“After this his Excellency proceeded to erect courts of Judicature, and constituted the said John Allyn, Esq. & Judge of the inferiour Court of Common Pleas for the county of Hartford, and all others who before had been assistants, & dwelling in the same County, he now made Justices of the Peace for the said County.
“From hence his Excellency passed through all the rest of the countys of N. Haven, N. London and Fairfield, settling the Government, was everywhere chearfully and gratefully received, and erected the King’s Courts as aforesaid, wherein those who were before in the office of Govr, Deputy Govr and Assistants were made Judges of the Pleas, or Justices of the Peace, not one excepted nor (finally) excepting, but accepting the same, some few others being by his Excellency added to them in the several Countys, not without, but by & with their own advice and approbation, and all sworn by the oaths (of allegience and) of their respective offices, to do equal justice to rich and poor, after the Laws & Customs of the Realm of England, and of this his Majesty’s dominion.”
“The Secretary, who was well acquainted with all the transactions of the General Court, and very well understood their meaning and intent in all, delivered their common seal to Sir E. A.”[137]
Connecticut under Andros passed a period of peace and quiet. Governor Treat and secretary Allyn were made members of the council and judges, besides being entrusted with military commands, and everything went on quietly. There was an evident disposition to favor Connecticut, and every reason why it should be favored. We hear of no complaint against the government or the laws. The worst hardship recorded is the settling of intestate property according to English law, instead of the customs of the colony. It is true that town meetings were forbidden except once a year, but there were frequent sessions of the courts held, so that the citizens were not deprived of all the common interests of their lives. With Allyn the governor was on most friendly terms, modifying several regulations at his suggestions, and entrusting him largely with the management of Connecticut affairs.[138] To make a proper catalogue of miseries, the Connecticut historian, Trumbull, is obliged to borrow and relate doleful stories from Massachusetts, not asserting that they happened in Connecticut, but certainly producing that impression.[139]
There were many reasons why Connecticut did not resent the government of Andros as much as was the case in Massachusetts. In the first place, Connecticut had had a lawful government and a law-abiding people; its charter had not been taken away as a punishment, but as a political necessity; while Massachusetts had been fighting for a system of more than questionable legality, and in a spirit which might well seem to the royal officials to be seditious. Connecticut had enjoyed a form of government in which the people had really controlled public affairs; in Massachusetts the government had been in the hands of an oligarchy, who resented most bitterly their deposition from power as robbing them of their peculiar privileges. In Connecticut the ecclesiastical system at this time was judicious and moderate; the radical tendencies of the New Haven colony had been held in check by the wiser policy of Hartford. Persecution had never been a feature of Connecticut religion, and its history is not disgraced with the accounts of frequent religious quarrels, excommunications, and expulsions which are so familiar to that of the neighboring colony. In Massachusetts Andros found himself opposed and thwarted in every way that the angry leaders could devise; in Connecticut, though men were attached to their self-government and resented its loss, he was received with respect and consideration. One is led to suspect that, with all their pride in their charter and love of their liberties, the leading men of Connecticut were shrewd enough to see the advantages that they received from the new arrangement. They saw the arrogance of their old rivals of the “Bay Colony” humiliated; they had the pleasure of seeing Hampshire county compelled to come to Hartford to court, and they felt themselves favored and trusted by the governor. Besides all these considerations, from the situation of Connecticut, lying as it did between Massachusetts and New York, it was much to Andros’s interest that he should keep the colony well disposed, and he took some trouble to do so.
And, after all, what do the charges of tyranny and misgovernment amount to, even in Massachusetts? The real gravamen of all the charges is, that the charter had been taken away, and the people of Massachusetts did not enjoy those laws of England which they had always claimed as their birthright. The personal charges against Andros were so frivolous that the colonial agents did not dare to put their hands to them when the case was brought to trial in England, and, by their failure to appear, confessed that they were false and malicious. It is not likely that Andros was always conciliatory. That a population of dissenting Whigs should put difficulties in the way of public service of the Church of England, as by law established, must have been to Andros unendurable, and it is absurd to represent his use of a meeting-house in Boston for the religious services of the national church as an instance of malignant despotism.[140] It is far from improbable that Andros was compelled against his will to be as civil as he was to the American non-conformists, because his master was trafficking with them in England. While Increase Mather was intriguing with the king and receiving friendly messages from Father Petre, and while men like Alsop and Rosewell and Penn were basking in the favors of the court at Whitehall, a governor of New England, even if he had wished, could not venture upon any acts of oppression in America.[141] In fact, Andros’s actions in insisting on the services of the English Church in Boston may be considered among the most creditable in his history, and exhibit the character of the man. He risked offending the king, and did offend the puritans, in order to show respect to that historic church of his nation, which king and puritan alike desired to overthrow.
It is quite probable that Andros was at times rough in his language. Without justifying him in this, it may be pleaded that it certainly was not an uncommon fault of military men; and besides, there were a good many things that must have made the use of strong language a relief. He did not have a very high appreciation of Indian deeds; but few honest men to-day, legal or lay, would differ from him. He reviled the palladium of New England liberties, the towns; but perhaps in this he was in advance of his age. He reorganized the court system, established tables of fees, and changed the method of proving wills; but here the blame is not his; but if any one’s, it should lie upon the king who established the province, or the council who passed the laws. The truth seems to be that Andros was shocked and scandalized at the loose, happy-go-lucky way of doing business that had, up to this time, served the colonies; and he labored in New England, as he had in New York, and as he afterwards did in Virginia, to give his province a good, efficient, general system of administration. What made it objectionable to the colonies was not that it was bad, but that it was different from what they had had. The man who does his arithmetic upon his fingers would count it a hardship if he were compelled to use the much more convenient processes known to better educated men. The case was the same in New England. They did not want to be improved; they had no desire for any more efficient or regular administration than they were accustomed to. They preferred managing their own affairs badly to having them done for them, were it ever so well. It is not difficult for us to appreciate their discontent.
It is harder for us to put ourselves in Andros’s place, and to feel with him the disgust of an experienced and orderly administrator at the loose and slipshod methods that he saw everywhere; the indignation of the loyal servant of the king at hardly concealed disloyalty and sedition; the resentment of a devoted member of the national Church of England at the insults heaped upon it by the men who had failed in their previous attempt to destroy it.
Andros failed to conciliate Massachusetts. An angel from heaven bearing King James’s commission would have failed. A rebellion against his power was carefully prepared, doubtless in concert with the Whig leaders in England; and when the news of the English Revolution came, Massachusetts broke out also, arrested the governor, destroyed the government, and set up an irregular government of its own.[142] The object of this revolution was evidently to overthrow the Dominion of New England, and to resume separate colonial independence before the new English authorities had time to communicate with Andros. There is no reason to think that Andros would have tried to hold the country for James. Respect for the law was, with him, the reason for his loyalty to the crown; and though he was personally attached to the Stuarts and had acted under James for many years, he was governor of the Dominion, not for James Stuart, but for the king of England.
The popular leaders were indeed afraid, not that Andros would oppose the revolution in England, but that he would accept it, and be confirmed by William and Mary in the same position he had held under James, and that thus the hated union of the colonies would be perpetuated. Their revolution was only too successful. They had their own way, and the events in Salem in 1692 were a commentary on the benefits of colonial autonomy.