Sir Edmund Andross, who came with the title of governor gen oral, and empowered to take away their charters from the colonists, made Boston his head-quarters. He came with the fair mask of kindness, which was soon cast off. Fees of all officers were increased; public thanksgivings without royal permission were forbidden, the press was restrained; land titles were abrogated, and the people were obliged to petition for new patents, sometimes at great expense; and in various ways Andross and others man aged to enrich themselves by oppressing and impoverishing the inhabitants. The free spirit of New England was aroused, and the people became very restive under the tyrant. Secret meetings were held, in which the propriety of open resistance was discussed; but before the people of Boston, afterward so famous for their bold opposition to imperial power, lifted the arm of defiance, the news came that James was an exile, and that William and Mary were firmly seated on the throne of England. Boston was in great commotion. People flocked in from the country, and cries of "Down with all tyrants" were mingled with the notes of joy rung out by the church-bells. Andross, alarmed, fled to the fort, * but was soon arrested, imprisoned, and, as already noticed, sent home for trial. A new charter was received in 1692, when the territories of Plymouth, Maine, and Nova Scotia were added to Massachusetts. By that charter the governor was appointed by the crown, and a property qualification was necessary to procure the privilege of the elective franchise in choosing the members of the General Court or Assembly. Such was the government that existed when the Revolution broke out.
About this time the French, who had settled upon the St. Lawrence, began to excite the Northern and Eastern Indians against the English settlements in New England. Dover and Salmon Falls in New Hampshire, Casco in Maine, and Schenectady in New York were desolated. The colony fitted out a force, under General Winthrop, to attack Montreal, and a fleet, under Sir William Phipps, to besiege Quebec. The expedition was a failure, and for seven years, until the treaty of peace between France and England was concluded, the frontier was scourged by savage cruelties. During this time military operations exhausted the treasury of Massachusetts, and the government emitted bills of credit, the first paper money issued in the American colonies.
From the beginning of the eighteenth century until the treaty of Paris, or, rather, of Fontainbleau, in 1763, the New England colonies were continually agitated by successive wars
* The first fort was upon one of the three eminences in Boston, called Cornhill, from the circumstance that the first explorers found corn buried there. The fort was completed in 1634. It had complete command of the harbor. It is now a green plat, two hundred feet in diameter, and called Washington Place The eminence is called Fort Hill.
* Another of the eminences is called Beacon Hill, from the circumstance that on the top of it was a beacon pole, with a tar barrel at its apex, erected in 1635, which was to be fired, to give an alarm in the country, if Boston should be attacked by savages. Upon a crane was suspended a basket containing some combustibles for firing the barrel. This beacon was blown down in 1789, and the next year a plain Doric column of brick and stone, incrusted with cement, was erected. It was about sixty feet high, on an eight feet pedestal. On the tablets of the pedestal were inscriptions commemorating the most important events from the passage of the Stamp Act until 1790. This pedestal is preserved in the State House of Boston. The monument stood a little north of the site of the present State House. A view of the old beacon is given above.
First American Paper money.—Prowess of Colonial Troops.—The French and Indian War.—The Revolutionary Era.
with the French and Indians, by jealousies concerning colonial rights, which acts of Parliament from time to time seemed to menace with subversion.