Andros’s commission gave him the power to appoint and remove his counselors at will. The council consisted of nineteen members, five of whom were from Rhode Island. One of them, John Greene, was absent on his agency in England. Their first meeting was held at Boston. In this the usual oaths of allegiance and office were taken, the two Quaker members from Rhode Island being allowed to make their affirmation. All officers in commission were continued in office during the Governor’s pleasure, and all laws that did not clash with the laws of England, were retained. The first was the only full meeting of this impotent board, which only met to confirm the resolves of an arbitrary Governor.
In substance Andros had his own way, though not without occasional opposition and now and then humiliation. In Rhode Island the charter was adroitly put out of his reach by Governor Clarke and not reproduced till he had left Newport. In Connecticut it was hidden in the hollow of an oak. The seal of Rhode Island was broken. The members of the council were constantly changing, and few of them, according to Randolph, cared for the King. “His Excellency has to do with a perverse people.”
We meet some of the questions of our own day. Licenses for the sale of liquor were granted in Newport, but no liquor could be sold in King’s Province. How well the prohibition was obeyed it is impossible to say. Poor laws also appear in the guise of taxes for the support of that perplexing part of the population. It would be tedious and useless to follow the despotic Governor through all the changes of his administration of two years and four months. Suffice it to say that he had fully imbibed the spirit of his master, and did all that he could to reduce the colonies to servitude. A few provisions, however, may be mentioned as illustrating the condition of the country. With the growth of the towns fires became sources of danger. To enforce watchfulness the person in whose house a fire broke out was fined two and sixpence, and for still greater security every householder was required to set “a ladder reaching to the ridge pole, to every house that he owned.” Attention was called to the fishing in Pettaquamscot pond and an order passed for encouraging it. A tax was laid for the extermination of wolves, which seem still to have been very numerous.
In April, 1688, Andros’s commission was enlarged so as to comprise New York and the Jerseys, all under the general appellation of New England. Enlarged powers and minute instructions accompanied the new commission, and among the former was the subjection of the press to the will of the Governor.
But another change was drawing nigh. There was nothing in common between James the Second and the New England colonist, and Andros represented his master too faithfully not to be bitterly hated. Even Thanksgiving, that thoroughly New England festival, was neglected when announced by his proclamation. Some spoke out their detestation openly to his face. “I suppose,” he said one morning to Dr. Hooker, the great clerical wit of Hartford, “all the good people of Connecticut are fasting and praying on my account.” “Yes,” replied the Doctor, “we read, ‘This kind goeth not out but by fasting and prayer.’”
Rhode Island suffered less at his hands than any other colony. The enforced toleration which excited such strong feelings in Massachusetts met with no opposition in a territory where Baptists and Quakers and Puritans and Separatists worshipped according to their own convictions. John Greene soon became aware that there was no prospect of a return to the free life of the charter so long as James held the throne. Therefore, without renouncing the hope of a better future, he confined his negotiations for the present to questions of minor, though important bearing. Chief among them was the putting an end to the intrusions of the outside claimants to Narragansett. This brought up all the unsettled claims which had been so pertinaciously enforced and so firmly resisted. The Atherton claim was thrown out by the Commissioners as extorted from the Indians by fear. The Connecticut claim was repudiated upon grounds set forth in the Rhode Island charter. Several individual titles, both Indian and English, were considered, and after careful examination, the right of Rhode Island to King’s Province was confirmed for the third time—“against Connecticut in point of jurisdiction, and against the so-called proprietors in point of ownership.” This report was met in England by a petition of Lord Culpepper in behalf of the Atherton company for grants of land not already occupied and the bass ponds, upon such quit rents as might seem good to the King. The petition was granted in part and Andros was intrusted to “assign them such lands as had not already been occupied—at a quit rent of two and sixpence for every hundred acres.”
Thus far Rhode Island has come off with honor in her contests with her neighbors. There was one, however, in which she won no honor. A party of unfortunate Huguenots had established themselves in King’s Province, forming a little settlement of their own and paying honestly for their lands. But the French name was not loved in the colonies and their Protestant neighbors persecuted them away. Traces of them may still be found in the neighborhood where they settled, which bears to this day the name of Frenchtown.
Meanwhile great changes were taking place in England, where James was rapidly running his career of bigotry and oppression. Slow as the communications between the mother country and her colonies were there was still communication enough to enable the latter to form some conception of the state of public feeling in the former. The new government had never acquired any stability in New England. The Council was constantly changing, and after the first meeting never all met together again. The public mind was ripe for revolution, and when the first tidings of the fall of James reached New England she was prepared to accept them with all their consequences. Unfortunately for Andros he was in Boston at this critical moment, and Boston was ready to act with her wonted vigor. The Governor was summoned to surrender his authority, and refusing, was thrown into prison. Massachusetts made haste to reörganize her government, but her charter was gone.