Introduction

      Nuggets rich in early American history still lie just below the surface, awaiting discovery. One of them is the Dominion of New England, the short-lived royal government that blanketed the Atlantic coast from Maine to Delaware in the latter part of the seventeenth century.

      America’s Glorious Uprising of 1689 recalls events that led to the radical Dominion’s creation and to the vital roles played by two Crown stalwarts who helped to shape it: Edward Randolph, the manipulative royal agent who accomplished what two kings failed to achieve, and Edmund Andros, the loyal soldier and former governor of New York, whose rigid ways triggered the Dominion's downfall.

      For whatever reason, colonial America's very first revolution never has warranted more than a paragraph or, two in the study of early American history. Traditional history sets the start of the war for independence to April 19, 1775 when British soldiers fired upon minutemen who were holding their ground in Concord and in Lexington, Massachusetts. In reality, the colonists’ first revolt against the Crown erupted in Boston, one day and eighty-six years earlier.

      On April 18, 1689, crews of arriving merchant ships confirmed the rumors that England's hated Catholic king James II abandoned his crown and fled to France in December and that his Protestant daughter Princess Mary and her Dutch-born husband Prince William of Orange had accepted England's invitation to reign as co-regents.

      Long held resentment quickly gave way to a desire for swift revenge as Bostonians surged through town in search of Andros and his officials. Surprised by the suddenness of events, leading merchants, businessmen and clergy gathered at noon in Town House. There, they proclaimed the twelve-point Declaration of Grievances they had intended to present to Andros. They called on him to "surrender and deliver up the Government and Fortification" for preservation until anticipated word arrived from England.

      By day's end, Andros was under house arrest, his colleagues began their nine-month stay in the common jail and not a life had been lost. Neither was the answer lost to the question, "Who has the right to rule New England, the Crown or, the General Court?"

      As news of the bloodless coup made its way down the East Coast, the colonies reacted, each to its own. For the most part, they removed the imposed Dominion officials without incident and installed their prior governments. Massachusetts, New York and Maryland experienced the greatest upheavals.

      In May, the Leisler Rebellion led by a wealthy Protestant merchant with encouragement from Connecticut ousted the Dominion's lieutenant governor from his New York office. That summer in Maryland, economic and religious discontent led Protestants, who now outnumbered Catholics twenty to one, to take up arms against proprietary rule.
    
       It bears noting on reflection that if royal plans to expand the Dominion further South had materialized, today's America would feature a much different image.

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Chapter Contents - first paragraphs

1. Years At Home, Years In Exile
Chance, not destiny, brought together two sons of wealthy English families. After they entered the royal orbit and the need to retaliate in one meshed with fealty absolute in the other, their shadows fell over every man, woman and child in the New World from West Jersey to Maine. It is hard to know whom the colonists disliked more, the snively toady Edward Randolph or, the arrogant royalist Edmund Andros. But loathe them they did and when the opportunity arose, the Anglo-Americans grabbed it without remorse in the first revolution against arbitrary Crown rule.

2. The Formative Years
In 1661, Randolph met Robert Mason, an ardent royalist and brother-in-law of his wife’s brother. Born with the surname Tufton, Mason was the grandson of John Mason who had received a royal patent in 1622 from the Council for New England for land (New Hampshire) that extended from the Merrimac River to Kennebec.

3. Managing The Melting Pot
As soon as the Diamond and the Castle dropped anchor in the Narrows on October 22, Andros dispatched a message to the Dutch governor to let him know he was ready to assume control of the former Dutch territory. Although the Dutch Staats General had written Colve to expect Andros’s arrival before year’s end, he could not prepare to end his official presence without a more precise time frame. He advised Andros by messenger that he would need eight days to complete removal of his administration from the fort and the province.

4. Andros In Conflict with Connecticut
"Finding that a great part of His Royal Highnesse territories is now under your Colony," Andros wrote Governor Winthrop and the General Court on May 1, "I desire that pursuant to His Majesty’s pleasure and commands, signified in his Letters Patent, you will give present and effectuall orders for my receiving in his Royall Highnesse behalf, that part o3f his territories as yet under your Jurisdiction."

5. 1676: a Seminal Year
When Mason sought help from the standing Committee for Trade and Pantations, successor to the abolished Council for Trade and Plantations. The Lords of Trade, as the Committee was known, agreed to review his proprietary rights to New Hampshire. The Committee agreed to write a letter to Massachusetts and demand that men who had knowledge of the colony and its ownership appear at Whitehall. Mason suggested that Randolph be retained as a royal courier and deliver the letter to give more credence to the summons than if it were sent by regular post. Charles signed the letter drafted by the Lords and Randolph left England on May 8. He landed in Boston on June 10.

6. Andros In Conflict With New Jersey
Never let it be said that Andros put anything on a back burner if he could cook it today. New Jersey was not on James’s list of instructions but that did not prevent the professional soldier from making it his business. When an order of his was refused, he sent his troop to arrest the colony’s legitimate governor. With that, his troubles with New Jersey began.

7. Andros The Defendant
As James made clear in 1674, he expected to turn a profit on his province and it was up to his administrator to bring it to fruition. He could write James in 1678 that all was well and New York did not have any beggars. But in his determination to serve James, Andros crushed too many toes. The hurt built up until 1680 when alienated English merchants took their grievances to James in Scotland.

8. Randolph and Trouble in the Colonies
Before Randolph sailed for the colonies in Ocxtober 1681, William Blathwayt, Royal Syrveyor and Auditor General for all revenues raised in the colonies, warned him not to let his adversaries come near him, else they would give him the “Cornish Hugg” and topple him. Perhaps Randolph thought himself inviolate to further insults and dismissed his friend’s counsel but on April 11 1682, he wrote from Boston to Sir Lionel Jenkins, the Principal Secretary of State at Whitehall, “Friday next I am to be examined. Imprisonment is the least I expect."

9. Randolph and the Quo Warrantos
Whether or not every word was true, Randolph wrote a scathing report against Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Plymouth Plantation. Insulted by them, ignored by them, repulsed by them, Randolph was determined to bring the colonies into submission in the royal orbit. Quo Warrantos would eclipse the individual charters and pave the way for his idea, one governor for all the colonies. Better management or, disaster?

10. Andros and the Dominion of New England
Rough weather off Cape Anne threatened the 50-gun Kingfisher before she was able to reach Boston Harbor and drop anchor on December 19, 1686. Though the inlet basked in the light of a full moon, Sir Edmund Andros waited until morning before he felt land under his feet for the first time in two months. Monday morning, he and his retinue of soldiers debarked in their bright red full dress uniforms to a waiting assemblage. While companies of militia saluted him, Reverend Increase Mather of the Congregational church offered a prayer, and his Commission was read Andros stood at attention, his covered head signifying that he was second to none.

11. The Seed to England’s Glorious Revolution
On June 18, 1688, James’s second wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a healthy boy. He was the Catholic heir to the English throne. From her home in England, Princess Anne, James’s younger daughter by his marriage to Anne Hyde, wrote to her sister, Princess Mary, at The Hague about their infant half-brother, James Francis Edward, "I shall never now be satisfied whether the child be true or, false. It may be it is our brother but … where one believes it, a thousand do not."

12. The Dominion Under Attack
Andros’s military training and unswerving loyalty to the Royals prevented him from ever thinking about veering off course to ponder and play "What if…" But, what if he had allowed his inward eye to stray and look back? Would he have given second thought in Boston to the impertinent behavior that had greeted him within days of his arrival as governor of New York? Could he then have avoided the swift collapse of a government that was created to unite the colonies in a cohesive relationship?

13. Lament from Gaol
Randolph had plenty of time to write letters from, as he headlined them, "The Boston Common Gaol" but it took a while to receive paper and pen together. In a lengthy reprise to the Lords of Trade in late May, he recounted events of the month before when people "being prepossessed with strange fears and jealousies against Sir Edmund Andros Governor and members of the Council took armes and in a short time made themselves masters of the fort castles and Rose frigutt."

14. Eruption in New York
Traders returning from Barbados in March brought New York the first reports on the tumultuous events in London. Afraid that riots might break out if the news got out, Nicholson held it close to his vest but when word about the Massachusetts uprising reached New York on April 26, Nicholson called a meeting of the city’s Aldermen and Common Council on how to keep the city quiet. New York remained calm until late May when Nicholson crossed words with a soldier on duty at the fort and threatened to set the city on fire.

15. Insurrection in Maryland
November 1688 was not a good month for either James II or Lord Baltimore. Maryland’s Catholic proprietary governor. Baltimore was in London when Prince William and his army invaded England while, at home, the Maryland Assembly met in delayed session to review a request from Crown Council to ban export of bulk tobacco. The Assembly rejected the proposal on the grounds that it would be too injurious financially for both the Crown and Maryland.

16. The Colonies under William and Mary
The end of the Dominion of New England and the restoration of American colonial independence succeeded up to a point. Though mindful of what the colonies had suffered under Andros, William and Mary still tried to exert royal control over them. In time, the legislative arm of the individual colonies turned to Parliament for support.