WHEN the English revolution of 1689 opened the way for similar movements in America, the opposition gathered strength from various sources. The chartered colonies of New England desired their old local independence; their religious prejudices also were stirred by the support which the Andros régime had given to the Anglican church, and by its toleration of what seemed to them a looser morality. The Catholicism of James and some of his agents was a prime factor in enabling the revolutionists of New York to discredit his authority in the province. There and in New England stanch Anglicans were suspected as possible tools of a “Popish” conspiracy. In Maryland, however, this religious antagonism had precisely the opposite effect, and contributed towards the temporary overthrow of the proprietor and the extension of royal control.

     One of the first acts of William III. was the appointment, in February, 1689, of a new Committee of the Privy Council on Trade and Plantations, including the leading ministers of state, both Whig

and Tory. In the early months of 1689 the general principles of colonial policy were discussed with some care, and the new committee accepted, in large measure, the policy of its predecessors. Thus, in April, 1689, before the uprising in New England was known, the committee recommended the organization of such a government in New England, New York, and the Jerseys, as would enable the people to oppose the French with their united forces. Here the military motive appears to reinforce the commercial argument for closer control. In May of the same year the committee suggested as a proper subject for consideration by Parliament whether Maryland, the Carolinas, and Pennsylvania should not be brought into closer dependence upon the crown. Pending the settlement of a definite policy, the existing political arrangements in the colonies were, in general, to be continued.¹

     In the mean time the colonists were taking matters into their own hands. Revolutionary movements in Massachusetts and New York overthrew the Andros administration; the New England colonies resumed their chartered constitutions, and in New York Leisler set up his revolutionary government. In Maryland the agitators of the Protestant Association took advantage of religious prejudices against the Catholic proprietor to overthrow his authority and organize a new government in the name of William and Mary. Even in

Virginia and the West Indian Islands considerable uneasiness resulted from the political changes at home.¹ The confusion was seriously increased in many colonies by the outbreak of war with France and by Indian incursions on the northern frontiers. With these various and perplexing problems to be dealt with, it is not surprising that the king and his ministers were not able at once to restore order and carry out a consistent policy; and it is a mark of statesmanship that during the next two years a fair solution of the problem was worked out in most of the colonies.

     The basis of this settlement was compromise. Though the colonial policy of James II. was maintained in many of its essential features, it was considerably modified, and on one point was definitely abandoned. The privilege of a representative assembly could hardly be denied by a government instituted for the protection of representative institutions in the mother-country; and it was now restored in all the colonies.

     The question still remained of restoring the old charters, especially in New England. The colonists, represented by skilful agents, and supported by influential politicians in England, claimed to stand in defence of ancient privileges arbitrarily taken from them by the now discredited government of James II. The Puritan party had played an important

part in bringing about the English revolution also, and might reasonably claim some consideration for Puritan interests in America. Against these claims, however, were enlisted some powerful influences. Many of the new king’s counsellors had had an active part in the administrations of the last two Stuart kings, and were hardly prepared to abandon altogether the old policy. The revolution also strengthened rather than weakened the influence of the merchants in the government; desiring, as they did, a strict observance of the navigation acts, and a steady assertion of British as against distinctively colonial interests, it was clearly their interest to extend the administrative control of the mother-country.

     Lastly, the outbreak of war both in Europe and America served to emphasize the military point of view. It was urged again and again in the colonial correspondence that the ravages of the Indians on the frontier were largely the result of the political disintegration which followed the revolution. So long as the colonies were divided into petty independent jurisdictions, each pursuing selfishly its own immediate interests, there could be no effective cooperation for the defence of the empire as a whole.

     The adjustment of colonial governments from 1689 to 1691 was a fair compromise between the antagonistic views which have just been described. The idea of a consolidated New England was abandoned; Connecticut and Rhode Island were allowed

to resume their rights of government under the old charters which had never been definitely surrendered; and New Hampshire was to be governed, as before, as a separate royal province, though the proprietor of the soil, Samuel Allen, was given a governor’s commission. The tendency towards consolidation appears, however, in the new charter of Massachusetts, which organized under a single royal government Massachusetts, Maine, and the old colony of Plymouth. The charter also included Acadia, recently conquered by Sir William Phips; but this clause was deprived of importance through the French reconquest of Port Royal in 1691.¹

     The Massachusetts charter was in itself a compromise. The interests of the crown were to be protected by a royal governor with a limited appointing power and the right of veto upon acts of the general court or assembly; there was also an ultimate royal veto on colonial statutes, and an express right of appeal from colonial courts to the Privy Council. These were serious deductions from the old colonial independence, but enough remained to give Massachusetts until the eve of the American Revolution several marked advantages among the royal provinces: the royal veto had to be exercised within a specified time; the executive council, which served also as the upper house of the legislature, was here alone an elective body,

annually chosen by joint ballot of the council and the house of representatives, though subject to the governor’s veto. The guarantee of annual elections, the right to exercise a considerable part of the appointing power, and the semi-popular character of the legislative upper house gave to the assembly a freedom of action and an influence in administration not to be found in any other royal province.¹

     In New York the revolutionary leaders had involved themselves in unnecessary antagonism with the new government in England and were set aside in the final settlement. The province received a separate royal government of the ordinary type, but the representative principle was definitely recognized.

     The problems of the proprietary governments were not settled in any consistent or logical fashion, but were largely affected by personal considerations. The pending proceedings against the proprietors of the Jerseys and of the Carolinas were not pushed, in spite of the disorderly conditions in those colonies. On the other hand, the proprietors of Pennsylvania and Maryland were prejudiced by their associations. The fact that Lord Baltimore was a Catholic had been emphasized by the unfortunate delay of his government in proclaiming the new sovereign, and was taken advantage of by the discontented elements within the province. The friction between proprietary and royal officers during the preceding

years injured him with the statesmen of the new government as well as with their predecessors. The result was a somewhat peculiar compromise; Baltimore remained technically in possession of his charter, and enjoyed certain rights as proprietor of the soil; while the king appointed the governor and council, and in general exercised the same political authority as in the normal royal province.

     Penn’s position was particularly vulnerable: his legal title to the lower counties was questioned; his officers were charged with laxity in the administration of the navigation laws; his intimacy with the late king made him an object of suspicion; and there was sharp criticism of the Quaker attitude towards imperial defence. In this crisis, however, Penn and his friends in the province showed a marked capacity for diplomacy and passive resistance. Except for a brief interruption in 1692-1694, during which Governor Fletcher, of New York, undertook to administer the province under a royal commission, Penn was able to hold his ground.

     By the close of the year 1691, the two royal governments on the continent had been increased to five: New Hampshire; the three leading colonies of Virginia, Massachusetts, and Maryland; and New York, which occupied a position of pre-eminent strategic importance in the coming struggle with France. Taken together, the royal provinces now had perhaps two-thirds of the total population of the continental colonies. Thus the net result of

the decade which began with Penn’s charter in 1681 and ended with the second Massachusetts charter of 1691 was a marked extension of imperial control.

     Though the Stuart policy had been modified in some respects, the Stuart traditions were still strong at the court. Provincial officials who had begun American service under Charles and James, and were closely associated with the carrying out of their policy, were retained in the service with every indication of royal confidence. The charges against Andros were dismissed, and he received afterwards an appointment to the royal government of Virginia, the most important on the continent. Howard of Effingham, in spite of the vigorous opposition in Virginia, was at first reappointed titular governor of the province, with Francis Nicholson, Andros’s former associate in New York, as his lieutenant on the ground. Usher, the new lieutenant-governor in New Hampshire, belonged to the same party. Above all, Edward Randolph, the unsparing critic of the chartered governments, continued his colonial career as surveyor-general of customs. From these and others like them correspondence on colonial affairs was constantly coming in to the secretaries of state and the committee of trade, and impressing upon them the desirability of pushing to its legitimate conclusions the policy of imperial control.¹

     In Massachusetts the final establishment of even a modified provincial system was peculiarly painful, and it was associated with another event which gave to this constitutional change something of tragic dignity.

     It is now well understood that the witchcraft delusion in Massachusetts was no unique incident in human history or in the Christian world of that time. The basis of the witchcraft idea was the belief in a personal devil who, through his agents, the witches, was constantly conspiring against the welfare of mankind. This dogma was almost universally held by the Christian church in its various branches for two centuries after the Protestant revolution, and was definitely recognized by the law of the land. In the Massachusetts Body of Liberties of 1641 witchcraft was made a capital offence, and in 1692 the general court enacted a law, taken almost verbatim from a statute of James I., imposing the same penalty for witchcraft in its more serious forms. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many thousands of persons were executed as witches in England, and methods of procedure in such cases were carefully set forth in the legal treatises of the day.¹

     Before 1692 there were a few sporadic cases of conviction and execution for witchcraft. About ten years before the Salem outbreak, the ministers of

Boston and vicinity undertook a serious investigation of the history of witchcraft in New England, and soon after Increase Mather described, in his Illustrious Providences, witchcraft and kindred phenomena. In 1688 the children of John Goodwin, of Boston, were supposed to have been bewitched by an Irish laundress, who was tried and executed. Cotton Mather, the son of Increase Mather, interested himself in this case, and applied to it his theory that the malign influences of the Evil One might be overcome by fasting and prayer. In the following year he published a book in which he insisted on the reality of devils and witches, and sharply criticised the sceptics. Richard Baxter, the famous English dissenter, thought the book so convincing “that he must be a very obdurate Sadducee that will not believe it.” Both the Mather, recommended cautious methods of procedure in the trial of supposed witches, but probably their Publications helped to develop a morbid interest in supernatural phenomena.¹

     In the mean time the colonists had been abnormally excited by experiences of other kinds. Their old charter had been taken from them, and serious men were anxious about the possibility of maintaining the old ideals under the changed conditions. Then, for several years, a peculiarly shocking warfare had been going on on the frontier with a savage people, whom it was easy to think of as fiendish

allies of the Evil One. Thus, when the tales of witchcraft at Salem village began to come in, they found a more ready response than might have been given in calmer times.

     The disturbance began with the strange actions of some young girls at Salem village (now Danvers). Friends and professional advisers were called in, and when they agreed that the girls had been bewitched there was great alarm, and public fasts were kept, not only in the immediate neighborhood, but in other parts of the colony. When questioned about the cause of their troubles, the “afflicted persons” named at first three women by whom they claimed to have been bewitched; then from time to time they made similar charges against other persons. In this way a large number of men and women, not only in Salem village but in neighboring towns, were examined and imprisoned, until finally, in May, 1692, the new governor, Sir William Phips, and his council organized a special court to try the witchcraft cases. During the following summer this court sat at Salem, and under its authority nineteen persons in all were convicted of witchcraft and executed. The majority of them were women, but one, George Burroughs, was a graduate of Harvard College and a prominent minister of the province. One man, Giles Corey, under a strict application of the old English law, was pressed to death for refusing to plead. Many others, over-wrought by the cruel examinations which they had

to undergo, and in order to save their own lives, made confessions implicating innocent persons. These convictions were brought about in large measure by the acceptance of what was called “spectral” testimony. It was assumed by the court in accordance with some English precedents that the devil could not assume the form of an innocent person. When, therefore, the “afflicted persons” professed that they had been bewitched by the devil in the form of certain individuals whom they named, this was taken as conclusive evidence of guilt. The leading ministers, however, including the Mathers, condemned the use of spectral testimony, and insisted that the devil might assume the form of an innocent person. Finally, when an increasing number of people of high character and social standing, including Lady Phips, began to be accused, there was a strong revulsion of feeling. In the winter of 1692-1693 the special court was superseded by the newly organized superior court, which held a special session at Salem in January, 1693. About fifty persons were then tried; but only three were convicted, and they were reprieved by Governor Phips, who now ordered that the prosecutions should be stopped.¹

     Before many years had passed, the people of

Massachusetts generally were convinced that great wrong had been done to innocent people, and the general court set apart a day of fasting and prayer in recognition of the errors committed in the witchcraft proceedings. At that time Cotton Mather expressed in his diary his anxiety lest the divine displeasure might overtake his family “for my not appearing with vigor enough to stop the proceedings of the judges when the inextricable storm from the Invisible World assaulted the country.” A more memorable and impressive declaration is that of Samuel Sewall, a councillor and a member of the witchcraft court, in a paper which he caused to be publicly read in his presence at church in 1697. He manfully took upon himself a large share of the “Guilt contracted” in the Salem proceedings, “Asking pardon of men, And especially desiring prayers that God, who has an Unlimited Authority, would pardon that sin and all other his sins; . . . and . . . Not Visit the sin of him, or of any other, upon himself or any of his, nor upon the Land.”