puritan Church members. By the end of May 1689, the towns had pledged enlargement of the freemen, but nothing had been done for a year.

14:32After a petition for enlargement was sent to the general court in 1690, the court finally repealed the restrictive clauses and voted to admit to freemanship anyone able to pay four shillings and to the poll tax, or whose income from land was six pounds. In the spring of 1690, 700 new freemen were admitted, of whom nearly two-thirds were non-church members. But Puritans were still favored in the new regulations, for church members were specially exempt from the property qualifications. As might be expected, the electrifying news of the overthrow and arrest of Andros in Boston galvanized the other colonies under Andros's In Plymouth, the people seized Andros' main henchman, the counselor Nathaniel Clark, and reestablished the old Plymouth government under former Governor Thomas Hinckley.

15:30Clark was sent to England along with Andros and the others, hopefully to answer for his high crimes and misdemeanors. Plymouth, always charterless and anxious to obtain a proper charter, naively thanked Increase Mather for supposedly presenting Plymouth's case at court. But on arriving in England, Plymouth's agent, Reverend Ichabod Wisval, soon discovered that Massachusetts was trying to absorb Plymouth in its own charter, in short, to play the and the same game by which Connecticut had seized New Haven three decades before. Mather, indeed, had already managed to incorporate Plymouth when Wiswall arrived and was able to strike out the clause, an act for which Mather dubbed Wiswall the Weasel.

16:20But Mather had an enormous advantage for winning his way—money. Mather was supplied with the very large sum of seventeen hundred pounds, which he was was able to use, for the purpose intended, to spread about in the right places. Plymouth, on the other hand, was a poor colony, and had little money to supply. Wiswell had virtually nothing to bestow for favors. When in February 1691 the Plymouth General Court, in desperation, asked the towns to subscribe 500 pounds to keep their independence, the sum could not be raised. Plymouth's future was fading fast. When New Hampshire heard the glorious news of Andrus' arrest, it did not, like the other New England colonies, have a recent self-governing past to look back upon. Instead, it had been strictly a royally controlled colony, and before that, for decades, part of Massachusetts. The four New Hampshire towns first attempted to Draw Up a Self-Governing Constitution to Frame a Government.

17:30The Constitutional Convention met at Portsmouth on January 24, 1690, and included 22 of the leading men of the colony. It included also the rehabilitated revolutionary hero Edward Gove of Hampton, as well as Major William Vaughan and Major Richard Waldron from Portsmouth. The convention agreed to a brief constitution providing for election of a president, to be head of the province's militia, and a council of ten representing the people of the four towns. The president and council were also to call an assembly of representatives from each town. This was the first constitution in American history to be drawn up by popular and then submitted to the people for ratification.

18:20But the town of Hampton, worried about too much power accruing to Portsmouth under this arrangement, refused to elect representatives and so the Constitution fell through. The immediate reaction was a petition signed by hundreds of the leading men of New Hampshire urging Massachusetts to resume, at least temporarily, government of the colony. The revolutionary Massachusetts government promptly granted the request at the end of February and in England, Mather did his best to absorb New Hampshire as well as Plymouth in his forthcoming new charter. But Massachusetts' plans were foiled from two sides. In the first place, the independent and unbridled town of Hampton, led by Nathaniel Weir, balked at a Permanent Surrender to Massachusetts, and Weir was known in England as the man who had gone there from New Hampshire to lay low the hated Governor Cranfield five years before.

19:25Perhaps more important was the partial reactivation of the old Mason menace to the liberty and property of the residents of New Hampshire. Mason, who had been on the council for New New England had sold his proprietary claim to New Hampshire to Samuel Allen, and Allen was able to persuade the King to nominate himself to be governor of the new royal colony of New Hampshire. Allen named his son-in-law, the former Dominion Treasurer John Usher, to be lieutenant governor and operating head of the colony. Usher assumed his post in August 1692. New Hampshire had lost its struggle for self-government. Usher was not only a son-in-law of the new proprietary pretender, but had himself bought a great amount of New Hampshire land from Mason, and therefore depended on the latter's rather dubious title. Usher's return brought the Mason, now Allen, claims once again into the forefront of New Hampshire The leading enemies of the Mason claims, Vaughan, Waldron, Weir, now banded together to oppose the Usher regime.

20:41Connecticut, too, received the news of the Boston Revolution with jubilation. Facing the question of what to do next, the colony confronted three alternatives. To resume the old charter government, which, unlike Massachusetts, had not been formally voided. To continue the dominion government, which had virtually dissolved, or to follow Massachusetts path and establish a provincial committee for safety. Leading the fight for the first alternative was James Fitch, who also wanted to exclude such top Andrews supporters as Fitch John Winthrop and John Allen from public office. Counter-pressure for continuing the defunct dominion came from Reverend Gershom Buckley of Wethersfield and Edward Palmes, both of whom had been made judges by Andros. Connecticut had an election on May 9, 1689, and the delegates decided to reestablish the former Governor Robert Treat and the general court. One of the court's first acts was to resume the the old laws and institutions of the colony. But while the bulk of the freemen agreed with Fitch that the old Andrews henchmen must be excluded, the more conservative delegates

22:06decided to reappoint the old council of magistrates. As a further blow to the revolutionary forces, they appointed such old Andrews supporters as Fitch John Winthrop and Samuel Willis, members The old opportunist clique, anxious to head off Fitch's likely drive for democratic reform of the Charter, had managed to outmaneuver the popular party. The decisions of the convention were submitted to the body of freemen for approval, but the freemen could only vote for or against the entire panel of officials selected by the delegates. They did not have the option of voting down such individual nominees as Allen or Winthrop.

22:52Still battling the new dispensation, however, were such ultra-reactionaries as Gershom Buckley and Edward Palmes, who pleaded with England to restore the Old Dominion rule. In a sense, Buckley was more prophetic than his more moderate colleagues, for James Fitch, Liesler and the great leader of the Connecticut Revolution soon came to dominate the council and the Connecticut government. The newly elected councilors were followers of Fitch. Fitch, an open admirer of Jacob Liesler's revolutionary government in New York, was able by 1692 to widen the Connecticut franchise. The only requirement for free-manship was now possession of a 40 shilling freehold.

23:40Moreover, a highly democratic election system was installed. Each freeman could write out a list of twenty nominees for the fourteen post of governor, deputy governor and magistrates. The officials were to be elected from the top twenty names submitted by the freemen in a second series of town meetings. Connecticut had decided for self-government and for resuming

24:37for one thing, it shared Andros' deep antipathy to Massachusetts. For another, it was grateful for Andros' support in the old Narragansett controversy with Connecticut. Indeed, Andros had been preparing to flee to Rhode Island before his capture. Rhode Island now determined to return to its old self-governing charter. The timorous former governor, Walter Clark, however, refused to realize It was temporarily occupied at the end of February by John Cogshill, the previous deputy governor. At the end of April, Newport issued a summons to the other towns of Rhode Island to meet there on May 1 to plot the colony's future course.

25:25There the delegates decided to resume operations under the old and never officially vacated charter. But, once more, the timid Walter Clark refused to reassume his post, and the permanent post of governor was granted to the Quaker Henry Bull. Thus, on the advent of the glorious revolution in England, the New England colonies took the welcome opportunity to overthrow the dominion regime. Upon the imprisonment of Andros and his henchmen, Massachusetts returned, at least temporarily, to self-government according to its old charter and institutions and was followed by Plymouth, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, the last temporarily placing itself under Massachusetts sovereignty.

26:18We remember, however, that the dominion of New England had expanded to New York and to the banks of the Delaware. These lower colonies had been left in charge of Lieutenant Governor Francis Nicholson. Nicholson also learned of the Glorious Revolution in early February, but kept it from the public. Finally, news of the overthrow of Andros reached New York at approximately the end of April. Already the Dominion was in a far stronger position in New York than in New England, for when Andros and his colleagues were arrested, there were no other Dominion officials in New England to continue the old regime in power. Furthermore, there were previous charters to which the colonies could conveniently return, but New York and the lower dominion areas were still controlled by Nicholson and his subordinate officials, and there were no charters to fall back upon.

27:18Governor Nicholson, the representative of the King's authority in New York and the Jersey's, was now faced with the problem of what to do at this point. His first step was to call the New York members of the Council of the Dominion together, but prudently they failed to appear. Nicholson was left with the appointed civil and military officials who constituted the de facto government under him. At the end of April, twenty-six such officials began to meet as a ruling convention or council. The first rebellion against the The Dominion in New York broke out, as might be expected, in the always turbulent Suffolk County on eastern Long Island. Led by Southhold, the Freeholders of Suffolk met at Southampton on May 3, ousted all the local appointed civil and military officials, and elected their own. They also demanded the return of the tax monies that had been extorted from them.

28:24The Suffolk towns were soon followed by the towns of Westchester and Queens, each of which established home rule. The grievances of Queens on western Long Island were aggravated by the fact that drafted militiamen from that county had not been paid for their part in a military expedition Dongan had sent against French Canada. Now Nicholson decided to pay The Federal Reserve decided to pay these ex-soldiers, but determined to raise the funds by ordering the collection of Queens County's arrears for back taxes. The money was never collected from the rebellious people of Queens, and this protest of militiamen's pay was promptly joined by Kings and Suffolk counties.

29:11On May 9, the protesting ex-soldiers gathered armed at Jamaica to demand their promised pay. Nicholson and his council agreed. This was followed on the same day by demonstrations for back pay by the New York City militia with similar results. We have seen that the Catholicism of several high officials in New York had intensified The Anti-Catholic hysteria in New York attended on troubles with the French. New York was the colony closest to French Canada and the Iroquois, and conflicts with the Catholic French had grown in recent years. By May 6, discontent had spread to New York City itself.

29:56After a vote to apply customs revenue to strengthen the fortification of New York, the charge Research was made that the collector of customs, Matthew Plowman, was a Catholic. So hypersensitive were New Yorkers becoming on this issue that a government official at Setocket, Brookhaven, Long Island, refused to serve as a messenger to Andros, fearing that the people taking him to be a papist would raise and plunder his house if not offer violence to his family. Asserting the accusation against Plowman as a convenient excuse, the merchants of New York City now refused to pay the custom duties, asserting that they were illegal decrees of the executive.

30:42In short, the atmosphere in New York by the end of the first week in May was becoming increasingly revolutionary. Anti-Catholic prejudice quickly spurred a tax rebellion and an implicit call for a representative of Assembly, with sole power to levy taxes. And meanwhile, Dominion government was caught in an increasingly aggravated inner contradiction. The clamor for promised back pay by the armed militia grew at the same time that refusal to pay taxes increased in scope and breadth. How then could the Nicholson regime impose more taxes to pay the promised back salaries? Man's promises were not enough to satisfy the increasingly revolutionary militia. On May 10, the militia captains of the Long Island towns of Southampton, Eastampton, and Huntington demanded that the Manhattan fort be delivered into the hands of such persons as the country shall choose, that is, clearly out of existing hands. The ruling convention of New York City Many officials denounced the militia action as mutinous, but the Long Island towns, joined by Hempstead, refused to send delegates to any expanded convention called by Nicholson.

32:05On May 22, the Nicholson Convention ordered the signers of the various petitions to appear before it. They flatly refused. The developing revolutionary temper of the militia was further by Nicholas's Failure to Proclaim William and Mary as His Sovereign This prompted further suspicions of his allegiance to the Catholic and absolutist James II. Matters finally came to a head on May 30. Lieutenant Hendrick Kyler of the Militia directed a corporal to place a militiaman at a certain sensitive post at the fort. When the regular English soldier refused to give way to a New Yorker at the post, Kyler took the dispute to Nicholson. Not only did the governor side with the soldier and order the militia corporal from his room at gunpoint, but he told Lieutenant Kyler that he feared for his life and would set the town in fire rather than see the situation continue. Word of Nicholson's threats spread through New York City like wildfire and caused an immediate Revolt by the Militia. The New York Militia decided to ignore all commands from either

33:20Nicholson or his appointed militia commander, Colonel Nicholas Bayard. Further, the Militia proceeded to take over and hold the fort. The day after this revolt, the Militia issued a declaration of the inhabitant soldiers. The declaration, signed by some 400 men, avowed The Revolutionary Militiamen held the fort themselves, but had not yet openly repudiated Nicholson as governor.

34:07The governor now foolishly precipitated his own ouster by ordering Colonel Bayard to take command of the militia. When Bayard ordered the militia companies to leave the neighborhood of the fort, most of them refused. They joined the company that happened to be taking its turn occupying the fort that day, a company headed by a leading Dutch Calvinist merchant of German Origin, Captain Jacob Leisler. The militiamen had now openly repudiated the orders and the rule of the governor. There were now two parallel governments in New York, the militia and Governor Nicholson and his convention officials.

34:53On June 3 and 4, four of the five captains of the militia, the leading officers subordinate to the repudiated Bayard signed a humble address of the militia and people of the city. This document recognized and hailed King William as liberator from tyranny, potpourri and slavery, and as the protector of the true Protestant religion, liberty and property. The militia also proceeded to call for a new revolutionary governmental form, a committee of safety. The committee consisted of two delegates from each county and was to meet on June 26. The Nicholson government had precipitated this revolutionary step by ordering all the New York funds, now kept at the fort, transferred to the home of counselor Frederick Phillips, and by commanding the militia captains to appear before the convention.

35:54Both demands were refused by four of the five militia captains, with Leisler the most outspoken. With the Council denouncing the rebels, Nicholson sailed on June 24 to England for help. Before going he angered New Yorkers still further by ordering the Catholic customs collector, Matthew Plowman, to enforce the payment of duties. The Nicholson Council now decided to remove Plowman and to fill his post with four collectors, including the hated Nicholas Bayard. The militiamen, however, were by now in far too rebellious a mood to accept this arrangement. They evicted the four men from the Custom House and substituted their own appointee, Peter Delanois, a former treasurer and collector of New York City.

36:46Some of the militiamen tried to assault Bayard, but were stopped by Captain Leisler. On June 26, the Revolutionary Committee of Safety met in Queens. Most of the counties of New York accepted the invitation to send delegates and prominent citizens attended from New York City, Kings, Queens, Westchester, and Richmond, Staten Island counties, as well as one each from the towns of Tappan, Hackensack, and Elizabethtown The county delegates were in turn elected at county meetings of delegates elected by the towns. Refusing to send delegates was Suffolk County, where the towns, especially Southhold and Setocket, once again hoped to join Connecticut.

37:31Albany, Kingston and most of New Jersey also failed to send representatives. It seems clear that the town elections were highly democratic, with almost all of the adult males of the participating towns voting in the elections for delegates. The Suffolk towns were not, incidentally, the only ones that wanted to merge with Connecticut. Jacob Leisler was particularly active in working for such a merger, and Connecticut did agree to send two delegates to the meeting of the Committee of Safety, along with ten friendly soldiers. The delegates to the committee, to repeat, were not unknown members of a mob, but prominent citizens of the community.

38:17The Revolutionary Committee, for example, included in its ranks Dr. Gerardus Beekman of Kings, a future acting governor of the colony, William Lawrence of Hackensack, a future counselor, and Samuel Edsel, father-in-law of both Lawrence and Delanois and a prominent trader who had held political office in New Jersey. The Committee of Safety officially dissolved the authority of the royal council and its Liesler's Customs Commissioners appointed Peter Delanois as moderator of the committee and confirmed his appointment as collector. It also named Jacob Liesler as permanent captain of the fort. The old municipal court now ceased to meet. Liesler refused to guarantee the safety of its members. The reactionary pro-Andros mayor of New York City, Stephanus Van Cortland, and his fellow counselors made themselves scarce.

39:20The revolutionary government was now the sole government in New York City and vicinity. Now that the revolution had been accomplished and the old order completely overthrown, we may pause to ask about the meaning of this revolution, for it is important, when weighing the reasons for the outbreak of a revolution, to separate this stage from the later history of the Revolutionary Government after it has taken power. Many writers have judged the rebellion to be a class struggle, a pure outbreak of religious hatred or an ethnic war of Dutch against English rule. Yet it should be clear that all these explanations are either fallacious or, in the case of the religious explanation, partial and misleading.

40:11The Revolution was not a class struggle of the poor against the rich or of the laborer against other occupations. It was the culmination of many years of political and economic grievances suffered by every great economic class in the colony, by every section, by English and Dutch alike. The aggressively English towns of Suffolk were and had always been even more are more revolutionary than the Dutch of New York, and the Dutch members of the ruling oligarchy, the Bayards, the Van Cortlands, and the leading Dutch ministers, were just as fiercely opposed to the revolution as were the English members. Economically, the leaders of the revolutionary movement ranged from the prominent merchants and other citizens named above, to such men as Joost Stol, a carter, and an ensign in and Lisler's Militia Company. Stoll was probably the single person most responsible for the fateful decision of the militia to seize the fort on May 30. In short, this was truly a liberal people's revolution, a revolution of all classes and ethnic strains in New York

41:24against the common oppressors, the oligarchal ruling clique and its favorites, receivers

42:00Rebellion of the Rebellion has written, a fair characterization of all the opponents of the revolution would be that they were officials and landed, or would be landed aristocrats. There are, however, no grounds for terming the rebellion a class struggle in the Marxist sense. Capitalists were found in both camps. The reason for the last statement might be added, capitalists are never a homogenous entity, as is true of all Marxian classes that are not, as we have noted above, estates or castes. The capitalists who gained their money from government privilege were against the revolution. The capitalists who earned their money in free market activity joined and all the other producers in the colony to favor it.

42:53As in the other colonies under dominion rule, though with greater difficulty because of the Nicholsonian bureaucracy, the people took heart from the overthrow of Andros in Boston to end the hated rule of the dominion in New York as well. Even the anti-Catholicism is largely explainable by the Catholicism of James II and many of his ruling henchmen in New York. And finally, the revolution in New York cannot correctly be termed Leisler's Rebellion. The fact that Jacob Leisler acquired control of the revolutionary government after it had assumed power should not be allowed to obscure the fact that Leisler was only one of the many leaders of the actual revolution and that this was a spontaneous uprising of the mass of the people.

43:44Any libertarian revolution that takes power immediately confronts a grave inner contradiction. In the last analysis, liberty and power are incompatible. Thus, Peter Delanois was now supposed to collect the colony's taxes, but a tax paid to a Delanois was no less oppressive or tyrannical than the same tax paid to a Nicholson, and so the The merchants still refused to pay the duties, again using the argument that they had not been levied by a representative assembly. Six weeks later, the revolution took a decisive step from liberty to power. On August 16, the Committee of Safety in its second meeting created an executive of almost unlimited authority by naming Jacob Leisler Commander-in-Chief The first step was to arrest whoever dared to criticize the new regime.

44:42Arrest included merchants and laborers, Dutchmen such as the Schulers and Philipses, and Anglicans such as Thomas Clark. Many were arrested on suspicion of disloyalty. It is true, however, that the prisoners were treated with relative respect. The first step was to arrest whoever dared to criticize the new regime.

45:06The Revolutionary Committee of Safety decided to press ahead with the annual September elections that had been held in pre-dominion years. Also, to expand democracy and check oligarchy by subjecting justices of the peace and militia captains to the decisions of the voters. In an action reflecting the bitter anti-Catholicism of the people, all Protestant freeholders were made eligible to vote.

45:54In New York City, the people elected aldermen and common councillors according to the old charter. In addition, Leisler made elective the three top posts in the city, Mayor, Sheriff and Town Clerk, which had always been appointed. The free elections removed the counter-revolutionaries from office, and Stephanus Van Cortland was replaced as Mayor by Peter Delanois, who was to be the last popularly elected Mayor of New York until the 19th century. Although Although Leisler and the Committee controlled the bulk of New York, they did not command the allegiance of Albany. Albany, tightly run by the privileged monopolist of the Iroquois fur trade, was devoted to the Dominion. Its top officials were leaders of the Andros oligarchy, for example Mayor Peter Schuler and his assistant and brother-in-law, Robert Livingston. In In the fall elections, Albany simply re-elected its old officials.

46:55The shift from liberty to power was now proceeding apace. Leisler and the committee became filled with imperialist zeal to impose their unwanted rule on Albany. An expedition of three ships was sent by Leisler under his future son-in-law, the merchant Jacob Milburn, to seize Albany. Albany, to cover itself, forced every townsman to take an oath of allegiance to William & Mary. The Albany Convention then refused to permit Milburn to enter the fort. Milburn now tried to appeal to the people of Albany over the heads of their rulers. He urged them to overthrow all government derived from James II and promised free elections and other liberties. Milburn's The stirring words had some effect and a hundred citizens of Albany elected Joachim Statz as captain of Milburn's troops in Albany. But the support of Statz and the Albany opposition for Milburn was not enough. The Convention oligarchy and the fort determined to resist and they threw into the breach the powerful support of the Iroquois, fur trading allies

48:08of the Albany Oligarchs. The Iroquois threatened to attack Milborne should he persist, and Milborne finally left ignominiously for home. Moreover, to complete the fiasco, Captain Statz and his Milborne militia were now obliged to take orders from the Convention. Albany was the more strengthened by Connecticut's recognition of its Convention government. At this point, Leisler's fortunes took a swift turn upward. A letter arrived in mid-December from King William, legitimizing the rule of either Nicholson or such as for the time being take care for preserving the peace and administering the laws, and naming said person lieutenant governor. Thus, by the end of 1689, the revolutionary government in New York, as in Massachusetts, had been at least temporarily legitimized by the Crown, while the other New England colonies resumed their old ways of self-government. As with the other colonies, the key to their fate rested on the decisions of the new monarch. The August session of the Committee of Safety had decided to send an agent to England to plead its case. Chosen was the revolutionary

49:29Murray Cartman, Joost Stoll, whose lower-class ways were not, alas, calculated to endear him to the aristocratic officials of the Crown. Stoll presented seven bold demands to the Privy Council, including royal and parliamentary approval of the actions of the Revolution, a new self-governing charter for New York, and encouragement for a united colonial effort to Conquer French Canada. But unlike the cause of Massachusetts at court, Leisler's regime was doomed from the start. For even as Leisler was being temporarily confirmed in his post, the King prepared to end his rule and all self-government in New York. Heavily influenced by the reports of the old oligarchs Bayard and Van Cortland, the Lords of Trade recommended that a royal governor with two companies of troops be sent to rule New York.

50:29Colonel Henry Slaughter was promptly chosen as governor. Only a war in France held up Slaughter's actual arrival in New York and permitted Leisler to continue his interim rule. In contrast to conditions in other colonies under dominion rule, everything was quiet during the Glorious Revolution in the colonies of East Jersey and West Jersey. While the New England colonies aimed to resume self-government, and while New York tried to move from royal colony to self-government, the Jerseys had been proprietary colonies before the Dominion. With Nicholson and his royal officials gone, the proprietors who had been facing co-warrento Action against their territories trod warily in deed and did nothing during the years of turmoil after 1689.

51:23Central government in the Jersey's disappeared with the end of the Dominion and the colonies were left with existing local governments only. In this state of purely minimal government, the people of the Jersey's were happy. The Royal Officials were gone, their ancient proprietary enemies were cautious and inactive. Indeed, there was virtually nothing against which to revolt.