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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