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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
The revolution of 1689 in Massachusetts was an event of some complexity in which various shades of political opinion were united, temporarily and for different reasons, in opposition to Governor Andros and the government of the Dominion of New England. The immediate result of the overthrow of Andros was the formation of an alternative government, a ‘Council for the Safety of the People and the Conservation of the Peace’, which was formally constituted on 20 April 1689, two days after the Boston uprising. It was then agreed that the fifteen signatories of the letter to Andros which had demanded his surrender should be members of this Council ‘together with such other of them of the old Magistrates or such other Gentlemen as they shall Judge meet to Associate to them…’ Twenty-two other men accepted the invitation of the original fifteen to join them.
page 1 note 1 Massachusetts Archives (State House, Boston), Court Records, vi, 2Google Scholar. (Hereafter cited as C.R. VI.)
page 1 note 2 Ibid. pp. 2–3.
page 1 note 3 Ibid. pp. 3–5.
page 1 note 4 Ibid. p. 2.
page 2 note 1 E.g. C.R. vi, pp. 32–4, ‘The Humble Address and Petition of the Governor and Council and Convention of Representatives of the People of Your Majesties Colony of the Massachusetts in New England’, 6 06, 1689Google Scholar.
page 2 note 2 C.R. vii, p. 11.
page 2 note 3 Ibid. pp. 11–12.
page 2 note 4 Ibid. pp. 16–18.
page 3 note 1 Public Record Office, C.O. 5:855, no. 17.
page 3 note 2 Massachusetts Archives, cvii, p. 27.
page 3 note 3 C.R. VI, p. 28. The names of the signatories to this document provide a partial list of the ‘moderates’ in the colony. They were: Andrew Belcher, Jeremiah Dumer, Penn Townsend, Nathaniel Oliver, John Eyre, David Waterhouse, Richard Sprague, John Foster, Adam Winthrop, John Nelson, Peter Sergeant and Samuel Shrimpton.
page 3 note 4 Ibid. pp. 35–6.
page 3 note 5 Lucas, Paul R., ‘Colony or Commonwealth: Massachusetts Bay, 1661–1666’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 24, no. 1 (01 1967), pp. 88–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
page 4 note 1 Hall, Michael G., Edward Randolph and the American Colonies, 1676–1703 (University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1960), pp. 59–61, 69–73, 82Google Scholar.
page 4 note 2 Massachusetts Archives, cvii, p. 87.
page 4 note 3 Massachusetts Archives, xxxv, pp. 104b, 142a, 171a. In Cooke's case the Convention agreed that he should be sent as a ‘Representative’ to England. The Council substituted the word ‘Agent.’
page 4 note 4 These broadsides are in the Public Record Office, C.O. 5:855, nos. 4–6. I am grateful for permission to print them. (See below, section III.)
page 4 note 5 C.R. vi, pp. 16–17.
page 5 note 1 E.g. C.R. VI, pp. 31–2.
page 5 note 2 A law passed in 1664 set the qualifications for the franchise in this period Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, ed. Shurtleff, N. B., (Boston, 1853), vol. iv, pt. ii, pp. 117–18Google Scholar. The financial qualification is succinctly stated in Massachusetts Archives, cvi, p. 94. Randolph's use of the franchise in his criticisms of the Massachusetts government may be studied, passim, in Letters and Papers of Edward Randolph, ed. Toppan, R. N. and Goodrich, A. T. S. for the Prince Society (Boston, 1898–1909), vol. iiiGoogle Scholar.
page 5 note 3 Town mandates or returns may be found in Massachusetts Archives, cvii, pp. 8a–54.
page 5 note 4 Ibid. p. 49a.
page 6 note 1 Massachusetts Archives, cvii, p. 94a.
page 7 note 1 ‘From a Gentleman of Boston…’ is listed in Evans's American Bibliography and was reproduced in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, first series, 12 (1873), 118–19Google Scholar. Neither of the other two broadsides are listed in Evans and they were not known to its present editor, Dr C. K. Shipton, to whom I am grateful for answering my queries.