- Edmund Andros - Wikimedia
The Dominion of New England, instituted in 1686, was England’s first attempt to unify her northern colonies in America. The British King, James II, restructured the government of the colonies for two primary reasons: to enhance Royal revenues by enforcing the Navigation Acts; and to facilitate cooperative military efforts to protect the Crown’s ballooning business prospects.
James II and his Lords of Trade strategized a radical alteration, in effect a nearly total overthrow, of the extant governments of the individual American colonies. Although added after inception, East Jersey, West Jersey, and New York also fell under the jurisdiction of the Dominion of New England.
Despite plenty of moderate and Loyalist voices from southernmost West Jersey to Pemaquid, Maine, the Dominion of New England was effectively eradicated by rebellions in Massachusetts and New York: the seizure of Andros in Boston, and Leisler’s Rebellion in New York City. The Glorious Revolution incited both rebellions.
Establishing the Dominion of New England, Adding New York
James II and the British Lords of Trade instituted the Dominion in two phases. To ease the colonies towards unification, the King and his Lords determined that, following a period during which Joseph Dudley and Edward Randolph would administer a moderate, provisional government, a single royal governor would control the entire Dominion. James II appointed Edmund Andros the Royal Governor.
Wresting control from the individual colonies, habituated to relative autonomy, was not easy, even for the King. The colonies saw clearly that the Dominion of New England disestablished their own union, the New England Confederation. Much of the administrative autonomy either granted by charter or substantiated through unchallenged practice was minimized, if not eliminated, by the Commission of Sir Edmund Andros, the King’s instructions to the new governor. The New England colonies, particularly Massachusetts, proved intransigent. Massachusetts and Connecticut had rights vested by charter, to which their most vocal leaders refused to negotiate changes. Eventually, the King had no choice but to revoke the Massachusetts and Connecticut charters.
Once the individual charters were vacated, the New England colonies were yoked and controlled by the King. Adding New York to the Dominion of New England involved few legal entanglements. In 1665, following the capture of New Netherlands from the Dutch, the Duke of York became its proprietor. When the Duke of York was crowned King James II in 1685, New York became a royal colony. Edmund Andros had been its Royal Governor since 1674. When New York and the Jerseys were added to the Dominion, Andros was promoted to oversee its entirety.
Boston Puritans, Edmund Andros and the Glorious Revolution
New Englanders cited politics and economics for much of their resistance to Edmund Andros and the Dominion, but religion precipitated its overthrow. James II, via his agent, Edmund Andros, was determined to restrain- if not abolish- the political autonomy of the colonies, and enforce the Navigation Acts to bolster the Crown’s coffers. The King’s Catholicism, however, may have been even more intolerable to the strident Puritans in New England and Calvinists and other Protestants in New York.
The Puritan colonies bristled against the ascension of James II, a friend of the French, and a highly conspicuous Catholic with a penchant for absolute monarchy. The birth of his son, a Catholic heir, rallied forces that backed William III of Orange. When William III of Orange mounted an invasion from the Netherlands, James II left England, abdicating the Crown; William III of Orange and his wife, Mary, replaced James II. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was complete.
Most Puritans, relieved, rejoiced. William and Mary were Protestant. Boston grew bold. At the Boston Town House, Cotton Mather litanized the alleged evils Massachusetts had suffered by the hand of the “horrid Popish plot,” the “great Scarlet Whore,” and the tyranny of the Dominion. Puritan leaders could restrain neither militia nor a mob of a thousand or more, who seized Edmund Andros, Edward Randolph and numerous figureheads of the “popish regime.” Andros, jailed, awaited extradition. Most New England colonies restored their pre-Dominion governments rather quickly.
The Glorious Revolution, New York and Leisler’s Rebellion
In Massachusetts, the Glorious Revolution sparked an approximate resumption of the government prior to the commission of the Dominion of New England, whereas, in New York, the political changes were, at least temporarily, far more radical. In New England, Puritan Protestant leadership was restored; in New York, Edmund Andros’ elitist, aristocratic, Anglican leadership was reconfigured by a Calvinist Protestant working class hero, Jacob Leisler. Jacob Leisler’s assumption of political control over the province from 1689-1691- the years comprising Leisler’s Rebellion- represented a true putsch directly in the wake of Boston’s seizure of Edmund Andros.
Leisler’s brief reign was highly contentious. Although supported by the Dutch working class and others who resented James II’s Catholic monarchy, and especially by those who, like Jacob Leisler, championed representational government, Leisler was resented by men of power and wealth who, two years later, orchestrated Leisler’s conviction for treason against the King. Leisler was hanged, then beheaded.
A highly successful merchant, Jacob Leisler traded with New England businessmen. Leisler, indeed, had much in common with the Boston Puritans. The Glorious Revolution roused the spirit of independence in both colonies, from Cotton Mather to Jacob Leisler. Businessmen in Massachusetts and New York alike felt handicapped by the various Trade and Navigation Acts most severely enforced under the jurisdiction of the Dominion of New England, while the militia and general population of both areas proved primed for rebellion. Citizens of both provinces were becoming increasingly insistent up a more representational form of government.
Boston’s seizure of Edmund Andros and Jacob Leisler’s Rebellion shared religious, economic, and political causes and, to an extent, both presaged the Declaration of Independence and subsequent Revolutionary War.
Sources:
Barnes, Florence. The Dominion of New England. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1960.
Reich, Jerome. Leisler's Rebellion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.
Wellenreuther, Hermann. Jacob Leisler's Atlantic World in the Later Seventeenth Century. New Brunswick: Transaction, 2009.
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