The Dominion: A New Governing Structure
The Dominion of New England in North America was an administrative union of English colonies, including the territories of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Plymouth Colony, the Province of New Hampshire, the Province of Maine, and the Narragansett Country [present-day Washington County, Rhode Island]. It was composed of the present-day states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. The union lasted from 1686–1689 and ultimately failed because it was too large for a single governor to manage.
Seal of the Dominion of New England, 1686–1689
The seal of the Dominion of New England was ordered by King James II of England. The inscription around the edge is an abbreviation for Iacobus Secundus Dei Gratia Magnae Britanniae, Franciae et Hiberniae Rex, Fidei Defensor ["James the Second, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith"], the monarch's full title, an inscription which was also on the Great Seal of the Realm. The motto of the dominion was Nunquam libertas gratior extat, taken from the Claudian quotation Nunquam libertas gratior extat Quam sub rege pio ["Never does liberty appear in a more gracious form than under a pious king"].
The image depicts a Native American and a colonist kneeling at the feet of King James.
Forming the Dominion
Following the English Restoration in 1660, King Charles II sought to streamline the administration of the colonial territories and began a process that brought a number of the colonies under direct crown control. One motive for these actions was to control the cost of administration of individual colonies; another significant reason was the desire to regulate trade. The specific objectives of the Dominion included the regulation of trade, an increase in religious freedoms, reformation of land title practices to conform more to English methods and practices, coordination on matters of defense, and a streamlining of the administration into fewer centers.
Joseph Dudley, a Massachusetts-born colonial, was made provisional president of the Council of New England on October 8, 1685, a move intended to secure the Dominion while political support was raised for Sir Edmund Andros, who was to take permanent command. Dudley's council successfully petitioned the Lords of Trade to include the colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut in the Dominion on September 9, 1686. Edmund Andros, whose commission had been issued in June, was given an annex to his commission to incorporate them into the Dominion.
Andros arrived in Boston on December 20, 1686, and immediately assumed power. The Dominion at this time consisted of the Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island colonies. In 1688, its jurisdiction was expanded to include New York, and East and West Jersey. Andros' commission called for governance by himself, again with a council. The initial composition of the council included representatives from each of the colonies, but because of the inconvenience of travel and the fact that travel costs were not reimbursed, the council's quorums were dominated by the most local representatives from Massachusetts and Plymouth.
Tensions in the Dominion
Andros was extremely unpopular in New England. He disregarded local representation, denied the validity of existing land titles in Massachusetts [which had been dependent on the old charter], restricted town meetings, and actively promoted the Church of England in largely Puritan regions. He also enforced the Navigation Acts, laws that restricted New England trade.
Enforcing Revenue Laws
The first attempts to enforce revenue laws were met by stiff resistance from a number of Massachusetts communities. Several towns refused to choose commissioners to assess the town population and estates, and officials from a number of them were consequently arrested and brought to Boston. Some were fined and released; others were imprisoned until they promised to perform their duties. Other provinces did not resist the imposition of the new law even though, at least in Rhode Island, the rates were higher than they had been under the previous colonial administration. Plymouth's relatively poor landowners were hard hit by the high rates on livestock.
Andros, responding to the tax protests, sought to restrict town meetings, since these were where that protest had begun. He introduced a law that limited meetings to a single annual meeting, solely for the purpose of electing officials and explicitly banned meetings at other times for any reason. This loss of local power was widely hated. Protests were made that the town meeting and tax laws were violations of the Magna Carta, which guaranteed taxation by representatives of the people.
Land Title Practices
Andros had been instructed to bring colonial land title practices into line with those in England and introduce quit-rents as a means of raising colonial revenues. Some landowners went through the confirmation process. Many refused, fearing the possibility of losing their land; they viewed the process as a thinly veiled land grab. The Puritans of Plymouth and Massachusetts, some of whom had extensive landholdings, were among the latter. Since all of the existing land titles in Massachusetts had been granted under the now-vacated colonial charter, Andros declared them to be void and required landowners to re-certify their ownership, paying fees to the Dominion and becoming subject to the charging of a quit-rent.
Religious Protests and the Glorious Revolution
The religious leaders of Massachusetts, led by Cotton and Increase Mather, were opposed to the rule of Andros and organized dissent targeted to influence the court in London. Increase Mather and other Massachusetts agents traveled to England in 1688 and were received by King James II, who promised to address the colony's concerns.
However, James II became increasingly unpopular in England and faced opposition from the Anglican church hierarchy when he issued the Declaration of Indulgence, establishing some freedom of religion. With the birth of his son and potential successor James III in June 1688, factions of English conspired with the Dutch prince to replace James with his Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange. The nearly bloodless "Glorious Revolution" followed in November and December of 1688 and established William and his wife Mary as co-rulers of England.
After the Glorious Revolution and the ascent of William and Mary, the Massachusetts agents then petitioned the new monarchs and the Lords of Trade [who oversaw colonial affairs] for restoration of the Massachusetts charter. Furthermore, Mather convinced the Lords of Trade to delay notifying Andros of the revolution. He had already dispatched to previous colonial governor Simon Bradstreet, a letter containing news of a report [prepared before the revolution], that the annulment of the Massachusetts charter had been illegal, and that the magistrates should "prepare the minds of the people for a change." Rumors of the revolution apparently reached some individuals in Boston before official news arrived.
The Dissolution of the Dominion
When the other New England colonies in the Dominion were informed of the overthrow of Andros, pre-Dominion colonial authorities moved to restore their former governments to power. Rhode Island and Connecticut resumed governance under their earlier charters, and Massachusetts resumed governance according to its vacated charter after being temporarily governed by a committee composed of magistrates, Massachusetts Bay officials, and a majority of Andros' council. The committee was disbanded after some Boston leaders felt that radical rebels held too much sway over it.
The dissolution of the Dominion presented legal problems for both Massachusetts and Plymouth. Plymouth had never had a royal charter, and Massachusetts had been legally vacated. As a result, the restored governments lacked legal foundations for their existence. This was particularly problematic for Massachusetts because its long frontier with New France was exposed to French and American Indian raids with the 1689 outbreak of King William's War. The cost of colonial defense resulted in a heavy tax burden, and the war also made it difficult to rebuild the colony's trade.
Agents for both colonies worked in England to rectify the charter issues. The Lords of Trade decided to solve the issue by combining the two provinces. The resulting Province of Massachusetts Bay, whose charter was issued in 1691 and began operating in 1692 under governor Sir William Phips, combined the territories of both colonies, along with the islands south of Cape Cod [Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Elizabeth Islands] that had previously been part of New York.